The Eyes of Death

Today I had lunch with a young woman who is dying. No, she does not have cancer or some other typical disease that most would immediately think of. No, the fact is this young woman is an addict and an alcoholic... and it is killing her. I started to say that it was "slowly but surely" killing her, but the fact is, it is taking her down rapidly and with a vengeance. I had last seen this woman about 7 weeks ago, and I was absolutely stunned at the change in her physical appearance from then to now. In fact, I told her so. I was not trying to be mean or harsh at all, but I was trying to slap her into reality. This is a woman in her early twenties and unless something drastic happens in her life and soon, she will die before her 25th birthday. I know this woman well and I love her dearly and I spoke very frankly with her. I said to her, "you do know you are on a path to self destruction" with the list of things that she is doing and the chemicals she is putting into her body. She nodded and acknowledge, "Yeah, I know, Pastor D." She admits she needs to go to rehab or she is going to die. The alcohol is causing her body and face to swell and the heroine is causing her skin and hair to age, and the color in her eyes is faded and the whites of her eyes are grey. I said to her, "Hon, I don't want to offend you, but you are looking terrible." I did not even have to go further. She told me what I was seeing. She said that a loved one had recently said to her that her eyes were "dead".  That is a good way to describe it.

I'm so tired of drugs taking the lives of so many young people. I cannot even begin to count how many funerals we've had in our community over the past 2 years due to drugs and alcohol. I'm praying... I really praying... but the bottom line is that each of these people who are trapped by the demon of addiction must come to a decision themselves that they are done. I wish I could fix them all. I wish I could destroy all the drugs. But it just does not work that way... and I know that if things don't change... and soon... there will be more funerals. The one I sat with today... and the once beautiful young woman I know who has wasted away to barely more than skin stretched on a skeleton because of her use of meth. The promising athlete who lost it all because he could not stop hitting the crack pipe. I could go on and on... but this demonic force of drug addiction is running rampant in Galesburg... and I hate it! I'm tired of staring into the eyes of death that sit in the sunken faces of 20 something year old kids!

Lord... we need an earth shaking revival in Galesburg.

(The Picture above is NOT someone I know, but is from www.thegooddrugsguide.com for the purpose of illustrating what drugs do very rapidly. )