The Story of Us Continued

I'd walked into the sandwich shop early in the evening, and it was deserted except for the lady behind the counter, who was on the phone. "DNA test?" she was saying, "Who's going to have to pay for that?" She said something else about "paternity" and "Social Services." Then she saw me and ended the phone call.

We've been going through some struggles of her own in our extended family, so I got to talking with her. Her son, while a drug addict, had taken up with a woman who was also an addict, then had broken up with her. She called him to say that she had been pregnant but had gotten an abortion. Then, a few weeks ago, she called from the hospital to say that the baby was now born, and she'd named this woman's son as the father. He, in recovery, has serious doubts that he is the father, but the Social Services department believes the woman and wants him to take responsibility. The woman I was talking too is 67, and can't take on raising a child at her age, but she wants to find a better home for this baby.

You can see how messy it all is, how impossible to unravel without someone suffering. I'm baffled. How can we keep telling ourselves that we're all right, that we just need a little more education, or a little more therapy, or a little more whatever, and we'll come up smelling like roses?

The biggest reckoning we need is with ourselves. We're not all right. Sure, we can point to a story like this one as just an example of the sad fact that some people are messed up. But the story is repeated too many times with too many permutations, and the result is always human suffering. We need to wake up to a new reality - that we're not all right, and we need a Redeemer to rescue us from ourselves.