Not of This World

     On March 25, 1960 my younger brother was entering this world in a small hospital in the small town of Philipsburg, Montana.  The doctor who delivered him was not competent enough to recognize how much distress the baby was in.  He suffered from a condition called erythroblastosis fetalis, Rh factor, in which a mother with Rh negative blood has a slight blood transfer with her baby's Rh positive blood.  The mother's body reacts by producing antibodies against the perceived threat, even when the threat is her baby.  The sensitivity builds gradually and seldom affects first or second pregnancies.  Roddy was the third child.  He was left with speech and hearing problems, spasticity, mental retardation.  The damage was irreversible.
     On October 8, 1962 as my sister was entering this world my mother was leaving it.  She was drawn into a world of danger, intrigue and secret conspiracies, the world of the paranoid schizophrenic.  Schizophrenia is not split personality, as in the T-shirt "I'm schizophrenic and so am I".  Schizophrenia is split thinking:  schizo=split phren=mind.  There is a breakdown in the way the mind processes information often causing hallucinations; the brain receives visual and auditory signals without outside stimuli.  It is as if your television turned itself on and began broadcasting its own channels.  Medications can mute the input but they cannot shut it off.  The disease was incurable.
     One might question the goodness of a God who would burden my father with both a handicapped son and a mentally ill wife, but there is a beautiful economy in God's purposes.  Because my mother was mentally ill, dad would spend most of his life alone in his marriage.  And because my brother was handicapped, he would spend most of his life with his dad.  Through all the lonely years they have had each other.  Isaiah 55:8,9 says:
     " For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord.
       As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
God has a plan for everyone born into this world.  Often those plans don't make sense to us.  That is because the plans are not of this world.