Who is Really Blocking Blessings?

Knowing certain people is like having shingles. You go years without an eruption, and then you feel that familiar sensation again.

Today I heard a police siren outside my house. I looked out, and I saw a cop car at my gate. The officer was waving. I buzzed him in.

He told me nothing was wrong, meaning I was not in trouble, but he named my sister and asked if I were her brother. I reluctantly said I was, and I asked what she had done. He told me she was in a hospital in Kentucky, and a caregiver was trying to get in touch with me. He did not have details.

Thinking she might be dead or dying, which would be something I would need to know about, I took the caregiver’s number. I figured this person was a nurse.

I knew one thing: I was not about to call that number without praying and without asking someone I knew in Kentucky for information. I also did a little research to make sure I would not obligate myself accidentally.

After my wife and I prayed, I called someone and asked what they knew. Nothing, but they offered to call the caregiver for me. I could not believe it. What a gift from heaven.

I didn’t want the caregiver to have my number, I did not want to be manipulated, and I definitely didn’t want to be put on the phone with my sister after a decade. It would be like erasing “3650” and writing “0” on a sign reading “DAYS SINCE LAST ACCIDENT.”

A long time later, I got a call back.

My sister’s life is not in danger at the moment. The caregiver is actually a social worker who helped her move into a subsidized apartment a few years ago.

She is obese. She has diabetes. She had a fall. It was not her first. I knew that. She fell in her kitchen in about 2010 and broke her arm. She also moved in with our elderly aunt and refused to leave, and the only reason my aunt was able to get rid of her is that she fell in a ditch on the way to Whole Foods and broke her leg. While she was in the hospital, my aunt and her daughter moved my sister’s things to the subsidized apartment.

A CAT scan says she has had 4 strokes. Her memory is not good.

She says God is going to heal her.

She says nutty things. She says neighborhood kids come to her apartment, and she feeds them. This is not true.

She is being evicted because she never cleans. This is how she behaved in the only house she ever owned, which she held in joint tenancy with my father after she conned him into paying for most of it. The filth in her house was so bad, you wouldn’t understand if you hadn’t seen it. She didn’t do any maintenance, either, so the house fell apart, and my dad had to buy her out.

The caseworker sent crews to her apartment several times to clean it for her, and she would not come to the door. On one occasion, someone took her trash out, and it amounted to 26 bags.

No surprise. My mother used to pay for apartments for her, and to prevent eviction, she used to go clean them. She would haul out multiple bags full of filthy garbage and dog feces.

When she is thrown out, she will have to wait three years to get another subsidized apartment. If she gets one, she will be evicted from it, too.

Someone has looked the apartment over, and they say the contents are a total loss. There is filth on everything. It’s full of dirty clothes that are beyond saving. Apparently, she has been buying new clothes instead of doing laundry.

She has to go, because one filthy unit will eventually ruin an entire building. Roaches and other pests will use it as a base and maternity ward.

Her car has been impounded. Somehow, she has a driver’s license, but it is being taken away. She has 4 hit-and-run charges. There are two active criminal cases on the county website where she lives, but the site won’t tell me what they’re about. Maybe the traffic cases. She does not have car insurance.

The caseworker wants someone to make medical decisions for her. I could do that, right? I could, but I won’t. It would put me in a position where she could sue me or report me to the authorities over imagined malfeasance. Also, and more importantly, I couldn’t stand being subjected to her. I am too old. I have suffered enough.

God has worked things out so I have no abusive or toxic people in my life. If I bring the worst one back in voluntarily, is that gratitude? Should he continue to help me? This is one of the greatest gifts he has given me; one of the greatest gifts anyone could have. I don’t want to spit on it.

She will get medical treatment. I checked, so it’s not as if she will do without treatment if no one steps up to make her decisions. I don’t know why they want a family member involved, except that it may save the government money. I don’t know, but I feel sure there are people who make medical decisions for indigent individuals who don’t have family. I don’t think they just toss them into dumpsters.

It occurred to me that the person I spoke to could make the decisions. I would be happy to consult, as long as I could stay here and never speak to my sister. I would even be glad to pay a monthly fee. The person I spoke to is not a tempting lawsuit target.

I am told something has to be done, because my sister will have nowhere to go in a day or two. Well, I can’t help that. Look at the options.

1. Have her move in with me. My wife would leave and take my son, and I would not blame her. My life would be shortened, and I would wish for death every day. Frankly, I would rather see my sister die than take her in and subject myself, my wife, and my wonderful baby son to her.

2. Pay for an apartment. She would be evicted. I would be liable for the repairs, extensive pest control treatment, days of cleaning, lost rent, and junk removal.

3. Buy a house for her. This has been tried.

4. Put her in a facility. She would be evicted. See 2. Even if she did not destroy the place, she would be so obnoxious, they would have to get rid of her in order to maintain order. This isn’t a possibility; it’s a certainty. It has happened already.

5. Homeless shelter. That’s where she’s going to go, if they will take her. They will probably throw her out before long, but at least I won’t have to pay for new drywall and plumbing.

Prison or a mental asylum would be the best thing for her, because they could keep her clean, give her medical care, and feed her, and she wouldn’t be able to defy them. No one else can do it.

The person I spoke to asked if I wanted to do anything to save the car. No. I do not. She can’t drive it anyway, so it has to go. Maybe a relative of ours would agree to sell it for her. I can only think of one who would dare try.

The caseworker likes my sister. She thinks she’s funny. She didn’t have to raise her or be her sibling, however. She was not there to see her torment her mother over and over. She was not there when she was torturing her little brother in the crib. She was not there when she tried to victimize her elderly father or when she abused her frail, elderly aunt and refused to leave her home.

She wasn’t there when she got thrown out of Teen Challenge, of all places. When you hit bottom and find yourself in Teen Challenge, and you abuse the employees and residents until they give you one day to leave, you should know you are very, very special.

I can’t help her. Maybe I can work it out so someone assumes responsibility for her medical decisions, but even that is risky. She will never get better. She will keep doing what she does until she dies. No one can help, but people can become enablers.

The caseworker is a woman. She is probably an emotional person; the field attracts that type. I doubt she has thought the situation through, as I just did. She may marvel to see the family of a helpless person abandon her. She may be under a common Christian delusion, which is that God never gives up on anyone, so we shouldn’t either.

God gives up on people. He gave up on the entire world in Noah’s time. He gave up on Sodom and Gomorrah. He will give up on the world again, precipitating the rapture and tribulation. He gave up on the Amalekites and the residents of various Canaanite cities. Yeshua gave up on cities that would not receive him. He told his disciples to do the same.

There is one person who could help my sister, and it’s not Yeshua. It’s my sister. Yeshua has done everything he could. My sister refuses to help herself by doing simple things like cooperating with her caseworker. She refuses to confess and repent. The horse is at the water trough, but it will not drink.

There is a small possibility that I might involve myself peripherally in getting someone to handle the medical decisions, but I don’t think I will. I think God told me I should not even think about my sister, and I don’t believe he wants me tossing others into her snake pit. Fixing her medical care won’t change much, anyway.

She will lose the car. She will go to a shelter, if they will have her. She will not get another apartment. I suppose she will live in a tent. There are tent camps in her area. The county and city clear them out, but they return.

Until today, I never thought much about the final residences of incorrigible people who don’t qualify for prison or permanent commission to institutions. I see how it works now. We are told encampments exist because of bad old capitalism or because we don’t offer enough care. Not true. People who live in tents are there because they don’t give us options. They won’t work with us, so we can’t help them. And leftists blame society, not the guilty.

Sure, there are some tent residents who can’t be blamed because of mental illness, but on the other hand, you can make yourself mentally ill by being an unrepentant jerk all your life. Not every mental case is a blameless person who suddenly went schizophrenic without warning. There are plenty of crazy homeless people who caused their own mental issues.

My sister appears to be somewhat crazy now, but that was not always the case. She made herself crazy through decades of evil decisions she made in cold blood while in her right mind.

She is as self-righteous as anyone on Earth. She is always right. She is always the victim. Everyone owes her an apology. Other people cause all of her problems. She could be saved if she would admit guilt, repent, and have her many demons cast out. Pride, a love of lying, and hostility are the hedges that confine her with her demons.

So that’s it. I’ll pray with my wife, and we will probably leave it at that.