What do you get someone who has nothing?

Imagine my surprise when I came in this morning to discover that it’s the 10th anniversary of this site! Congratulations to everyone who has worked so hard in making it the success and safe haven for budding writers that it is today! I just joined a week or so ago, have already been made to feel most welcome, and am enjoying my experience here greatly.

However, it was not without sadness that I noted that this date also marks my sister’s birthday. I mentioned her ongoing struggle with drugs earlier, and this addiction has unfortunately turned what used to be a very happy celebration into one that is, to say the least, quite uncomfortable.

We used to be able to all get together, go out, spend time together, enjoy a nice meal as a family, and give her gifts. I usually gave her makeup and a card with some money. Now, the family is no more, splintered and torn; her own children are lost to her since her substance abuse began---and I mean that quite literally. Her two oldest girls are with their dads (best thing for them, by far, as now they have good lives, whereas before, with their mother using, they just didn’t), who would be more than happy to let her have contact with the girls, if she would only promise not to use drugs when they are there; she can’t even promise that, and the presence of her drug-addicted spouse makes things even more impossible, as far as her seeing her girls is concerned. Her youngest girl has been given up for adoption, and the little boy that she had with her husband less than three years ago is in foster care. Such circumstances tend to preclude family gatherings as neither she nor her husband are capable of truly enjoying them (or, indeed, much of anything these days, except getting high, and I really doubt they get a whole lot of pleasure out of that---it’s a craving and an addiction that has them in its grasp and that’s all they care about right now).

So what exactly do you get the person who has nothing? (Because that’s all that my sister has right now). What I’m probably going to get her is a gift certificate to get her hair done at the beauty academy’s salon (it’s one which her oldest daughter is going to attend this fall), because I won’t give her any money to enable her drug habit, and because she always likes to look pretty (in fact, before the drug’s insidious effects began to show, she was a beautiful girl; she could be again, but needs desperately to get clean first). I’ve already gotten her a nice, warm sweater, as she’s so cold all the time now (she’s so very painfully thin, it hurts me just to think of it), and she’s always had low blood. I may even get her some headbands to go with the new hairstyle, as she likes those (and I love her so very much, I only wish I could do something to help her, but what?).

What would I like to get her? Not just for her birthday, but everyday:

Freedom from the fears that plague her, the demons that haunt her, and the insecurities that cripple her. Most of all, freedom from the addictions which have become her coping mechanisms.

Restoration to health.

Reunion with her children, and reconciliation between herself and them. They love her so much, and she loves them, too, but somehow, she has become afraid/unable to love them the way I know she really wants to.

Most of all, if I could, I would give her joy, and all that it entails, both great and small. The joy of loving and being truly loved in return, savouring a favourite food, enjoying everyday life and living it to the fullest, the joy of a good book (she always liked the V. C. Andrew series; she used to read them all, and now her eldest daughter is collecting them!), the “joy unspeakable and full of glory” that comes from loving God (and knowing He loves you back!), the joy of simply being alive. If I could, these are the presents I would give---and then she would have everything!