The Bipolar Otaku

A friend of mine told me about what happened to him in the last month. He told me all this knowing that I am (or, at least, I try to be) a good Christian.

I had known that in his business travels, he had been taking up some stupid habits... the stupidest one being marital suicide (aka "cheating"). In fact, when I saw him a month ago, he was bragging about his hot new girlfriend. I really wanted to ask him how his wife and daughter felt about her, but I just shook my head and kept my mouth closed.

Instead, I guess God has some other means of penance in mind. Instead, his conscience ate away at him the old-fashioned way... guilt fed (surprisingly) by the end of Stephen King's Dark Tower series and physically manifested by severe back pain. In other words, his life had to come awfully close to a crashing halt. So he finally decided to come clean to his wife at about the same time he realized he need to detox away from all the pain medications that weren't working anymore.

So, luckily, his marriage and family appear to be on the rebound, his medical sheet is looking better, his career looks like it rolled on smoothly, and he looks like he's actually happy for once. He said he now realizes, in a way that he never understood before, the extent of God's mercy. Of course, he's still in store for a bit more pain - it sounds like his email, voicemail, and phone logs are now being tracked and his wife insists on coming along any time he goes out of town... the trust was broken, but now it might get repaired.

I look back and wonder if I should have said anything. Maybe I said all that I had to with the look on my face. Thank God that it worked out okay.

Last Tuesday, I finally had my surgery. After the sleep study and CT scan, the doctor recommended a surgery to fix my deviated septum, to get a culture sample of the bacteria chronically growing in my nose, and the shock my tongue so it doesn't collapse in my sleep.

After the initial 8 hours of wondering if my nose would ever stop bleeding, everything started to clear up. There have been a few minor problems... I now have to take antibiotics 4 times per day, which means that I'll be popping pills and puffing inhalers almost constantly during the day. I have to irrigate nose twice a day, which is kind of like forcing yourself to snort milk out your nose. I haven't yet gotten back full control of my tongue, which means I stutter when I talk and drool when I eat.

But I can sleep, thank God! That's always a good thing.

I have this friend. He is one of those guys that people either love or hate. He tells it like it is, but he is quick to forgive and to help people. He loves everyone. He's great, and I'd go to the end of the world to help him. Unfortunately, he hasn't been around for a while, so he has told his wife to take the lead in his teaching and to continue his work.

Many people who know him forget that he has a wife. But the worst part is how people treat his wife. She gets blamed for everything, it seems. Some say that she is the cause of all of the people who hate my friend. Some say that she has abused all the loving generosity that he has given her. She's not perfect, so most people don't think that she's worthy of him, but they forget that she is the one that he chose. Some people call her nasty names, and try to convince everyone that they were never married at all, but it's true - they are legitimately married and he would never divorce her. Quite simply, he loves her too much.

The most unusual part is how their "friends" treat her. Some of his friends actually recognize that they are married and married for good. So they take pictures of them together, but they crop her out of the picture. Sometimes they just rip the picture in half and frame that; sometimes they take a knife and cut her head out of the picture; sometimes they will paint their own pictures about what they want him to look like, and then paint themselves as his wife. These are their "friends".

Fortunately, she has they have some real friends. They treat her with honor because he treats her with honor. They recognize that that the two are, in fact, husband and wife in the fullest sense of the word. Those two are, in fact, bound in marriage, in a one-flesh union in the name of God. They have faith that, even when he is not here physically, his spirit will protect her in all circumstances, despite her occasional bouts of foolishness. Most of all, they also know that she now speaks for the household while he is away. Unfortunately he has been away on his father's business for quite some time, so people are more frequently questioning her authority. Worse yet, some people are starting to forget all that he did for the people he loved and they doubt that she was ever had a husband at all.

He has saved my life more than once, so I am ever in debt to him. I try to do everything I can to be a real friend to both him and his wife. Obviously, I should continue to help passing along his teaching and working his works. Shouldn't I also do everything that I can to protect their real image? Shouldn't I defend the authority that he has given her? Shouldn't I help others love her too?

One night I had a wondrous dream,
One set of footprints there was seen,
The footprints of my precious Lord,
But mine were not along the shore.

But then some strange prints appeared,
And I asked the Lord, "What have we here?"
Those prints are large and round and neat,
"But Lord, they are too big for feet."

"My child," He said in somber tones,
"For miles I carried you along.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
But you refused and made me wait."

"You disobeyed, you would not grow,
The walk of faith, you would not know,
So I got tired, I got fed up,
And there I dropped you on your butt."

"Because in life, there comes a time,
When one must fight, and one must climb,
When one must rise and take a stand,
Or leave their butt prints in the sand."

- author unknown