If Only Longing Would Fix It

        While visiting New Orleans recently, I took in the World War II Museum. The experience begins with a simulation: you board a train, you feel it move across the rails, and through the use of film, you see a black and white America pass by the windows. Most of the young soldiers have never been more than fifty miles from home, and their future is uncertain.

       And their mothers' job was to let them go....into separation, danger and not knowing.

Those mothers had little expectation of getting word from their sons, perhaps a letter or card from time to time. Others would get that dreadful telegram from the state department.

       Theirs was some serious waiting.

       When I lost touch with my faraway son a few weeks ago – no phone, no texts, no Facebook – it took me to a new level of panic. As moderns, we expect to reach anyone, any time. Nightmarish scenarios multiplied themselves in my mind: he's friendless, he's jailed, he's overdosed.

How frequently the metaphor of war is invoked to talk about addiction: the “war on drugs,” “battling an addiction,” “in the trenches” and so on. And it's a comparison not without merit. Sometimes drugs feel that way to me, that my son is off fighting a dangerous enemy that is beyond my comprehension.

     Then I remembered the example of those World War II moms. I can wait fretfully, until I am paralyzed with worry, or I can contribute to the war effort . My most important job – and maybe the only job within my power - is to pray.