We, as parents of RAD children, can easily make statements that the reality of our disordered child is way off. It manifests in their “crazy lying”, paranoia and lack of trust to us. We based “reality” on our own moral compass or the family values we got as we were growing up.
Yesterday, I was researching on Catholic Sacred Music and by the grace of God was led to the vocations youtube video of the Maronite Monks of Adoration. The vocations director in the short film explained their charism and the focus of their religious order.
In the middle of the video, the insight I got about “reality” grabbed my attention.
The monk explained that there was a man who sort of served as their “errand boy” to the outside world. The villagers in the locality asked this man if the monks consider him as their “contact” to the real world.
The man surprisingly told the locals that in fact, it was the other way around and that the monks are his contact to “reality”.
The vocations director relates that “God is reality. That is the real thing. God himself. When you live a life without God, you call that the real world , but that is the illusion. That is why it is frantic and crazy, because they are missing the one thing that is real.”
This is a great food for thought in our lives with our RAD children. As we straighten out their “reality”, we must not forget that our gauge of reality must be re-defined.
Do we think of our Catholic life as separate from the “real things” that are occurring around us like job, errands, children’s activities etc? It may seem that what society demands for us is our real world and that our life of prayer is something we do as extra or as part of our real world.
We need to refocus our lenses. We may be aiming at a different target that is why everything in our RAD’s life are blurry and without solution. Perhaps, we need to focus our life’s camera to God, the Reality and let all other be at the background.
In our digital cameras, it now seems automatic that our camera re-focuses to the person or place or thing we are targetting and it gives us many options. Now, we must be patient and re-order our lives so that God will always be the center of our lives.
