Behaving Badly

I heard this morning that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Senator and estranged scoundrel, John Edwards, has been given word by her doctors that there is nothing more they can do about her cancer. Although John is at her side along with other family members, I can imagine the cold reception he must get when he walks in the room. He had a baby with a campaign staffer a few years ago, right under the radar of his loyal, ailing wife.

Gary Sadler and I watched a DVD about the Christian singer/ songwriter, Larry Norman. After he passed away in February, 2008 of heart failure, many hidden stories from his past are now coming to the surface. He was a very selfish man and left broken relationships strewn across the landscape of his life since he started his music career in the 1960's, maybe even into his childhood. Buck Owens, a hero of mine since childhood (I used to listen to his songs on a portable AM radio) and the seemingly good-guy from Hee Haw, has been revealed, years after his death, to be an absolute jerk. His biography reveals that he must have had bi-polar disorder. Larry Norman was perported to have mental illness in his family, too.

As I read the book about Martin Luther King's killer, James Earl Ray, called Hellhound On His Trail, I was disheartened to see a duplicitous man in MLK, behaving badly in the shadows, just feet away from adoring followers and a desperate country in the throws of a civil crisis. If our hopes are dashed, they are turned to dust when people we admire for so long prove to be something that they are not.

The flashlight of judgment shines right back on me. I need God's grace and guidance each day to navigate, unscathed, through this life. My problem is when people blame their behavior on an illness when, clearly, they made choices. God, help me to avoid the same potholes.