Good Sunday morning everyone, I've just recently finished listening to intervention by Terri Blackstock, again. It's not a bad thing to like listening to certain series by your favorite authors, repeatedly, is it? I don't think so, anyhow.
OK, I'm gonna admit something here, I'm a very avid reader, and i love, love, love listening to audiobooks when I'm doing laundry, cleaning, or doing anything else outside of actually reading a book. So, Terri Blackstock is an awesome Christian author, she's got series I still have yet to read/listen to. Intervention is the first in her intervention series, followed by vicious cycle and downfall. Intervention follows the Covington family shortly after losing dad and husband to cancer, leaving mom to single parent her two teenage children and work all while grieving and eventually moving forward. I've thankfully never had to deal with drug addiction with my kids, however, knowing people who do, I give them praise. In the book, Barbara is about at wit's end with her 18yr old, drug addicted, still grieving daughter, who's gotten herself addicted to so much, you sit and wonder how she hasn't overdosed somewhere yet, thankful that she hasn't. Barbara is so frustrated and not knowing what else to do, she brings in an interventionist to hopefully help make her daughter's transition from fallen off the wagon drug addicted daughter to rehab.
The meet with the interventionist does not go anything like Barbara hoped for. Instead, she has to break down and admit it went just like the interventionist, Tricia, says it would. However, once the meet is said and done, Emily is packed and they are safely delivered to the airport, she tries checking off one stressor off her list. Just when she starts to relax a little, thinking things are going according to plan, she gets what you almost want to imagine as a frying pan to the head, finding after speaking to her daughter at baggage claim, that the final leg of the trip to rehab, goes very far south.
The suspense of the story following the events that take place starting with the interventionist's demise, the disappearance of the drug addicted daughter, and the ever so helpful younger son, added to her already full plate, would definitely make me want to crawl in a hole and forget to come out again. I understand her frustration of getting that call from Atlanta's police detective regarding her daughter's interventionist being quietly killed and her disappearance from the scene, nonetheless from the airport. While listening to it, I sat and thought to myself, if that were me, would i automatically want to believe that all that transpired in between hearing that my daughter is just an hour away from rehab, and getting a call from the state's police in which they traveled to tell me I needed to also head there directly to help find out the events that took place, on top of now searching for my drug addicted daughter? I'd have also called the police station to verify that this guy actually existed and that, yes, indeed, this incident did actually happen. Crap..... how many of us, mothers or not, tried thinking in our head of all the things you need to get done in a very short time frame, and coming back to the realization that, you're not gonna get it all done in time, and, on top of it all, you have to arrange for your younger child, who hasn't gotten carried away in the ways of the world, yet, to be placed with somebody who's gonna make sure they stay in school, do homework, behave and panic that they've lost dad to cancer, sister in a whirlwind of what you think, crime you've only heard about on TV, and now mom to help untangle it all. No way, that younger child has now added a really big monkey wrench to your overflowing plate, and you haven't had a chance to stop, breathe and pray that God will wake you up from what you're hoping is just a really really bad dream, and not having hubby there to help you figure it all out.
Fast forward close to a week, feeling like you're still in that clouded dream that won't seem to end, thinking you're just about reunited with your daughter, while you're son is safely on his way home via airplane, and you'll finally be able to sleep and get back to functioning like a somewhat normal human, when, yet again, another monkey wrench wreaks havoc. When you start thinking, as Barbara is, "man, when is this going to end. I'm so close to getting life, somewhat back to normal and then this, somebody, please just shoot me." Coincidentally, that almost does actually happen before this whole ordeal is finished. Imagine being that mother who's just about ready to crack, or who's in the cracking stage, adrenaline kicking in, and fear of nothing running the show you're about ready to end. When, thankfully, her knight in shining armor comes to the rescue to give her the fairy tale ending she has been hoping for way too long.
I myself enjoyed listening to this series, I hope you enjoy the review also and take time to either ready or listen to the last two in this series, vicious cycle and downfall. They'll get you hooked.
