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DizzyD:
  i first want to wish to all a blessed and wonderful day.
                i NEED help and ideas with a dilemma that has recently developed involving members of my family, 2 brothers, 2 sisters.
                I have one brother that is now 66 yrs old. He ran away from home the first time when he was about 15 yrs old. He has been a burden on society ever since, particularly to my parents. He would come back home when he got into trouble either financially or legal and my dad would get him out of it hoping he would "see the light", it would only be days after and he would tell my parents to go to .......well you know where.
                He would do this to every person he has known and to every known acquaintance to our family. He has done this multiple times, this is the norm for his way of living. He has called my mom every thing you can think of except a lady multiple times. He almost killed my dad one time if it had not been for my mom he would have. Long story short my dad dropped the charges the next day hoping he would "come about", he didn't. When mom died we had to hunt for him because we did not know where he was but we did find him to let him know, these past few days i have been thinking about moms funeral and the day before and i don't recall him ever shedding one tear, therefore i don't sense any remorse from him.
                 When dad died we could not find him at all. It was probably about 1 or 2 months before we could locate him to let him know about dad, when he was told it was the same, no sadness shown and no remorse shown either. My dad was not rich by any means, but one of the things that sticks out in my memory is that back in my brothers earlier years he was one of the gifted people that could do ABSOLUTELY any thing he set out to do. My dad offered to buy him everything to start up his own floor cover business, he said no, its to much like work. The only time he comes around family is when he needs either money, food, or a warm place when it gets cold.

                 My sister has now her "heart on her sleeve", he has showed up and she thinks it wonderful he is now around. He knows how to play people to get sympathy and ultimately whatever it is he wants. My sister is stuck in Babylon and thinks that bending over backs to accommodate is the christian thing to do. However i guess i am  still carnal to the point that i think that if he has truly changed and is remorseful for his squandered life then he will need to prove it , for he has played this card multiple times over the past 50 or so years. To my thinking if he shows up a my door wanting a sandwhich i'll feed him and give him something to drink but after that he has to hit the road. i know if he has truly changed the past should  be forgotten, i believe it is the same old game. i don't have anything to forgive him for, because he was never around me to do anything to, my problem is what he has done to everyone else , particularly to my mom and dad and even  to himself. Since i have discovered that we don't have free will that everything is for the purpose of God's will how are we to interact with someone who for all his life depended on a con for his existence? Personally i see no problem with how i feel, i'll feed him and give him drink but i will not socialize with him. i guess i'm asking where does my obligation to my brother end.? i've been praying over this matter but so far i see no clear answer. So i'm asking my forum brothers and sisters for a little insight, maybe someone can share some thoughts that will bring about some peace of mind. This is  weighing on me greatly. My sister is upset with me because i won't interact with him, but i can't get over my carnality to be anywhere near him because i know this is just another con to get something without having to earn it. When he PROVES, and that will take time, that he has "seen the light", then i'll be more apt to spend time with him.
                             i would be grateful for any thoughts

                                                         Bud

ellie77:
Hi Bud, My heart goes out to you in this situation and I will pray for you and your family. In dealing with my own son,who acts in quite some similar ways. I needed to look at some things. The main thing was that, if I continually,rescued, provided somewhere to live, fixed, patched up the problem, gave money...it never for one minute,  cured anything,made anything better,changed one thing..In fact in doing all the above I was doing nothing more than enabling the continuance of all his behaviours.Knowing this and looking at my thoughts and actions, allowed me to do the same as you are doing, a visit a little food and then he must be on his way.Then I asked for prayer,and completely put him in God,s hands and got out of the way of his (God's) dealings with my son.This in the face of every loving "mothering instinct",do good,help,rescuing feeling.Perhaps if you could gently point out to your sister that "enabling " this behaviour is not a great thing for us to do.You can grantee his future behaviour by his track record of the past. Rest assured that he will be saved in God's good time...Peace be with you and yours ...Ellie....

hillsbororiver:

--- Quote from: DizzyD on March 12, 2008, 12:07:38 PM --- 
 i guess i'm asking where does my obligation to my brother end.?
                                                         

--- End quote ---

Hi Bud,

I can't say that I would know when it would end, but from the following scripture we can be certain we know when it begins, when your brother repents;

Luk 17:3  Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.
 
Luk 17:4  And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.

Have you ever had a man to man, heart to heart talk with him and tell him exactly how you feel about the way he treated your parents? By the sound of it your folks really did want him to "see the light" and would not give up on him, perhaps through you this desire of theirs will finally come to be.

It is a very tough thing to see family taken advantage of, even by family.

His Peace to you,

Joe
   

brandon h:
Hello Dizzy D,

Well first off let me say it's good to be back to the forum. I took a break for a few weeks. Second, I only 26, but I have an older brother who has the same attributes, so this hits home. He's been on this pattern for well over 10 years. The last time he messed up it was devastating for all of us, because it affected his fiance as well as his daughter (my god daughter).
Now he's been given another chance, and God has blessed him again. I truly want him to have a good, blessed life. But every time he's set up he blows it away. I wanted to have a heart to heart with hin about all these things, but he has a way of avoiding things he does not want to hear. So I prayed about it, and this is what God spoke to my heart.

1. He is sovereign, so if he wants to bless my borther 5 times over no matter how much he screws up, that's His purpose.

2. I do not have to be yoked to my brother to be his brother, especially when it effects my walk in Christ.

3. If my parents want to contiually bail him out, then that is their business.. All I can do is give my piece of mind.

My brother consumed my emotions time and time again with his endless antics. I prayed and prayed for God to take away what at times seemed like hatred towards him. For the first time I'm sensing true peace throughout this situation this time around. So I pray he straightens out. If he doesn't, it's not worth me losing my peace over it. And like you Dizzy, I say the same thing. Prove it! But we all need growth, so I judged myself when I say that. This is my personal experiance. Hope it helps a little.

God Bless

Robin:
Several years ago when I was struggling with my son's alcoholism this pamphlet handed out at Al-anon meetings helped me understand my role better. Through a lot of pain I've changed my role with my son and God has taught me to treat him with love and respect without trying to play God in his life. My son will have a year sober this month though the grace of God. I had to change my expectations and put my son's life and my life in God's hands. The lessons were very hard for both of us.

The Merry-Go-Round of DENIAL

  Alcoholism is a tragic three act play in which there is at least two characters, the drinker and his family; friends; co-workers and even healthcare workers may have a part in keeping the Merry-Go-Round turning. 

ACT ONE

The play opens with the alcoholic stating that no one can tell him/her what to do. This makes it very difficult for the family to talk about drinking and its results. Even when the drinking is obviously causing serious problems, he/she simply will not discuss it. Talking is like a one-way street. 

The key word in alcoholism is Denial, for again and again people do what they say they will not or deny what they have done. 

As the alcoholic drinks more and more, the helpers deny the problem and increase the alcoholic’s dependency. 

In act one, the alcoholic kills all his/her pain and woes by getting drunk. 

ACT TWO

 In act two, the alcoholic does nothing but wait for and expect others to do for them. Distinct characters begin to evolve from his/her helpers. A person can play more than one character and usually does. 


The Enabler

The Enabler is a helpful type, trying to rescue his friend from their predicament. The Enabler wants to save the alcoholic from the immediate crisis and relieve them of the unbearable tension created by the situation. 

In reality, this person is meeting a need of their own, rather than that of the alcoholic, although the Enabler does not realize this themselves. 

The Enabler denies the alcoholic the process of learning by correcting and taking responsibility for his/her own mistakes. 

The Enabler may eventually insist they will never again rescue the alcoholic. They always have and the alcoholic believes they always will. 

The Victim

This may be the boss, the employer, the foreman or supervisor. The Victim is the person who is responsible for getting the work done, if the alcoholic is absent due to drinking or is half on and half off the job due to a hangover. 

The alcoholic becomes completely dependent on this repeated protection and cover-up by the Victim; otherwise he/his could not continue drinking in this fashion. If the Victim stops helping, the alcoholic will be compelled to give up drinking or give up the job. 

It is the Victim who enables the alcoholic to continue his irresponsible drinking without losing his/her job. 

The Provoker

This is usually the wife or mother and is a key person in the play.

She is a veteran at this role and has played it much longer than others. She is the Provoker. She is hurt and upset by repeated drinking episodes; but she holds the family together despite all the trouble caused by drinking. 

In turn, she feeds back in the relationship her bitterness, resentment, fear and hurt, and so becomes the source of provocation. 

She controls, she tries to force the changes she wants; she sacrifices, adjusts, never gives up, never gives in, but never forgets. 

The attitude of the alcoholic is that his/her failure should be acceptable, but she must never fail the alcoholic! He/she acts with complete independence and insists he/she will do as they please. 

This character might also be called the Adjuster. She is constantly adjusting to the crises and trouble caused by drinking. 

Act two is now played out in full. Everything is done for the alcoholic and not by them. The results, effects and problems caused by drinking, have been removed by others. The painful results of the drinking were suffered by persons other than the drinker. This permits him/her to continue drinking as a way to solve his/her problems. 

 
ACT THREE

Act three begins much like act one. The need to deny dependence is now greater for the alcoholic and must be expressed almost at once, and even more emphatically. The alcoholic denies he/she has a drinking problem, denies he/she is an alcoholic, denies that alcohol is causing him/her trouble. The alcoholic refuses to acknowledge that anyone helped them - more denial. He/she denies that they may lose their job and insists that he/she is the best or most skilled person at his/her job. Above all, the alcoholic denies he/she has caused his/her family any trouble. In fact, the alcoholic blames the family, especially the spouse/parent, for all the fuss, nagging and problems. 

Some alcoholics achieve the same denial by a stony silence, refusing to discuss anything related to their drinking. The memory is too painful. 

The real problem is that the alcoholic is well aware of the truth which he/she so strongly denies. He/she is aware of the drunkenness and the failure. His/her guilt and remorse have become unbearable and the alcoholic cannot tolerate criticism or advice from others. 

Above all, the memory of his/her utter helplessness and failure is more than embarrassing; it is far too painful for a person who thinks and acts as if he/she were a little god in their own world. 

The wheel goes round and round.

The curtain never closes after act three, but instead the acts run over and over again. As years go by the actors get older, but there is little change in the words or the action of the play. 

It is not true that an alcoholic cannot be helped until he wants help. It is true that there is almost no chance that the alcoholic will stop drinking as along as other people remove all the painful consequences for him/her. The other actors find it difficult to change. It is much easier and far less painful for them to say that the alcoholic cannot be helped, than to go through the agony of learning to play a new role. 

Self-creating crisis

If drinking continues long enough, the alcoholic creates a crisis, gets into trouble, and ends up in a mess. This can happen in many ways, but the pattern is always the same: he/she is a dependent who behaves as if he/she were independent, and drinking makes it easy to convince himself/herself this is true. Yet the results of his drinking make him ever more dependent upon others. 

When his/her self-created crisis strikes, he waits for something to happen, ignores it, walks away from it, or cries for someone to get him/her out of it. Alcohol, which at first gave him/her a sense of success and independence, has now stripped him/her of their mask and reveals a helpless, dependent child. 

The crisis is a way of reassuring the alcoholic that they have control over the other players in the play. 

The Little God

No one has a right to play God and demand that the alcoholic stop drinking. The reverse is also true. The alcoholic can only continue to act like a little god, telling everyone what to do, while doing as he/she pleases, if a supporting cast continues to play their roles. Every player has every right and responsibility to refuse to act as if the alcoholic in their lives were God whose every wish and commandment be obeyed. 

 
Ending the play

There is no easy way to stop the merry-go-round, for it can be more painful to stop it than to keep it going. It is impossible to spell out definite rules which apply to all members of the play. Each case is different, but the framework of the play remains the same.

By Joseph L. Kellermann

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