Funny what you'll find on the internet.

My brother-in-law, Mark commented on my recent Facebook profile photo where I'm wearing a beach towel at the Yuba River, "It's funny what you find on the internet. We've been looking for that towel ever since your last visit..." He was writing from Cabo where they went, apparently after spending significant time looking for the towel that ended up in our bag after our last swim in his backyard pool.

I was reading today in a friend's posting about her struggles with cancer how she and her family were on the "cancer coaster", an appropriate picture. I decided to read down in to the comments written by others and came across this quote:

"Peace is not the absence of troubles, trials and torment, but calm in the midst of them".

It's very well put. I've observed people or heard stories of people who have gone to great lengths to remove troubles and the rest. The psychatric community calls it "medicating", which used to be their term but now means, "doing inappropriate things to compensate for painful emotional experiences". Sometiems that involves drugs, both street drugs and prescription drugs.

In the midst of all that, when you stop to think about it, medicating is one way to pursue "calm in the midst of..." Unfortunately, of course everybody knows, it doesn't last long. Only as long as the chemical that is bathing our brains stays "on-board", as they say.

The addict moves from seeking calm in the midst of, to constant belief that with their habit topped off, they are absent of torment.

Devon, number three son, was conceived by the magical prompting of hormonal activism between his birth father and birth mother. Two teens just caring for each other... and both highly experimenal when it came to street drugs. Devon's enuterine experience was one bathed in on-board medicating for troubles he knew nothing of at the time. His troubles began once he took his first breath; which as it happened, was on a paramedic's geurney at a crack party. He had to work hard for it too. He was born dehydrated, wrapped still in the amniotic sac... and dead. All thanks to street drugs and the pursuit of the absence of torment.

He came to us, just after birth, addicted to methamphetimines and with a host of other physiological challenges that present when a developing zygote assembles with alien chemical assistance. Devon was introduced to us, 14 years ago, by a woman appointed by the state as a foster parent while his birth mother decided what to do with him.

His foster mother was also, not ironically, his step grandmother. She married a man who came with children, one of whom was a girl who would one day bring Dev into the world. For whatever reasons along the way she and her husband became licensed for foster care, and when the state removed Devon, she stepped in to take him temporarily.

I was curious to see who wrote out the quote, "Peace is not the absence of troubles, trials and torment, but calm in the midst of them". I read down to find a name, it took me a few seconds to place it, and I blinked and read it again.

The signator of the guest comment about my friend's battle for life with unwelcome cancer was Devon's step-grandmother - also known as his once foster mother. It's a small town of course, but besides her name, I know very little about her. I'm told that she's a lot like the rest of us, just trying to do her part with what she has both material and intangible. She could not keep him 14 yeas ago, her plate was full with other special needs children. Though her home was not calm, per se, I am almost certain that she was the first caring woman to hold Devon in love.

I doubt if Devon felt it through the torment of preemie, screaming, withdrawal-shaken fear of this alien world. Nevertheless, there it was in an almost indistinguishable way, but mabe just enough, "calm in the midst of".

It is, yes, so funny what you find on the internet these days.