Lindsay: In Which even Blogs have to change...

As you can see, we haven't been on here in a while.
Our youngest son had a terrible blood infection and we almost lost him.
Caleb had rushed him to the ER and ended up witnessing the worst of it... he couldn't handle the emotional turmoil that brought...
He has relapsed and pretty much disappeared for the moment.
I have hopes he will some day re-engage the fight... and get the help he needs, but for now, I have to simply give him over to God.
I will summarize the rest of our story, we were almost to the part where we met...
Caleb came home from college and went back to the construction world.  He lived at home, but his double life followed him. 
Shortly after returning to Ohio, Caleb met up with his cousin.  He saw him working on a roof, clumsy and tottering, looking like he had no business on a roof.  He stopped, pulled in, and called him down from the roof... In Caleb's mind, his cousin looked messed up, and Caleb wanted to know what he was on! When you've been getting high, you know the ecstasy of the high or the buzz, and you get jealous if someone seems to be more messed up...  At least, that's what I'm told.
His cousin let him in on his little secret once they got back to his house... heroin.
I'm told once you get high that first time, it is like you have dissolved into heaven, unlike any other feeling on the earth, more spiritual than physical.  Then, you spend the rest of your life, chasing death, trying to get that feeling again, but never ever will you ever get that same feeling.  It isn't physically possible.
 Satan was a beautiful angel before he was cast out of heaven, he knows how to orchestrate that heavenly experience just enough to make someone trapped in a counterfeit love... Caleb met the love of his life that day, the one with the darkest secrets...
Caleb knows, in his mind, he will never feel what he felt that day, but all rationality is lost on him when he is in "active drug use" mode.
I don't know where he is now.  I don't know what he is doing.
It is the hardest thing in the world, to let him go, again... knowing I have no ability to change the course of the rest of his life... or save him from himself.
Anyway, after that, Caleb spent most of his time with his cousin and his cousin's friends.  His cousin even talked him into renting an apartment for two drug dealers... free drugs!
So that was how he lived, but he slowly went toward rock bottom...
Christmas that year, he let his family down... and decided to come home...
It was a big drama, and a big turning point, if Caleb were here, he would do the telling with gusto...
But he isn't, so I'm not going to try to fill in the details I might mess up.
He had scheduled, six months prior to this first out-of-control spiral, to go and help a local college take a bicycle tour down the coast of California for a month.  He moved his stuff home.  Packed his bags.  And the day after Christmas, with $27 to his name, he got in a Ryder truck filled with bicycles and drove 18 hours straight, from Ohio to Colorado.
This was his first ever detox.
It was a Christian college and there was no access to any of the drugs he loved, except alcohol.  He decided he was done with heroin.  He figured he could do it himself, he didn't like what it had made him, it was time to leave it alone. 
I too went on that bike trip.  I was 18.  It was exactly one year after my heart testing and exercise restriction... I was all better and ready to ride 1,100 miles.  From San Francisco down the coast to San Diego, then over into Phoenix. 
I remember the first time I was face to face with Caleb.  He was measuring me for my bike.  He held the bike, while I hopped on, and he did some adjustments and moved on to the next person.
That was all.  Nothing special.
My mom was on the trip too, she was one of the group leaders.  Caleb said she had told me to pick up his group tee shirts and write his name in them.  He said that was the first time he noticed me, when I brought him his shirts. I don't actually remember doing that, but I'm sure it happened.
That was the beginning of everything real.  Innocent.  Helpful. And neither of us knew the true nature of the beast that Caleb had danced with, the beast that had struck its talons so deep in his heart that he would be tortured, daily, for the rest of his life... Neither of us knew, and so it began, January 1, 2004.