Moving On

My hope is that things are going to get back to something approaching normal. Rick left the village on Friday saying that a friend had offered to put him up for a while, though Joe tells me a slightly different story. I saw him back again on Saturday, though perfectly sober and not asking for anything, maintaining his un-girlfriend had asked to see him, and yesterday he was absent entirely so I hope he may indeed have found, at any rate, 'alternative arrangements'. It's been an exhausting little episode and I wonder what I should do about it. I suspect I must be very clear with myself what I can and can't do for people in difficult circumstances. The words of Peter in Acts kept coming back to me, 'gold and silver have I none yet what I have I give you' - but even offering spiritual support to people living disturbed lives is hard, because you can never be clear where the truth lies in what you're being told. Dealing with Rick and his partner's entanglements led to a landscape of shifting falsehoods in which truth is impossible to discern. And though people in my situation may need to set firm boundaries for the sake of self-preservation, I still have the niggling feeling that setting such boundaries runs the risk of walling your heart around from the kind of challenge and change that can lead you closer to God.