Tanya Ashworth/AZ, CO

My Brother Otto

Sometimes in life all of the pieces just seem to fall into place and everything works out right. Then there are those for who, no matter what they do nothing falls into place. My brother was in the later group.

Otto is a tall big man, that gentle giant of a guy with beautiful blue eyes displaying twinkling compassion in their gaze. Intelligent, kind and caring, his world dealt him some heavy blows. After decades of determination to turn things around, despair and desperation won out and he turned to drinking.

Otto had to be at his very lowest, his last shred of hanging on to make the decision to move in with his sister, me. He had fought the battle with alcohol for years but he was not winning the fight. He wanted to take control of it but it was gaining ground and perhaps his choice to move in with me and my husband was his last ditch effort.

My brother, an extremely good-looking man, was now every description that would be used to describe a drunk; overweight, sloppy, total disarray and even down to the black teeth that come with alcoholic consumption.

So, I took him shopping for new clothes. I was totally unfamiliar with alcoholism. I just assumed it was something you could “get over.” Get new clothes, get your teeth fixed and start anew. That was my take on it.

It was two days after Christmas when I drove Otto to the bus depot and put him on the bus headed to Mexico to have his teeth fixed. He had five thousand dollars in his pocket.

It wasn’t until the next day that the reality of what I had just done sunk into my dense head. I had put a drunk on a bus with a wad of cash in his pocket and sent him off to a foreign country during the holiday season when drinking would be rampant. All I could think about was him ending up in a jail somewhere in Mexico striped of money and without any way of finding help. What had I done??!!

I prayed. I prayed and I prayed. It was the end of December and very very cold. It was late at night and I had gotten out of bed and knelt of the icy cold wood floor. I was in massive despair and anxiety while praying, so much so that I noticed that I was sweating. The odd part about that is that I never sweat. No matter how hot it might be or how hard I might be working - I don’t sweat. The anxiety level that I was experiencing was so intense that my body was reacting by sweating. That was when Christ came into the room. I never actually saw Him but could feel Him and saw a haze of a presence. He took me up and together we looked down upon the earth below. We sat on a sort of platform watching life taking place below us. He never told me that everything would be okay, He just sort of let me see that things work out when we are with Him.

My brother returned home safely with a new set of beautiful front teeth. He also shared with me what had happened while in Mexico. He had arrived into town quite late and there were no rooms anywhere. The only thing he could find was a room above a bar. The noise and the smell of alcohol drove him to walking the streets way into the night. A shop owner saw Otto and asked if he would like to go home with him. My brother and this caring Christian man soon became very good friends. They stayed up most the night and one of the topics that they both had a shared interest in was Christ. They talked about Christ.

I asked my brother what time it was when he met the shop owner. It turned out to be the exact same time that I was in agonizing prayer.

Sitting with Christ on that platform far above the world and looking down at existence seemed at the time to be so natural and ordinary. Now, when I think about it it was an amazing thing that Christ did for me. It wasn’t a dream. I was wide awake. It was real and it was so compassionate. That was the primary feeling I experienced - compassion From Him for me, for the world and for my brother. It was so amazing. So wonderful!