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Connections...
FEBRUARY 6, 2000
FIFTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
Jesus cured many who were sick with various diseases, and he drove out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they knew him. Rising very early before dawn, Jesus left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.
- Mark 1:29-39
On deadline
Lesley Stahl of CBS' 60 Minutes has a reputation as a tenacious reporter and journalist in pursuit of a story. But she writes in her current memoir Reporting Live that is was after her marriage in 1977 that she faced the greatest challenge of her life.
Her husband, writer Aaron Latham, suffered from severe depression. Mike Wallace, her colleague at 60 Minutes who had suffered his own bout with depression, convinced her to get her husband to a doctor.
Ms. Stahl admits that staying with Aaron is the thing that surprised her the most. "I was a great walker-outer," she writes. During one fight she went so far as throwing her clothes into a suitcase and calling a cab. "He said, 'Stay and work this out. And in ten years you'll look back and say I preserved this family.'"
"We talked. We cried. And we agreed to try. Now it's 19 years later," Ms. Stahl remembers with joy, "and it's the thing I'm most proud of."
[Biography Magazine.]
CONNECTION: We all have problems and issues in our lives that we would much rather walk away from than face -- we all have "demons" that so drain us of hope and happiness that we surrender to them rather than confront them. In today's gospel, Jesus drives out the demons that have destroyed the lives of those possessed. As Lesley Stahl found within herself and within her family the strength to confront the "demon" of depression that threatened to destroy their home, in the love of Christ we can find the strength of grace and the clarity of honesty to confront the "demons" that divide our families, sever our friendships, and rend our spirits in hopelessness and despair.
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