Simple Journey

I want to know a song can rise from the ashes of a broken life... --Mike Donehey, 10th Ave. N.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Re-echoing the Praise of the Lord

January 15, 2011, will forever mark the day between my former existence as a happy mother of two, and my new existence as a mother of one teenage, musical, artistic, very intelligent Boy Scout whose beloved big sister suddenly, out of a clear blue sky, ran away and left him in a clinically anxious state, and one..... what kind of girl??

On that day our daughter, aged 19 going on 20, broke up with her boyfriend of 3 years, with whom she was practically engaged - had indeed made plans - in a most rude manner, over the phone. When I learned of this, I began delving into her friendships and found out she had cut off ALL ties with ANY of her friends. Facebook seemed the only connection she had left open. Over the next 24-36 hours we discovered she was in thick with a cult, and was lobbing accusations of abuse at us, her parents. We have subsequently learned that she has not attended ANY of the classes or sessions she enthusiastically set up for herself in the previous weeks, including her new college, George Fox, who verified that she had canceled all her classes. This in itself proved to us that our daughter was not acting out of her own will. To say this was disconcerting or even alarming would be a grave understatement of our feelings as parents. We were TERRIFIED for our daughter's safety!

We attempted to call, but were met with the immediate voice mail message.We called the host family where she was staying, but were stone-walled. As all messages from her appeared to have been written by someone else, we feared the worst. Yet when the police went to the home in which we last knew she was staying, they told us she was fine, an adult, and we should just back off.

The threats in her messages seemed to intensify over the next days, as I strove by using Facebook to reach my daughter herself somehow. It was clear her computers and telephone had been hijacked by the cult, and messages were being sent by people other than our daughter. Her voice on the phone and in messages was hers, but it was oddly changed, with a robotic quality that scared us very much. She was obviously repeating words she'd been coached to use. What were they feeding our daughter? What kind of mind manipulation were they using? Who could we get to help us?! The police were useless, and counselors were all out of town or otherwise occupied, including our daughter's own sleep therapist. The help friends gave us in the way of websites to visit and books to read merely added to my confusion, as it was all too new for me to digest all the information and sort out what would be helpful to us. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. This cult leader knew what he was doing.

The other day, our daughter left the car we'd bought for her to drive, along with everything to do with it (including the AAA card I'd gotten for her safety, cut in several pieces), her house key, and her cell phone, parked in front of the police station. She sent us a "Cease and Desist" letter, we believe was crafted by the cult leader, which was also sent to the policeman on the case. We thought this very odd, and that prompted a visit from me personally. I demanded to know what was going on with my daughter. The two policemen who had seen her the day before sat down with me very patiently and went over it all again. Basically they told me for the umpteenth time that since she was over 18 they could do nothing, and she has the right to do as she pleases. They also told me that if she wanted a restraining order she would have grounds, given the number of times we had attempted to contact her within a week. This feels like a threat. Me! Threatened by my own daughter together with my hometown police for attempting to protect her!!

So we have had to take our hands completely off this situation. We have no knowledge of our daughter's whereabouts. We have no way to find out. We know she is penniless and without any form of transportation, except what she is able to beg from others. We know she has probably got somebody to buy her a new cell phone, because she removed the battery and SIM card from hers when she left it in the car (which is theft, as those batteries are not cheap).

To say this keeps me awake nights would be yet another vast understatement of the facts.

But I am a child of the King. My daughter is a child of the King. All my life I have heard the promises, sung them, lived by them, taught them to my children. My daughter knows who she is, and in her heart is buried the Word of God, the Sword of the Lord, hidden in her heart with songs and memory verses and stories from Bible School, Sunday School, recordings of Christian singers and choirs she's sung in, and lullabies I used to sing her, one of which we sang together in my Mothers Day concert on behalf of Haiti last spring, another of which we sang together just last month at her grandmother's funeral. And if my life has not acted as witness to the Truth of those Words I sought to teach her, it is myself at fault, and not the promises.

We are not powerless.

I have been extremely distraught over this until now. I have gone ballistic on Facebook with so many posts people have hidden me or just turned it off. Some of them sent me messages, as they were very concerned for me. I thank God for them. They were right.  So I turned off Facebook and gave my login information to my best friend to check for any messages from my daughter. Of course there haven't been.

I have had difficulty smiling at people, answering their "How are you today?" in the store without saying just a plain, "Awful!" I have shed tears at odd times in odd places. And I cannot stand to look at the row of Growing Up Girls in the cupboard, waiting for the time my daughter should move out and have her own china closet to keep them in safely. This Tuesday, February 1, will be her 20th birthday. I can not even think of it. There has NEVER been a year I was not planning a party or get-together to celebrate God's leaving this most amazing child with us another year.

I have gone over and over what reasons my daughter could have for so breaking the hearts of everyone, EVERYONE, who loves her. I admit we have made mistakes, and I admit my attention has not been fully on her words in the last two months. If only she would come and sit down with me, and talk, just the two of us together, for a little while. Perhaps we could understand each other somewhat and put this behind us. I am not even permitted to ask for that. Not even permitted to try and apologize for whatever it is she is so unhappy about that she had to remove herself. But her words and actions beforehand lead me to believe she was not unhappy with us until she went with the cult, who twisted her mind around in knots and confused her so she doesn't know which way is Home.

I'd been hoping for a song to come to me, like they always do, that would speak to this situation. It's how I pray, and God is always faithful to send one. But there seemed no song for this. There are no words for this. But as I walked in the park today with my little dog, Jeffy, the sun came out. There were many people in the park today, as it was a planting day. The river was lovely, reflecting the houses on the other side. They were upside down... just like my life has been turned by my daughter.

As I walked through the filtered sunlight with Jeffy skipping beside me, finally a song came to me. It's on page 518 of The United Methodist Hymnal, copyrighted 1989, which includes a few musical contributions by my daughter's Godmother, Elise Eslinger,which has nothing to do with this; and it goes like this:

O Thou, in whose presence my soul takes delight,
On whom in affliction I call,
My comfort by day and my song in the night,
My hope, my salvation, my all!


Where dost thou, dear Shepherd, resort with thy sheep,
To feed them in pastures of love?
Say, why in the valley of death should I weep,
Or alone in this wilderness rove?


O why should I wander, an alien from thee,
Or cry in the desert for bread?
Thy foes will rejoice when my sorrows they see,
And smile at the tears I have shed.


Restore, my dear Savior, the light of thy face,
Thy soul-cheering comfort impart;
And let the sweet tokens of pardoning grace
Bring joy to my desolate heart.


He looks! and ten thousands of angels rejoice,
And myriads wait for his word,
He speaks! and eternity, filled with his voice,
Re-echoes the praise of the Lord.


(Joseph Swain, 1791 - Ps. 23)
I will praise Him. Though I have no earthly reason to right now, I will sing praises. It's who I am, a daughter of the King, and it's the job He gave me when I was born. And I intend to act, above all, like a true daughter of the King acts, by the grace of God.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it! And you can take that to the bank.

Simply T-R-U-S-T-ing,
Patty

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Love is of God

It was as if it were a death, and an old one at that.

She sifted through the photos, old photos, of their youth. They were still the same, those children. They hadn't grown or changed, they were still laughing just as they did so long ago, still walking across the tarmac to their waiting family, still planning to make the move that directed their entire lives and who their children would be and why they would eventually part ways.

And that was the answer, the reason at the core. They hadn't grown together. It's impossible for two vines to grow together if one refuses to grow, refuses to act like a vine but must immitate a fence post. The one growing vine will curl around it and even put tentacles into the fence-post-like vine, but eventually it must shoot out and away, seeking other company in the sunlight.

And so she had, while he stayed in his childhood, afraid to grow toward the light, and even shunning the touch of her leaves, planting himself firmly in the mud, and ridiculing her as she reached with all her might upward, ever outward, toward the joyous, rain-filled air.  They were never alike. They were planted wrongly in the garden.

Oh, it wasn't the Gardener's fault. But it was so nonetheless. Some underling had made the mistake, seeing the vine reaching, reaching toward the other in its shoot days. The Gardener had simply allowed it, to give the underling a lesson perhaps. But the underling hadn't got it, had left the two, she wrapped around him, he unwilling to grow, all the years locked by the rule of the garden - no one must move what has been planted - for so many, many years. And little vines had come up through the soil between them, sheltered by the growing vine from the intense sun of summer and worst rain of winter. But the two vines did not grow together. It was impossible.

The little vines were grown large enough now to stand much of the sun and rain on their own. She was almost as dead as the vine-turned-fence-post beside her. The rain fell gently on her upturned leaves: "Come out! Come out! Higher, climb higher into the open space where the sun will shine! We are almost finished watering the earth for awhile, the light will come again. Lift up your head!"

And so she did, as she put the pictures back into the disintegrating album. She looked up, and looked around. And she wasn't disappointed, there was the light! There was a whole garden all around her! And she knew there was the Gardener, though she couldn't yet see Him. And there were other vines, and especially that one....

Then she heard the voice of the Gardener saying, "Lift up your head, your redemption draweth nigh." And she knew it was time to put away the former things, for behold, all things are becoming new! And she stretched out her tendrils toward that other vine with all her might, but something gave her pause, something undescribable here.

But reach she must. The Gardener had said it, and that voice she never disobeyed had commanded her to LIVE. So live she must.

She put away the old photos. She would begin tomorrow to sort them all, like she'd planned for so many years, but life had got in the way. Just like it had got in the way of her growing toward the light. She would grow in a new direction, alone in the garden if necessary. She would be growing, though, and living. If not, she would end up a fence post, good for nothing but hemming in and saying "No!", even when "Yes!" is what's written.

This was her salvation.

But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us — by me and Silas and Timothy — was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.” For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.