Simple Journey

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

Thursday, June 23, 2011

It has been harrowing.

I would not wish this on my worst enemy..... well, maybe my worst enemy..... No. Not even him. No parent should ever, ever, ever have to go through what I'm experiencing. But then, what makes me so special?

Last January my daughter ran away with the gypsies. She .... or somebody.... sent back  messages to the effect that she did not wish to be contacted by anyone who knew or loved her; that we were to simply pretend she never existed, and that she was going where she could escape our life-long "control and abuse"; she .... or someone ..... sent a message to her brother saying she was "going away to protect" him. Protect him? From what? who?? How???

These questions have never been answered. My daughter left a trail of tears and broken hearts behind her to rival the Trail of Tears. And my family is a house divided. Already re-evaluating my own life decisions, this threw a wrench in the works the like of which I have never experienced, nor ever ever ever wish to again. I do not know what the outcome will be, and I do not know how long it will be before I do know.

Needless to say, I've been thrown into a tail-spin that sends me lurching from one end of myself to the other, asking the questions any loving parent would ask herself:

"How did she get to this place?"
"What was it I said - did?"
"How can I help her now?"
"Is she safe??!!"
"Where could she possibly be??"
"How can I find her?"
"What on earth should I say when I see her again?"
"How can I possibly ever forgive the people who led her down this path???"

Pondering these questions has led me over and over to my pastor, counselor, best friends, specialists, and daily - sometimes hourly - to prayer and Scripture. I keep the radio tuned to the Christian stations I abhorred for so long because of the shallowness of the music - yes, I've been a music snob most of my life. No longer. I need the Word in any way, shape, or form these days, so I'll take it from anyone in any form.

The other day, the Word came to me from my pastor, who I'd gone to pray with over a revelation found in my daughter's journal from a year ago. Apparently, she'd been planning an "escape" since childhood. The earth had seemed to drop from under me, and I ran to the Lord, who is "my strong tower".  After sharing the journal and praying, Libby suggested I read a little book she pulled off the shelves lining the study walls: The Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller.

This morning, reading in chapter two, I came across this, in reference to the father in the story dividing his property and giving up the half to his younger son:

"However, this division of the estate only occurred when the father died. Here the younger son asks for his inheritance now, which was a sign of deep disrespect. To ask this while the father still lived was the same as to wish him dead. The younger son was saying, essentially, that he wants his father's things, but not his father. His relationship to the father has been a means to the end of enjoying his wealth, and now he is weary of that relationship. He wants out. Now. 'Give me what is mine,' he says."

My daughter asked for her money. She didn't have any, but she thought she did, perhaps because her grandmother had recently died, and she'd heard how she would inherit from her someday. But she didn't, though perhaps she didn't know that. She wanted the money which had been in her account - a refund from the fine institution of higher learning she had withdrawn from in the fall. But that money was never hers: it was payment I made for her. It is safely now in a savings account, awaiting her brother's entrance into college in a couple of years, if he should choose that; or my own, as I am going back to school. But it was never hers.

In the story of The Prodigal Son, the father gives him the money. I've never understood why, and so have done the exact opposite. We feared the people who enticed her away, and we feared her own confusion. We feared she would wake up one day and regret it, and then have no way to mend her life. But perhaps we made a mistake.

"The father's response is even more startling than the request. This was an intensely patriarchal society, in which lavish expressions of deference and respect for elders and particularly for one's parents were of supreme importance. A traditional Middle Eastern father would be expected to respond to such a request by driving the son out of the family with nothing except physical blows."

No, we did not drive her out - she had already taken herself out. And "blows" were not my way of communicating - I'd unlearned that way long ago.  Words, however, I sent her, in any way, shape, or form I could find to send them. I called, but no one answered. I left at least one voice mail message, but then her phone went dark. Her father called the people who got her into this mess, but they stone-walled and would not let us speak with her. I sent email after email, posted on Facebook, and sent private messages. None were answered, and my own Notes on my Facebook account that were written specifically for her were mocked and jeered by her. This I knew because she left us her cell phone later, when she left her car at the police station for us to pick up, and informed us through a "Cease and Desist" email sent to her father's work account. Nothing I could do would bring anything good, only bad.

And so I quit. I "ceased and desisted". I let her go.

Oh, we still feared she had been kidnapped by the gypsies. In fact, to this day I do believe that is the correct interpretation of these events. But she doesn't know it, yet. She still thinks, apparently, that she's made the great escape from a responsible life and a family who would strongly encourage her to be true to herself, her gifts and her talents, and her own commitments. She still thinks, apparently, that she's got it good and that she'll never have to face the music she left behind. I am truly sorry that she is still digging her hole so very deep, because all the responsibilities she left, as a person over 18 and a legal adult, are still waiting for her here. Since we have no address for her, we are keeping them safely for the day when she returns and takes them up again, the day when she'll have to pay all the back-bills and answer to the IRS. No, she doesn't know yet that she's been kidnapped.

Perhaps we have the wrong approach. Perhaps we should have acted as the father in the parable, who instead of giving the culturally required "blows", gave what was asked:

"This father doesn't do anything like that. He simply 'divided his property between them.' To understand the significance of this we should notice that the Greek word translated as 'property' here is the word bios, which means 'life.' A more concrete word to denote capital could have been used but was not."

So the father "divided his life between them." Oh yes. I know what that is. Oh yes. My life has been torn in two ever since my son's Tourette's surfaced. "How can I give enough of myself to him, and still have something left for my daughter?" was my constant question to myself during his middle school years, in which we had only questions and no answers from doctors or anyone else. When finally we had a diagnosis, there was so much research to try and find a cure, try and find something, anything, that would subdue the whole body twitches and tics that so disrupted his everyday existence, and ours. His sister was a casualty of that time. How can a parent divide herself in half and survive? So the father "divided his life between them," and suffered death to half himself, as he watched his son run off into the sunset with his inheritance, thinking perhaps it were better if he actually were dead, as I have thought at times.

I will keep reading this book. I need it. I am eager to find out the writer's perspective on how the son came to himself in the pig trough, turned around (the literal translation of "repent"), came humbly back to his family home. I do not want to project, but how can I help praying this will be the end to my daughter's current story? Of course I am hoping this! Of course I am typing it here so she will see it - if she is looking! Of course I risk driving her further away in the process! I will give up anything -

Perhaps I didn't give up enough, though, according to the parable. Perhaps I should have let her take the money out of her account and squandered it on the pigs, and then she would have sooner seen her position in the pig trough. But our fear was that somehow she was being used (and I still believe it is so) to get not just the little bit that was in that account, but everything we own. Fear.... our enemy's great tool, which he wields with exquisite accuracy, aided by the fine intellect of our daughter. What a travesty! He could have gotten not only the half, but the whole of our estate, we feared. And so we put the kabosh on her taking money out of the account which was rightfully mine, instead of doing as the father in the parable and simply letting her have it all.

But the question will be there until she returns, "Should we have done as the prodigal's father? Should we have helped her run away with the gypsies?"

Recently I read a short line in a small gift book in a place called Sleighbells, a Christmas shop near our home; her former boyfriend/fiance works there. I was there to buy fudge from him - he's the fudge sampler, and very good at it, too. My visits there are therapeutic for both of us. But this time I actually found a Word, in this tiny book. Perhaps I should have bought it, but I have bought too many things, thinking they are the cure. So I simply wrote down this line:

"Every parent is at sometime in his life the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope." (John Ciardi)

So that's what I do. No matter where I am to be found after this, my home, even in someone else's house, will be open to the hope that one day I'll hear a knock or the doorbell, the phone will ring, and it will be my prodigal wanting love. And one thing has never changed since she left: I will always love her, wholly, passionately, truly, and unregrettingly.

No matter what she does to me.

"You can't outrun grace."

You’re best friends with the word “regret”
And you’re afraid that your life’s been wasted
You don’t think people really change
And you’re a mess and you’ll always be the same
And you doubt if you’ll ever get it turned around

So you’ve been running, searching for something
But you’re looking in a place you don’t belong
But it’s never too late, you can’t outrun grace
No, mercy doesn’t care what you’ve done
So, come home. So, come home

You can try and fix your broken empire
And put bricks on a cracked foundation
But you’d be building castles on the sand
There’s power in the blood of Jesus
And your Father’s screaming “just come home”
And He’s reaching out His hand

I know you’ve been running, searching for something
But you’re looking in a place you don’t belong
But it’s never too late, you can’t outrun grace
No, mercy doesn’t care what you’ve done
So, come home. So, come home

From the shadows, from the wrong roads,
From the darkness, from the unknown,
To redemption, something beautiful,
To a new love, to a new home

I know you’ve been running, searching for something
But you’re looking in a place you don’t belong
But it’s never too late, you can’t outrun grace
No, mercy doesn’t care what you’ve done
So, come home. So come home.*

Just come home...


*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLU6LLIBbt0&feature=related