Gone Astray...

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he would not depart from it" - Proverbs 22:6

I sit here and ponder this Christmas season the scriptures God has given us regarding our children. We do all we can do as parents to raise them right, teach them morals, and in the end we can only pray that they learned something all those years we took them to Church, had Family Home Evening, and prayed with them.
What of a child, so headstrong, so stubborn, so intelligent, but so rebellious that a parent cannot reach through the shell of adolescent rage? What of a child hellbent on staying on a destructive path and not capable of seeing the wisdom of age in her parents?
I find myself in this situation. A situation I never wanted or asked for and do not understand. A child whom I love more than life itself has wandered away. Wandered away from our love. Wandered away from her Heavenly Father's love. Wandered away from all who love her.
She has gravitated instead to people who do not give a care in the world for her or what happens to her. It is heartbreaking. I have friends who tell me to let her go. They tell me to let her fall and fail on her own. That this will bring her back in the end to her family and her faith.
It is tempting, especially when she says hurtful things and insists she cannot WAIT to get out of our home.....but then I recall this scriptural reference:

"What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish." - Matthew 18: 12-14

Therein lies my dilemma. The dilemma of every mother who has faced a rebellious teenager. A prodigal son or daughter. You love them. You don't want to lose them. You MUST search for them, and you can only rejoice when they return to the fold.

" The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness." ~Honoré de Balzac

Until such time that they do return to the fold, and are enfolded in your arms, there is only stress, anxiety and heartache. No rest for the weary. No peace for the home. In the words of Toni Morrison (Beloved, 1987), " Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that suppose to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing."



So I pray. I cry. I worry. I cry some more. I rant. I rave. I pray some more. And most of all, I love her. I ALWAYS love her. I will always love her, no matter what happens or what she says, or where she goes in this life. I will always love her.

A daughter may outgrow your lap, but she will never outgrow your heart. ~Author Unknown