Some of you have read about April on Casey's blog. She has been in Casey's life for over a year as Casey has been ministering to her, first on the streets where she found her pregnant and surviving anyway she could, and then through her delivery and subsequent rehab treatment/recovery. For the past month, I have been blessed to get to know April. For a little while, she was living relatively close by in a half-way house and I could pick her up and help her run errands with her son several days a week. I was keeping Tash on days that she worked and LOVED that she trusted me with her son. I enjoyed talking with her. She is very open and honest about her past. She often asked me questions about the Bible and about my faith in general. I was happy that I could meet those needs for her and that she felt like she had a friend in me.
A week ago she decided to leave the half-way house. Whether I agree with why she left or whether I would have made the same choice is irrelevant. I haven't come from where she has come from. My reality is different than her's. She made the decision to leave and, to her, that was what she had to do. So now, I am unable to help her as much physically. She is too far away for me to run and get her and drive her around. It is strange, but when she called to tell me that she was headed to a shelter with her son that first night, I was tempted to grab my keys and bring her to our apartment. It was the night of Graycen's tonsillectomy, so there was no way that I could bring her into our home and she wouldn't have had it anyway. Her mind was made up.
Since then, I have only been able to talk with her on the phone every other day. She seems to be doing okay. She celebrated 6 months of sobriety at a meeting. She is eating and she has gotten a bed in a shelter each night. There is long-term housing on the horizon if she can stay with this situation for a few more days, but tonight she sounded very tired. Every time I talk to her lately, I have to fight the urge to go and get her. I have to remind myself that my job is to pray for her and support her anyway I can 100% within the limits God has given me. We don't have endless funds available for gas to run downtown and back each day. I don't have a home where she and her son could sleep and feel safe and comfortable. For now, I can pray. I can pray that she gets food and shelter, but the best thing I can do is to pray that the Lord will call her and that when he does, she will hear Him and she will run to Him. She talks about "having faith" and about "knowing that God has a plan for her", but I am not sure those aren't just familiar phrases she has picked up over time. I am praying that she will come to KNOW exactly what those phrases really mean and that she will be able to stake her life on them
Will you pray with me?
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1 comment:
Angela, thank you for commenting on my blog! I am always amazed at the challenging responses I get. Yours was awesome.
In no way do I refute what you said, but in an effort to make myself look a little less *childish* in your eyes, I'll say this: my parents did a great job. I can only hope to do as well as they did. Even growing up, I recognized that my parents were doing a better job with us than some of the other parents we knew. As an adult, I've been privy to seeing some frustrating parental patterns in my extended family, in my youth group, and I've seen the results over the years. So when I see an out of control kid at the store, I'm probably not even thinking of that kid, but the little cousin my wife and I are watching slowly get spoiled, or the kid from youth group who made a mess of his life, in spite of all my efforts to turn the tide of his influences at home.
Well, that was a rambler. :) Hope to see you around again. God bless and happy blogging!
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