NOT ONCE, BUT TWICE!

Shock - to disturb the mind or emotions of; affect with great surprise; distress; disgust

Eight years ago, my mind and my emotions were disturbed, I was affected with great surprise, and I was distressed and disgusted.

They were all there, the classic warning signs. You know the ones the experts tell you about: mood swings; too much time alone in her room; disconnecting with the rest of the family, the wrong friends. For months the changes were subtle and then things began spiraling out of control very, very quickly.

A family moved to our church who had a daughter the same age as our daughter. They became friends fairly quickly. Not long into the friendship, K began expressing the desire to go to public school. (We were home schooling at the time.) Knowing her friend had painted her a glamorous picture of all the fun and freedom she was missing out on, we tried to convince her otherwise. We also reaffirmed our confidence in the fact that our conviction to keep her out of the public school system and to home school was God led, but none of that mattered. Soon her personality became foreign to us and out of character for her, unlike anything we had ever seen. This child of ours could not have willingly been capable of this kind of behavior. It had to be hormonal.

At first, my husband and I thought it would pass, but as she became relentless with her pleading and begging, we finally decided to give her the option of going to a Christian school. This was not what she wanted. She bounced back and forth from a state of total and complete defiance, being argumentative, to a state of depression, where she refused on some days to get out of bed. Her behavior was reckless and we felt that our giving in to her and allowing her to go to school was not an option. In other words, it was complex, not as simple as just giving in. We were in a show down. Here was our child, who had always been just as beautiful inwardly as she was outwardly, at the age of thirteen, no longer lovable, no longer discipline (able), and no longer direct (able), no longer reachable or reasonable. We needed help.

I cannot fill in the gaps of all that happened during this two and half year journey, but it was a distressful, scary, and very disturbing time in our lives. We tried several avenues to get help and finally found a Christian counselor who was able to make a breakthrough. There were many acts of defiance that caused us much grief, shame, and shock. Some of them were not even made known to us until after she opened up with the help of the counselor.

Skipping to the end of the story, we took some necessary measures to help her sever relationships, as well as, enrolled her in a Christian school. She was sincerely remorseful for this time of rebellion in her life, and later wrote a beautiful essay for her writing class on peer pressure. It was a tremendous part of the healing process for all of us.

Here is a copy of her New Year’s resolutions written at the end of the same year:

1. Tell people I love that I love them every day.
2. Work harder at everything.
3. Be nicer to __________ (her brother).
4. Do something nice for someone every day.
5. Clean my room.
“This is going to be a good year…”

And it was. For three years and three months it was good.