In my last blog, I talked about finding out that my daughter was facing charges for theft, probably felony theft. If prison is the cliff edge, there was a long road that led her to that edge. At many points in time there were crossroads. She could have turned off that dangerous path and onto a path that would have led to being an honest, productive member of society. During her teen years, plenty of people harmed by her choose to freely offer grace with the desire to see her get off the dangerous road she was traversing. How many chances did she have? Dozens? Hundreds? Only God knows for sure.

As might be expected, our family was the first to be impacted. I recall in her preschool years that items would disappear from time to time and I would think they were just misplaced…with five kids, that is easy to have happen. I’m guessing that some of those missing items marked the beginning of a habit of taking inviting looking items.

We know for certain now that my daughter started stealing money at least as young as first or second grade. We used to keep the kids’ allowance money in envelopes in the kitchen cabinet and would keep the running balances written on the front of the envelopes. One day I realized that small amounts were missing from the envelopes. At the time we thought that our oldest son was doing that though he denied doing so when we asked him about it. Years later we put “two and two” together and realized it had to have been our older daughter. I have since apologized to my son for looking to the oldest child as the culprit.

Expanding outward from our family, our daughter then stole from neighbors, from friends, and from church members. The last time we ever let her babysit, she did so for a friend of mine with two little girls. My friend discovered that my daughter had snooped through the girls’ room and had stolen money out of their piggybanks that were sitting on the top shelf of their closet…I believe birthday money from relatives. I was horrified and embarrassed that my daughter would do this. The friend was kind during the confrontation with my daughter but we both knew that things would never be the same again between us.

At the beginning, we made our daughter pay back double what she stole, apologize to her victim, and do chore hours with double chore hours if she lied about the incident. Later, we took soccer games away for every incident…so many that the coach (who was supportive) asked her to explain to the team about her problem. I could fill a volume with all of the thefts that she has been the instigator of…and that would be just the ones we know about.

My other kids unanimously refused to consider pressing charges against their own sister. As parents, though we discussed the idea, in the end it was just as impossible to do. The birth father of my daughter’s baby has also desired to avoid pressing charges…think of the difficulty of having to explain years down the road to his daughter that he was responsible for putting the mother in prison. Neighbors and friends had similar reluctance as they were close to our family.

It is sad to say but the best part of the day our daughter turned 18 years old was the realization that she was a legal adult in the eyes of the law. We had spent so much time, energy and finances to try to help her to no avail and had been extremely concerned about being dragged into an expensive court case for her actions.

I applaud the courage of the families who are choosing now to go forward with charges. They will be the first to do so. The long road of mercy is at an end now. Maybe the cliff edge will be enough of a shock to set my daughter on a straight path.

I will end with a great verse from the Old Testament that gives hope to anyone who has wasted years of life. That is my hope for my daughter…that when she finally chooses an honest life path, she will have many good years ahead of her.

International Standard Version
“Then I will restore to you the years that the locust swarm devoured, as did the young locust, the other locusts, and the ravaging locust, that great army of mine that I sent among you. Joel 2:25