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When Your Child Goes Astray Parents can sometimes be incredibly ignorant about what goes on in the minds and lives of their children. There is a tendency for some parents to think that all is well, there are no problems, and the family is fine, when in reality things are not going well at all. A child can leave a family and still be at home. The break can be moral or spiritual rather than physical. The Shock of Discovery The Wallace family was moving from Arkansas to Colorado. The father, the Rev. Arthur Wallace, had been invited to become the pastor of a young church in a fast-growing suburban community. The Wallaces were traveling in two automobiles, hoping to arrive at their new home just before the moving van would pull into their neighborhood. Rev. Wallace was driving the lead car, accompanied by their fifteen-year-old son Roger. Mrs. Wallace (Betsy) was driving the second car, with their eighteen-year-old daughter, Susan, a recent high-school graduate. For several days, Betsy knew that Susan was troubled about something. The excitement of a new home in a beautiful state and a challenging church for Dad made no difference. Susan had looked obviously depressed for several days. Moreover, she had been nauseated occasionally during the past few weeks and was not eating well. Her response to Betsy’s questions was, “Oh, it’s nothing.” Betsy had assumed Susan’s problem was that she had to leave her friends behind, especially Chuck, her boyfriend. However, halfway between Arkansas and Colorado, Susan decided she had to tell her mother the apparent truth: she was pregnant. She knew she could not hide her problem indefinitely. Betsy and Susan were driving just outside of Oklahoma City when Susan told her story. She and Chuck had been intimately involved for at least four months. She was probably two months pregnant. For the next several miles Betsy was frozen in the shock of a staggering discovery. Questions flooded her mind: “How can I help my daughter? Will she let me? How and when will I tell her father? What will Roger think? How will Susan’s grandparents react, or should they know?” Then came a big question: “How will we face a new congregation?” Before long the emotions flooded: anger, fear, resentment, pain, compassion, self-pity, embarrassment, depression. Such situations happen more often than we realize—even to Christian parents. The situations and problems vary with each case. In one family the situation may involve drug abuse; in another, a misdemeanor or felony theft; in another, alcohol use or abuse; in another, homosexuality or premarital sexual relations; in another, arrest, and possibly jail or prison; in another, chronic dishonesty. Or a runaway son or daughter throws the family into the crisis of not knowing for weeks or months where he or she might be. Other parents face a situation in which the son or daughter gradually stops attending church and starts associating with “the wrong crowd.” When parents discover that their child has gone morally or spiritually astray, that discovery comes as an emotional injury, an injury that is often deep and painful. |
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