Help-Hope in Grief, episode 142

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If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right

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here at When You Love a Prodigal and also hope and help for your own life journey.

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Last week I shared with you several major grief events in my life because I think it's

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good to recognize that grief is a normal part of life.

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Disappointments, losses, hard situations come, and grief is often a major thing in those

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experiences.

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But when you love a prodigal, grief can become an ongoing reality as the journey goes on

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and on.

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The hardest part of our journey lasted about 15 years.

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Grief was ever present, but so was God.

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Today I want to share with you some of the ways God met me and sustained me and even

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freed me.

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I hope you can grab hold of some of these to help you through your grief.

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A little more backstory for those of you who don't know it.

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I was married to wonderful Steve.

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We had two wonderful daughters who were just in early elementary school.

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And I was loving my ministry with Campus Crusade.

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And one morning, as I was reading God's word, I heard him say to me, I'm going to send

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you a son.

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My immediate response was, no, thank you.

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I'm happy with my life, my family, and my ministry.

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And God said, no, I'm sending you a son.

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Time passed.

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No boy.

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We were preparing to move from California to Florida, where our ministry was having its

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headquarters.

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And as I talked with the Lord one morning, I heard him say, when you get to Florida,

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I will send you that son.

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So I thought, if that happens, I'll realize this really isn't my imagination.

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We had been in Florida for three weeks when a new friend, as she was leaving, turned and

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said, do you know someone who could take an eight-year-old boy?

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My first response, without even thinking, was tears.

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And then I said, we might.

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So that began our journey.

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It took a year for Josh to come to live with us as a foster child.

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He came from living with his grandparents after he was removed from his drug addict

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mother.

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For his first eight years, everything was risky.

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They mostly lived in a small trailer where there was lots of drugs and alcohol, men in

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and out.

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Sometimes his mom would take off on a bench.

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Food was uncertain.

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School mostly nonexistent.

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So we welcome him as a foster child, believing that we could provide a stable, loving home

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and family.

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We were not prepared for the results of fetal alcohol syndrome, reactive attachment disorder,

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ADD.

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He was shocked that we had a regular bedtime and that he needed to go to school every day,

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that he had limits on what he could watch on TV, that we went to church every weekend,

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and we ate dinner together at a table.

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All of that was new and different to him, and naturally a hard thing for him.

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And he was experiencing a lot of grief because even though his mother was not a safe place

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for him, he still loved her.

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And then he was with his grandparents.

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He also loved them, but they said they couldn't keep him.

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They were already raising his half-sister.

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And so he felt fairly abandoned, and that's a very hard thing.

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So we worked together and we made progress.

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And after three years, the county terminated his mother's rights because she hadn't done

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what she needed to to get him back.

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And he was up for adoption.

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We had first choice.

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That was not the easiest decision because the three years had not been easy years.

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They hadn't been terrible, but they were challenging.

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But God made it clear to all of us, my daughters and my husband and me, that he had not sent

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us a son for three years, but for life.

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We thought the security of being adopted, the assurance that we loved him and would

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not abandon him, would help him to settle down and move on into a good life.

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Except that he was starting middle school, sixth grade, but he was two years behind,

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and basically the size of an eighth grader.

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This began his real wilderness journey.

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Josh found size mattered, and he became a bully.

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His ADD was so great teachers couldn't teach with him in the room, so he spent most of

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his time in an alternative classroom.

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He got kicked off the school bus.

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He joined a gang, a group he identified with.

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The principal said if there was one more incident, he would have to leave.

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He was sure that we would also abandon him as everyone else had, and in a way he felt

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we did.

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We placed him in a local Christian residential program for troubled teens.

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That was the beginning of our real grief over our son.

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We felt like we'd failed him.

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We hadn't been able to hold him up and get him on a good track.

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He and we had to go through the program.

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He had school daily, many chores, immediate consequences to bad choices, counseling, a

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weekly chapel, and a weekly required two hours with us.

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At first they were awkward as we all sat there together, but eventually he became willing

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to talk with us, mostly asking us to take him home, but giving us an opportunity and

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him a willingness that we actually began to bond and have relationship.

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Then one night his house dad called and said, Josh, invited Jesus into his heart today,

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and we baptized him.

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We rejoiced.

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Josh became happier.

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He worked the program.

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He graduated.

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He came home committed to walking with God and making good choices.

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We were hopeful.

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However, that was bore the beginning of a pretty wild roller coaster ride.

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It took him only a short time to reconnect with his old gang friends.

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He began to skip school.

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His grandparents, he was 16 by now as a freshman, and his grandparents were so kind to give him

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a car.

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He skipped school more, and within a month he had ruined the car.

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That was the first of 17 cars that he had over the next five years.

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We were not providing them.

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Increasingly, drugs and alcohol had control of him.

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I can name all the girls in his life that I knew about.

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Lying was the norm.

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He stole from us and his sisters and got really angry when his friends strolled from him.

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He overdosed on the pain medication that he was given when he had his wisdom teeth out

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and decided he was leaving us.

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My husband said he couldn't drive in the state he was in.

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Josh went in the house, got some more stuff, called 911, and said someone is about to get

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hurt.

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Then he came after his father with a hammer.

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Fortunately, the police arrived.

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The police he had called, and they took him to juvenile detention.

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He called about 2 a.m., begging me to come rescue him.

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But he was there for two days.

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In Boys Town, three weeks until his hearing.

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And the judge let him off.

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One time he came home terrified.

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A gang conflict somehow focused on him.

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And another gang was coming after him.

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He begged us to send him out of town so he ended up spending the summer working at a Christian

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camp.

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We laughed at God's sense of humor.

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That was one time his choices had a good outcome.

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There were other times that God sent angels into his life.

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Author and Speaker Josh McDowell appeared at our door one summer and said that he wanted

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to take Josh on vacation with his family for a month.

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We said, okay.

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It was a wonderfully positive interlude with Josh, who came home once again wanting to

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walk with God.

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Another time a friend of ours flew Josh to California from Florida to spend a week with

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a surfing pastor.

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Josh loved to surf.

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Josh helped teach young boys how to surf and helped set up for church.

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Again, he came home with a renewed faith.

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But his renewed commitment to Jesus rarely lasted very long.

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Both friends and ongoing addictions had a hold of him, just gripped him.

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When the gate at a friend's apartment complex wouldn't open, he had the code.

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He pushed the gate open and that broke it.

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A resident saw it and called the police.

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He spent the night in jail.

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He was given community service.

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When he didn't do it, the judge put him on two years probation.

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That helped him make some better choices.

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He was pretty terrified of going to jail.

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He married a girl he was living with.

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That marriage lasted seven years.

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When they were breaking up, he took his gun.

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He was working as an armed security guard.

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He took his gun, drove out into the woods, and texted me, goodbye.

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I texted with him for an hour and finally convinced him to put his gun down and go home.

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I don't really like to tell all these stories on Josh's bad choices, but I wanted to give

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you a realistic picture of the pain and grief that we experienced over those 15 years.

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The hour texting with him when he said he was taking his life was one of the hardest

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of my life.

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And this wasn't all.

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These were just some of the big items.

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So how did we survive the turbulence for so many years and have a wonderful relationship

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with our son even now?

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Well, of course, we grieved all the bad and sad choices that he made.

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Sometimes those caused friction between me and my husband.

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We didn't agree on how we should handle that.

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But we talked and prayed and committed to working through the hard times together to

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supporting each other rather opposing the other.

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And we prayed a lot.

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And I would encourage you, I'm sure that as your loved ones make those bad choices, that

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it sometimes creates a lot of tension between husband and wife.

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And you need to come to a point where you say, we're doing this together.

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We will work through our differences.

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We'll come to an acceptable action point or approach.

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And we'll be one as we approach this person we love so much who's breaking our hearts

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and causing friction between us.

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He also created a lot of grief for our two daughters.

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First, he required so much of my attention that they were robbed of a lot of what I would

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have given them because I had to focus so much on Josh.

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On one time, Debbie said to me, why do you let him get away with those things?

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And I said, Debbie, I could be after him all the time.

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I can't follow up on everything that he does wrong or thing he doesn't do that he should

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do.

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I have to focus on the ones that will save his life.

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I don't think she understood that then, but I think she learned it later.

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But we really had to also work to make sure our girls did not get hurt.

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And we really wanted them to come out of this with a loving relationship with their adopted

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brother.

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But he really was a pain to them a lot of times.

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And sometimes when he and his friends were over and it was clear that they were high,

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that was usually when we were somewhere else.

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They were afraid of them.

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They didn't even feel safe.

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And we would talk to the girls and we would ask for them to help us, which they love to

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tell us what Josh was doing wrong.

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And we prayed with them and I've asked for their forgiveness for not being with them

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and available to them as not.

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The night that Josh met Jesus, I had a vision from God.

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I may have talked about this in another episode, but it was a major point in my life of surviving

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this journey.

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The vision, I saw God over me and he had this huge vat and he was opening me up and he was

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about to pour what was in this vat in me.

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And I said, so Lord, what is that?

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And he said, this is my love, God's love, my love for Josh.

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I'm sharing it with you, you're going to need it.

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Meaning there was still more ahead.

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And he said, one more thing.

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He said, when you make mistakes with this boy and you will and I did, make them on the

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side of grace.

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So what I'm telling you is that not only was it important that we work on our relationships

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as we worked with Josh and our children's, but that we had available to us two amazing

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things.

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We had the love of God that he's giving to us, his love for that one who's causing you

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so much pain.

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He loves them.

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He loves them.

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He loves them.

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And he will give you the love that he has for them so that you can keep loving even when

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you grow weary and you're ready to give up.

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He also gives grace.

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Most of us don't do grace real naturally, but God's grace, which is what saves us, what

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gives us anything we need to live, is available to us as we work with them.

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One of the most important things we did was invite others to pray with us.

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I was like, okay, my prayers don't seem to be enough to break through with Josh.

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And so I asked some other people who had experienced similar things and I said, would you pray?

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And then I said, we're going to have a worldwide day of prayer for Josh.

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And we asked our friends and because of our ministry, we have friends around the world.

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And so many people began to pray with us.

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And one day God said, you know, there are other people who could use some prayer.

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He says, why don't you open it up?

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And so our day of prayer for Josh became what is now the Worldwide Prodigal Prayer Day.

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Every June 2nd was Josh's spiritual birthday when he met Jesus.

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And so we pray on that day and we have a list of now after 20 years is about 8,000 names

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that people have asked us to pray for.

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They're all just first names and it's coming up and I'll talk to you more about that in

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coming sessions.

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But it was a wonderful thing because we did see answers to prayer.

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We saw God doing things in Josh's life.

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Some of what I mentioned to you came straight from that, I'm sure.

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So you probably know people that you trust.

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You don't go to people that you're not sure of that you don't trust.

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But if you have friends, people at church, people who are struggling with the same thing

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you are, feel free to go to them and share a little of your journey in heart and grief

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and ask them to pray with you and you can pray with them.

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And that United Prayer is a wonderful thing to help you handle your grief and keep going

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on this hard journey.

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I mentioned that on June 2nd there's a Worldwide Day of Prayer.

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I will put in the show notes for today's episode, some links to tell you about that

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so you can look for yourself.

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Giving you a few helps, just a few for your grief working with not against your spouse,

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praying together and attending to your other children, asking forgiveness when you need

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to, and especially love and grace from God.

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But I have quite a few more thoughts.

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And in the next two episodes, I'm going to tell you about some special gifts that God

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gives you freely.

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They will be always available and will be so valuable for you on this journey.

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So you won't want to miss these next two sessions because you're going to get some help you

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might not have thought of.

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Take a few minutes now to ask God from what I've shared today that could especially give

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you some peace in the midst of your grief.

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God bless you.