A Missed Chance

It was probably a very nice late afternoon, summer image. A car pulls up to a small park at a small lake on the Pennsylvania/Ohio state border. Four people get out along with their towels. A Dad and Mom, a little six year old boy and a thirteen year old girl. Like the woman, the girl had long, wavy hair. Like the man, the boy had close cut hair. The Mom and Dad held hands as they walked toward the water, while the boy, walking with the man, was too busy picking up rocks to hold his daddy’s hand and the girl, walking with the Mom, was just too cool to hold anyone’s hand. At the water, the man and the boy just dropped their towels and splashed on in. The Mom looked at the girl and rolled her eyes and the girl giggled. The two of them laid out the towels and then daintily tip toed into the water. A lot of splashing ensued, but the ladies warned the guys that they did not want to get their hair wet. The girl stayed away from the man, but that would have been seen as a precautionary measure to protect her hair. The little boy tried to splash the girl, but with small hands he just managed to get her a little wet. She spoke sharply to him, but in so doing she looked away from the man. He sneaked up behind her and lifted her completely out of the water and then tossed her several feet away. She sputtered to the surface, wide eyed and a little frightened and then the little boy jumped on her head. What followed was a free for all with even Mom getting soaked.

         No one wanted to leave, but as is the usual happening in those cases, Mom called a halt to the fun. These kids have to eat, she said, a very Mom like thing. Lots of grumbling. Then Mom said she was taking all of them to Dairy Queen for burgers and ice cream. That made the difference! The two kids grabbed up their towels and raced each other to the car while Mom and Dad walked more slowly to the car. Dad asked Mom where she got the money to treat everyone and she smiled and said from you, dear. Also a very Mom thing.  A typical, all American family on a typical all American outing on a typical all American summer evening.

         Except that it wasn’t typical at all. At least not in the Norman Rockwell sense of typical. First, none of the people there were related by blood. The little boy had been adopted by the adults as a baby. The girl was in emergency custody of the adults. She had come to them a few days before with only the clothes on her back and a brown lunch bag containing a tooth brush and a clean pair of panties. It seemed she had gone to school on the last day of classes and had told her best friend that the night before her step father had done some bad things to her. The friend told the teacher, the teacher told the principle and one thing led to another. It was discovered that since the girl was eight years old she had been sexually assaulted and raped by her step father and two of his brothers. She was put in the home of that family as an emergency measure until things could be sorted out. That evening at the lake and Dairy Queen had been the first ‘normal’ family evening she could remember. She was Stephanie.  Marsha, the mother, and Adam, the son, and myself took her in as family.

         At first, she didn’t trust me. Who could blame her? But I rarely even touched her hand. (Well, there was the pick up and toss in the lake, but I was just a big kid myself and it was fun!) If there were hugs to give, they came from Marsha. As time went by, Stephanie began to realize that I was not going to harm her. She got to talking to me more, asking questions about what was right and what was wrong. She and Adam got along great. She met Marsha’s brother Joe, who was six years older, and thought she had died and gone to heaven. Joe couldn’t have cared less, but Steph was in love. She began to open up as a kid and our relationship, hers and mine, grew deeper. Every little girl needs that dad figure.

         Then came the day when Marsha called me in tears. It was terrible. I had to come home. The police and Stephanie’s mother had come to take her back. Her mother had petitioned the courts for Stephanie’s returned because we were forcing her to go to church. It was abuse, she said, and the court agreed. Everyone involved knew I was in the ministry, she was always ready before any of the rest of us to go to church and, when the court removed her, she went right back to that environment with the step father. The step father promised the court he wouldn’t touch her. It would seem that in Trumbull County, Ohio taking a child to church was greater abuse than rape. But she was older and she knew she didn’t have to put up with the old treatment. We were forbidden any contact until she was eighteen.

         One April day, Stephanie walked into my office. It was her eighteenth birthday. Much had happened in those intervening years. Her mother had met a new man, so she divorced the evil step father and married the new man. The new man wasn’t as bad. He was only a drug dealer. The mother got a job in Cleveland, some seventy miles away. She didn’t want Stephanie in an environment where there were drugs lying around, so she rented an apartment for Stephanie in the city Steph had grown up in so she could be near her friends. Her last two years in school she would see her mother once a month when the mother would come and pay the bills and stock the fridge. With such tender parental care you would never think the girl would get pregnant. But she did. On that April day when Stephanie walked into my office, she was a mommy.

         Stephanie just wanted us to know she was OK. She was ashamed of herself for having a child. She assumed we would not accept her at all. She just wanted to thank us for giving her some normalcy. It didn’t go like that, though. There were hugs all around. She had a job opportunity in Florida and she was going there in a few months. She had adult relatives there who felt she would benefit from counseling. She was excited about her future. Then, she was out of our lives again, although in contact. In Florida she met a young man named John. They decided to get married and came back to Ohio, where I married them. They wound up moving to Pennsylvania, just south of Pittsburgh. John was working for a car dealership and doing Bible school at night and Stephanie went to nursing school. Pittsburgh was only a three and a half hour trip, so we saw them quite often. As it happened, there was an outlet mall half way between Belle Vernon PA and Geneva OH. Sometimes Stephanie would call me and ask me to meet her at the mall on Saturday, and we would hang out for the day as she told me about her life. It was all good.

         Then, one cold winter’s day, John slipped on some ice at work and broke his neck. I was in Pittsburgh for his surgery. It was a long seven hours. He wound up with almost full use of his extremities, but he was in great pain. When his prescription for pain meds expired, he started buying them on the street. Then he talked Stephanie into taking some from the hospital where she was a nurse. She was caught and prosecuted. She lost her nursing license. Without the pain meds readily available he began getting whatever drugs he could get. Stephanie saw herself as a failure and she got pulled into it, as well. And, worse for her, John forbade her from contacting me. He had ended his plans for ministry and decided I had no use for him. Stephanie was so ashamed of herself that she followed what he said and I was out of the loop. Their daughters didn’t agree with that, so for these last few years I have been in touch with them.

         The drugs destroyed John’s heart. He has had five open heart surgeries in the last three years. After this last one he was told there would be no recovery. He sent me an e-mail asking me to pray for him. Then on this past Wednesday evening, with Hospice having medicated him, Stephanie called me. We had a long conversation. She has been clean for over a year and wants to get her life back together, although she will never be a nurse again. She got into the conversation very quietly, but when she realized I wasn’t going to scold her, it was like all those years before. She opened up more and more. Finally, she needed to go. After we hung up John passed away within twenty minutes.

         It is politically correct to say addiction is a disease. I disagree. All along the way you are making choices to go deeper and deeper into the addiction until it gets to where you cannot overcome it. It destroys your health, it destroys your life, it destroys your relationships. It takes you away from the people you love and who can help you. Over the years I have buried literally dozens of people who made those bad decisions.

         I will be gone next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Maybe Friday, too. I have to go bury another person who made some really bad choices and I have to start rebuilding a relationship with someone who needs to rebuild her life. She doesn’t need counselor or a friend. She needs a Dad. Since I have some spare time, I will have to do.

         Blessings.