CHILDREN CAN BE HEAVY LADEN Lent Devotion #21

REFLECTION: I was alone with nine year-old Susie when she approached me at my computer and began a conversation about her father, who’d left her and her mother when Susie was very young. She wanted to know why he didn’t care, what was wrong with her.

Susie proceeded to tell me that if anything happened to her mother, her father would take her. Then he would immediately turn her over to Children and Youth services.

She had a solution.

“I’m going to go and stand out on a street corner,” she told me. “If I’m pregnant he said he would let me live with him.”

Covering my own surprise at her words I asked what made her think he would take her in if she was pregnant but not if she needed a home.

“Because he said he would,” she responded.

I reminded her that I would never lie to her, that I wanted her to listen to what I had to say.

“My father left me when I was very young,” I began. “Do you think I turned out OK?”

She looked at me.

I continued. “You cannot live your life to get him back. You have to accept he is not coming back. Whose loss is that?”

“His,” she said.

“Right,” I said. “You are a wonderful child, and he is missing out. I know you are too, but he is missing more because he doesn’t even know it!”

I talked to her about how she should look at God for guidance, and let go of her dream of her father returning. She needed to develop who she was to be, to develop the gifts God gave her.

She cut the conversation off, asking, “Do we need to talk about this anymore tonight?” She’d dealt with all she could at the moment.

“No,” I said. “Just remember, you are a wonderful child.”

We all need to hear that message, especially if we are abandoned by those we love. We are wonderful children of God. No human being should be allowed to take that message from us.