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This is a difficult time of year for us. March holds our daughter’s birthday. It hasn’t always been a disquieting time. It used to be a time of excitement, anticipation, and joy, but all that changed two years ago.
Two years ago, she began re-dating a man much her senior. She had quit dating him six months earlier telling us it was because she found out that he had a bad temper and how glad she was to know this before they had gotten serious enough to plan marriage. Now, it seems, he no longer has a bad temper. He has gotten over all of that.
We tried to remind her that he was almost forty years old and had never supported himself. How could she possibly believe that he would be able to support her and the family she so desperately wanted? But, she had a job. She would help. Besides, she believed that she was getting to an age where she couldn’t wait much longer or she would be too old to have a healthy baby. I took it to mean that she felt she was getting too old to wait upon God’s provision.
The more we tried to protect our daughter, the more animosity grew in her heart. It got to the point where she told us that she would be happier if we were dead.
She supported him for a year. Her job was enough to pay her bills, but not the additional costs of things to which he felt entitled. She got in considerable debt.
He did not go to church often, but he was a member. They were confronted with the fact that they were living in a sinful relationship so they switched their membership to a church where no one knew either of them or about their living together. When the pastor at that church tried to talk to them, they decided that they would get married and that would erase this sin.
They had a ceremony, which was not held in a church. His family was involved in all the preparations. We were dead. When we heard about the ceremony, I asked her who helped her pick out her dress. She said it was her best friend, a name of some woman I had never heard of before. It turned out to be the wife of his best friend.
It’s hard to imagine that our daughter, who devotedly took part in children’s and youth activities, was the student representative on a pastoral search committee, a member of the choir and a member of mission trips to Mexico and Uruguay, is not a Christian, but that is what the minister believes. He says that anyone who commits sin, confesses knowledge of the sin, and yet still does not repent and turn away from the sin, cannot have Christ in their heart.
If given the opportunity to be with our daughter this birthday, we will look closely into her eyes. We will try to see a glimpse of the girl who at age eight asked Jesus into her heart and was baptized. We will claim the promises of God and continue to pray for her, expectantly.
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