"A thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. But I came to give life--life in all its fullness."
-John 10:10
Since we said goodbye and allowed you over to your own will, the rest of us have been under the microscope. We've been interviewed and investigated by the Police for your accusation that we bribed the officers who brought you home the first time you ran away; CPS for your allegations that we were physically abusive and neglectful; and to our utter amazement and horror, most recently the Department of Homeland Security for human trafficking (?!) after you claimed that we regularly called you "Prostitute" at home, not "Lucy"...and that we'd been forcing you to work to pay back every penny of your adoption costs as well as to provide groceries for your own meals that you "always had to cook" because, according to your statement, we only cooked for ourselves and offered you scraps if anything at all.... ????!
Our character has been/continues to be questioned by the world that we've allowed to be privy to every minute detail of your story, and. it. sucks. No. It hurts. And it's the suckiest bunch of suck that ever sucked. Especially when we come across pictures of you so happy and healthy and still so unaffected by the loss of our family...so the opposite of how we've been faring with the loss of you. But what breaks my heart the most, what I've been obsessing over and working on wrapping my head around for the past two months, is that it was you: our precious gift recently given to us by God Himself, who slayed it. You rejected us and the life God was laying out for you...
...over the loss of your cell phone.
...over admitting the truth about yourself and your temptations that we already discovered and had evidence of.
But not really.
The director and people of the shelter you've been staying at definitely view you as the victim. It's been frustrating to our flesh to say the least. Here you are, living it up...enjoying the freedom to partake in everything we've sought so hard to protect you from And while I don't agree that you're the victim of some horrifically abusive adoptive monsters called "The Roses", I've come to a place within myself that can remember that you are still a victim of sorts. Again, only you and God know what your past entails. And only you and God can work it out. Until you're ready to surrender your victim status, you will continue to flow through life wounded and wounding others, Lucy. You are tightly bound spiritually and emotionally. God spoke to my heart months ago about the demons that surround you, and He's been recalling those words in my heart as of late: "this kind can only be driven out by prayer" (Mark 9:29).
Dad, Josh, Isaac, me, and you...we are all victims of this lame but powerful enemy who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy all the work that God began in our new family. And although he's won a few huge battles, I refuse to stand by and let him win the war.
