No Longer a Daddy's Girl [Christian Fiction]

Part 4 - God is in control

This trusting God thing was a major struggle. Putting his daughter in God's hands was easier said than done. It took everything to not act from his gut and go out and find out where she was. It would not be a difficult task. Lonette was such a social animal that any of her friends likely knew where she was or what club she could be spotted in on Friday nights. With a little coercing, they would likely reveal her whereabouts. It would be so easy.

But Grayson had an unction not to do so. As he stood in his kitchen stirring a pot of black-eyed peas that he planned to have for dinner, he thought about the short but resounding conversation with Pastor and First Lady Abelson shortly after his daughter left. Grayson was broken and visibly upset when he walked in Sunday service two days after Lonette moved out. Pastor Abelson paused in the middle of his sermon to pray for and comfort Grayson. The rest of the 100 congregants joined in, praying for Lonette's safe return. But then after the service, Pastor Abelson invited Grayson to his office. He had come to know Grayson well enough over ten years that he would not allow Grayson to leave without making sure he was okay.

Grayson came into the office antsy, wanting to hear what his pastor had to say, but also wanting to get home in case Lonette had returned. To Grayson's surprise, it was not Pastor Grayson that had a word for him, but his wife, Miriam Abelson. She spoke while Grayson sat on a plush faux-leather couch in a corner of the office.

"Do you know Mary-Ann?"

Know Mary-Ann? Of course, he knew Mary-Ann. She was the Abelson's foxy daughter who started attending their church about a year after he joined. She had just graduated from medical school and was well on her way to becoming a pediatrician. She only attended the church for a year, long enough to complete her residency at a local hospital and pass the boards before she moved off to Atlanta to join a practice there. But she made quite an impression on Grayson, even though they barely interacted with one another.

Mary-Ann sometimes led prayer sessions in church, and occasionally M.C.ed special events, and she had a voice as sharp and clear as a news anchor. Grayson found her very attractive, and that intimidated him. He didn't have the level of confidence to approach her or to believe that she would have anything to do with him. And there were men in the church that also had their eyes on her, and they had more money and more swagger than he did.

It had been years since Grayson's wife died, and he knew he was finally able to start dating again. Mary-Ann Abelson would have been perfect. Saved, successful and single. But just when he was developing the nerve to ask her out, she was gone.

Pastor Abelson announced from the pulpit that his daughter had moved to Atlanta with her boyfriend to join a practice there. Grayson was disappointed that she had a boyfriend but relieved that he didn't face the sting of rejection by propositioning a girl who was already taken.

Grayson merely answered, "No." It was technically true and left no room for follow-up questions from Miriam if he had said yes.

"Well, Mary-Ann was a runaway once. Did you know that?"

"No."

"Yep, she ran away from home when she was nineteen years old. She was twenty-one when she came home."

Two years? This was not sounding encouraging so far. "So long?"

"The length of time doesn't matter. What matters is how she came home."

"How did she come home?"

"She came home humble, apologetic, and ready to move on to the next phase of her life. Two days later, she applied for college. Eventually, she was accepted, and to make a long story short, she is now a kid's doctor down in Atlanta. She and her husband have two kids of their own, and they are involved in a very nice church down there."

Grayson nodded. He was beginning to see her point, though it was a presumptuous one. He would love to see that kind of outcome for Lonette. But at the time, Lonette had only been missing for two days. He still hoped that her anger would blow over and she would come home. But what Miriam Abelson said next shocked him.

"When our daughter ran away from home, we didn't pursue her."

Grayson's frown took over his face. "I don't understand."

"Proverbs 22:6 says, 'Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' Our daughter left the safety, comfort, and security of her home and went off to live in sin. Rather than listen to her parents, she decided she knew what was right for her and ran away so she could have the freedom to do what she wanted. When she did that, we let her, believing that we had trained her to ultimately make the right choices."

Grayson still looked confused.

"In the parable of the prodigal son, do you see any indication that the father went off looking for the son? I'm sure with the father's resources, he could have found the son. Do you see any indication that the father prevented the son from going? No. The son made his decision to abandon the father and the home. And though the father was grieved and yearned for his son to be home, he had to let his son experience the results of his decision. To do otherwise meant that his father would be keeping his son from understanding the consequences of sinful behavior."

Pastor Abelson, who had been leaning against his desk, got up and stood beside his wife. "What my wife is trying to say is that when our daughter scuttled her college plans, packed up her belongings and moved in with her boyfriend, without any advance notice to us, we had to let her go. We could have tried to reach out to her, convince her to come home. But we had put enough teaching and instruction in her over nineteen years that we had to trust that God would use that to steer her in the right direction. We couldn't interfere with that. We had to take our hands off her and let God have her. And we were ostracized for it, by our church, family, and friends. We even beat up on ourselves, because it was difficult to let go. But in order for our daughter to realize whatever destiny God had planned for her, we had to turn her over to God."

"We kept praying for her," Miriam added. "But we made no attempt to contact her. Eventually, she called us. But the conversation was not, 'get your behind home.' It was more, 'Do what God is leading you to do.'"

Normally Grayson would not have questioned the couple's wisdom. But that was only if the wisdom was directed at someone else. Now, his daughter was at stake, and he could not keep his thoughts under a cloud.

"I appreciate what you're saying to me, and I'm glad things worked out for you and your daughter," Grayson said. "But there are also lots of parents who raise their children well, and yet their kids still end up getting pregnant out of wedlock, or using drugs, or going to prison, or even getting killed. Where's the happy ending for them?"

"And we acknowledge that happens," Miriam answered. "We live in an imperfect world. Babies die in childbirth sometimes, but it doesn't mean we should stop having babies. Food sometimes makes us sick, but it doesn't mean we should stop eating. Doing the right thing doesn't always guarantee us the results we had hoped for. But it doesn't mean we should stop doing the right thing. Because, when it is all said and done, having the favor of God is more important than anything."

And that was it. Grayson later realized their way of handling their daughter's leaving home was entirely subjective, and they wouldn't dare tell him that he should do the same. But he was encouraged knowing that the Abelson's daughter found God and made her way home, and it was that encouragement that sustained him. It had been two months, but to Grayson, it felt like two years. He had to constantly remind himself that God was in control. Though Lonette had abandoned him, the Heavenly Father was still watching over her, knew where she was and would help her fulfill her destiny, whatever that was. He needn't get in the way of that.