Sane (for KING & COUNTRY)

Joel met Adira Rhodes when she was a junior in high school carrying the weight of a sick mother and a household that was just barely staying together. Mistaking her baby brother for her own child, he extended a hand of greeting to her when she stumbled through the church's doors on a frigid Sunday morning in February. She was worn, and she was broken, but she knew where she was going with her life, and she wasn't going to let her circumstances stop her. He was able to offer her a steady side of life, a refuge to run to whenever it was all too much, and when he connected her with the church youth pastor, he was as well. She was always welcome in his and Moriah's home, and they thought of her as part of their little family.

But, just days after he attends her high school graduation, Joel is met with a text saying that she's leaving for college, the pre-law she's dreamed about for years, early, and she probably won't be able to talk to him much. It's the last he hears from her, despite every desperate attempt he makes to reconnect with her, for nine months. Then, driving home a February day much like the one he met her, he's sees something that will never cease to haunt him, the girl he loves so much selling herself on a street corner.

As the walls and lies she built between them come crumbling down, Joel is faced with his worst fears come true, a girl who is precious to him living like she's worth nothing and unwilling to turn away from it, convinced that after what's she's done, it's all she'll ever be. Feeling helpless but determined to fight for her until the battle is won, he's left saying the same words he used to say all the time, repeating them as a constant prayer... "This doesn't have to define you." But she seems to be convinced that she's going to let it anyway.