Our Twinkletoes went missing again.
It’s December 2019 and we’ve spent the year losing her little by little.
Instead of frantically praying for her to have a transformative change of heart, a metanoia, I’ve been asking God to help build me up in the event that she never returns…to us…to God…to the life she was created for.
I have been speaking to her on and off for the last months while she settled herself in Kentucky a place she carted all her emotional baggage to in an effort to start again.
Unfortunately, ‘starting all over again’ is a myth; unless one’s self is changed all the baggage goes with you and there it is, in all its glory on some pretty mountainside or picturesque spring, or huddled in your car for the night, in ‘wherever-the-heck-you-are-now’ land.
Unless you change yourself a change of scenery soon becomes populated with the same old stories. You just can’t start again without doing the hard work of exorcising first.
We’ve talked about that but I don’t think she really wants to believe it.
Anyway, she went quiet about ten days ago…not unusual but what is unusual is that text messages I send are green instead of blue and my calls go straight to voicemail and there is no response.
It seems that she has either committed herself into a rehab or immersed herself in some 12 step program retreat.
I could worry….
I could construe…
I could regret…
but instead I’m hopeful that this time may be the time when she experiences a spiritual conversion.
And if not then I am hopeful that God has prepared me for what will come next.
Then a little parcel came in the mail box and I opened it at the front gate just in case I couldn’t handle the contents stoically in front of Hubs.
It was her phone and a note about the 12 step program she is going through, for the how manyth time I found myself wondering, as I trailed up the driveway reading.
She has decided to take responsibility for her own phone bill and wants to make amends…
“On y’all’s terms…no rush at all,” she’d written.
I’m grateful that she’s alive and needs to figure her life out by herself, once and for all.
I’m prayerful that I can support her when we do speak on FaceTime…hopeful that this isn’t just another attention seeking ploy to push her further away and deeper into her preferred life without us.
I’m thankful that she gave me her new phone number.
Hello Twinkletoes, my daughter…I’m more than ready to start again if you are.