Our life drastically changed course a week ago. We are the parents of a daughter who has struggled for many years with substance abuse. We dread “the call.”   The call is when you are told that your child has died, and their struggle has ended. One week ago, our phone rang in the early hours of the morning. A police officer told my husband that our daughter had been found. Alive. The officer told my husband that our daughter had been brought by ambulance to a local hospital. The officer said, “She has some skin wounds, her arm hurts, and she doesn’t feel good.” What a profound gift for understatement…

Yesterday the church I attend was broken into. I started asking the typical safety and security questions, “Was anyone hurt?”  (No.) “How did they get in?”  (In military terms – ‘a soft perimeter.’)  That led to the more important questions, “Who was it? What did they want?”  The short answers were, “A meth addict. Money, food.” Those are the short answers. The longer answers require greater introspection. Allow me to share our journey. Seventeen years ago, our oldest child suffered sexual trauma at thirteen years old. The perpetrators were not caught as they were never accused. College men who never spent a day in jail. Our daughter was left broken.…