It has been a long and winding road raising a daughter of course. Gramma started weaving in faith from the very beginning. She took her on weekends almost from birth and of course this meant they attended church.
When I finally came back into the fold I took over. We attended church together but more importantly we talk about faith and prayer around the home. She would see me doing my devotionals in the morning over coffee and Christian television on the tube.
I switched our radio listening to Christian music and talk as well. To help get her on the right track in more ways than one I wrote a morning prayer for her to say which we did from like ages 6 to 9 or so.
When we were at a church that did Awanas the idea of having a prayer journal was presented to her and she embraced it some what. When we hit Ravelry she created a Christian Teens group although she was still just a pre teen herself.
We were contentedly living life without school or curriculum until the unsettling moment when through multiple mediums, people and circumstances God let us know He was sending her to public school. It was after she got sick with a fever. When it broke and she was perked up enough to talk she told me she had a dream. It is among other things she was holding a baby that said "Consecrate yourself...". I told her sounded like God was inviting her to get closer to Him.
As soon as she was enrolled in school she made friends with a girl who's mother had passed away. I knew young as my daughter was God had sent her on the mission field for ministry. He blessed her too with horse volunteer work and riding lessons. These things I explained to her as not just life's happenstances or accidents but gifts of the Lord.
We moved and she made a new friend as she entered junior high school. This girl was also a neighbor of ours. She happened to be a child in an interracial adoption who's adoptive parents had gotten divorced. One day my daughter called me from school so panicked I could barely understand what she was saying.
When I did the first thing I was thinking was why in the world did she call me and not get a member of the school staff involved or call 911. She told me she had discovered in the school bathroom that her new friend was covered in black, blue and purple bruises. The friend was claiming her adopted mother was abusing her and afraid to go home.
My daughter was calling to ask if we could shelter the girl for a night. I assured my daughter that if nothing else could be done before the end of school we would of course at least do that much. Instead when she got off the phone she discretely went to a vice principle and got her friend to come and tell.
When I arrived to speak to the school staff about all that had happened; social services had been called and made it over to pick up the girl and get her a place to sleep in the system for the night and were on the case of investigating the situation in the girls home.
The schools vice president could not stop raving about what a supportive blessing my daughter had been sitting with her friend trying to comfort her and keep her calm while they waited for authorities to come and get involved.
A couple of summers ago we went to Tahoe with her current best friend and a church group. The two of them went hiking, alone and then decided to get off the trails... (things to make a parents hair go grey in no time flat eh?)
When they had walked, fallen, gotten lost and realized things were not getting any better and it was late she said "Mom I prayed Lord send us a ride home." Then she got into the first vehicle that stopped for them after that and indeed the people drove them back to our camp site miles away.
Oh my, oh my the teachable moments:
Do not just get in the car with a stranger.
NEVER get off the trails when hiking alone with no supplies as an inexperienced youth in unfamiliar territory!
Prayer works!
Amen
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