Entering the Wilderness (episode 3)

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Do you love a prodigal? Do you feel like you are lost in a scary and endless wilderness?

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Welcome to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. I am Judy Douglass and I spent more than 15

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years in that wilderness. I believe together we will discover help and hope for your journey.

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Hi, welcome back to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. I am so glad that you are here.

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Last week I introduced you to our son Josh, who God sent to us as a very special gift.

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And today we're going to get into more of the details of the prodigal wilderness that Josh took us through

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over about 15 rather challenging years. He was with us as a foster child for three years,

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as we talked about last week, and then we were asked if we would adopt him.

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And we had a little family talk about it and decided, yes, God was saying, again,

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I have sent Josh to you as a gift, not just for three years, but for life.

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And so we said yes. And Josh, who also at 12 years old by now, had a say in it, said,

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I don't see any other better options. So I'll say yes. And so I like to say we all said I do.

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And we became one family. I was sure that Josh would feel secure, not abandoned, that we really did

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love him, and we were committed to him when we adopted him. And so that maybe some of the turmoil

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of the first three years would disappear because he was secure and confident in our commitment to him.

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Not so. That's not the way it happened. Because Josh was now going into middle school.

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Mind you, he was almost 13. He's a big boy. And so he's going in and he's towering over the sixth grade boys

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that he's in class with. And he found that being big had great advantages. You might translate that into bully.

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He found out he could get lunch money from the little kids. He could get other things he wanted from the little kids.

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And that became something of an issue. Also, the residuals from his mother's drugs and alcohol while she was carrying him,

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the fetal alcohol syndrome that had contributed to his ADD and his learning disability, and then the abandonment issues

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contributing to his sense of needing to be at the center of attention all the time, made him really difficult to have

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in a classroom with 25 other kids. And so each teacher would find after a while she couldn't teach if he was in the room.

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And so he ended up spending in his middle school time, much of his classroom time was in an alternative classroom,

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which he thought was normal. We did a little math. How many kids in your school? Oh, about 1200.

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And how many kids are in alternative classrooms when you're there? He says, I don't know, four or five, maybe up to ten.

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He says, that's not exactly everyone in school. And he says, oh, I guess it isn't, is it?

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Now, we really worked hard to help him have some good experiences in his life that would help him move beyond the struggles that he had had.

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So we went to church and he was in the youth group. He was on a soccer team, both at school and in the community.

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I played goalie most of the time when he was in soccer. But he also, when they were really playing a big tough team,

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they'd put him out in the field and his job was to be the enforcer. And so any of the kids that were giving their team a hard time,

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he was responsible to kind of let them know they couldn't get away with it.

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On the bus, Josh also had problems. He managed to cause fights and get other kids involved in negative behavior.

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And so finally the bus driver said, I'm not going to put up with this. He is not welcome on my bus anymore.

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And then as he's searching for a sense of family and community in school, he ends up joining a gang.

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Now, we sort of found out about this accidentally, but he joined a gang and his principal hadn't even known that.

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Speaking of his principal, I got to know a lot of people at the school.

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I was used to at the school getting a call from my daughters who tended to do well. Would you like to come see Debbie get this award

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or Michelle to do this performance? And Josh, I would get calls from the teachers and the counselor and the vice principal.

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And finally I became friends with the principal.

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And then one day when he was in seventh grade, the principal said, we can't have this anymore.

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If there's one more incident with Josh, we're going to not let him be back in this school.

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And so we were afraid. What are we going to do with him now?

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Because everything we'd tried, we'd done counseling, we had him with other friends who were positive in his life.

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Various things, sent him to a camp. Wonderful ways for him to find that it was possible to make some good choices for your life.

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And they had nothing had worked. And so what do we do?

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And God was so kind to lead us to a local in Orlando program, residential program called House of Hope.

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At the time it had been a girls program for many years and they were just opening a brand new boys program.

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And so Josh was the second boy in the House of Hope.

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Now here's what happened at House of Hope. They did have some fun because people would take them out to their boats and go out boating.

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Or take them to see the magic play. And there were other fun things that they got to do.

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But mostly their life was pretty regimented and they had a lot of rules.

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Now previously I mentioned that Josh had, because of his mother's drugs and alcohol, when she was carrying him, fetal alcohol syndrome,

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which prevents in the formation of her brain and the baby the cause and effect reasoning.

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So they have, I would say a thousand rules. That's probably an exaggeration.

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But a lot of rules so that they're sure to break them. And sure enough Josh was able to break the rules regularly.

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Some of them were very small and petty. Others were big and significant.

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But what that gave him was this repetitive figuring out, oh if I do this, this is what is the consequence or result.

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He began to build in his brain the pathways for cause and effect reasoning, which was a wonderful thing that was happening.

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Spiritually he was being loved. He was hearing the word of God. He was participating in worship.

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They did a program every year where they had to sing.

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And it was wonderful spiritual input into his life for the year and a half that he was at House of Hope.

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They provided counseling. They provided school. And they did something wonderful for us.

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Because you see Josh had so protected himself with this wall around him not to be abandoned again.

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That we could hardly get in even after adopting him.

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But they made us come and be there with him sitting looking at each other or going for a walk together.

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And we had to begin to talk. And so we asked questions that at home he wouldn't have paid any attention to.

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But we were able to help draw him out more and enter into his life more.

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And so a relationship began to develop. And I'm really grateful for that part of House of Hope for sure.

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I will say this that Josh, like most of them over time, learned how to work the program.

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Because they are given chance when they prove themselves at one level, they go to the next level,

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which gives them a little more freedom or a little more personal responsibility.

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And so then they began quickly to do what they knew they needed to so that they could get out.

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But they weren't necessarily absorbing it into their real life and heart and mind.

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But he worked the program pretty well. And he learned how to make good choices.

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But here's the best thing that happened at House of Hope.

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On June 2nd, when he was 14 years old, Josh met Jesus.

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His house dad, Mike, called. And he said, Josh just received Christ.

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And he was so excited that we baptized him in the lake right there where the boy's house at House of Hope was.

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Of course, the next day they saw this 10-foot alligator right there where they baptized Josh.

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Glad that he was somewhere else that day. But it was real for Josh.

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He was seriously committing his life to the Lord and wanting to grow, wanting to make better choices for his life.

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And so he graduated from the program. He was 15.

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And a number of great things happened. One, Mike, his house dad, was now working for Youth for Christ.

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And he was a junior counselor at a wilderness camp.

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And he asked Josh to come and be a junior counselor.

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And so Josh actually had responsibility for some younger boys to be a good model and really reach out to them.

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And that was a great experience. He caught up with school. I home-schooled him that next semester.

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He went to youth group. And then, and then he begged. He said, please, may I go to school?

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I don't want to be at home all the time. I want to be with the other kids.

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So after prayer and conversation and setting the boundaries, we said yes.

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And Josh went back to school. At this time, he's 16 years old.

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He's just going into ninth grade. And his grandparents had kindly given him a car.

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And he had a driver's license. And so he started off well. The school was cooperating and letting us know how he was doing.

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But about three weeks in, he kind of got back with old friends, back with gang friends.

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And that began to lead to a lot of things that happened over the next four years.

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He did come home after that semester because he only passed typing and weightlifting.

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And so I home-schooled him the rest of the time. But he had those friends and they would come get him or he would come go and get them.

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And they were gang friends. And the things that really became true was lots of alcohol, drugs, cars, girls, stealing, lying.

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At one point, he and my husband had a little interaction.

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Josh had had his wisdom teeth out and he was in pain. So he took his pain medication and decided he wanted to take more.

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So he took it all. And he was higher than you can imagine.

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He packed up a bag, came down the stairs and says, I'm leaving.

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And we took one look at him and my husband said, you can't go anywhere right now.

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He says, out of my way, I'm leaving. And so he left, went back in the house and went and got a hammer.

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And as he came back out, he stopped at the phone and he called 911 and said somebody's about to get hurt.

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And he hung up. Well, they traced where it was and sent some officers.

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And he went outside and Josh, my husband, Steve, is standing in front of the car with a baseball bat that Josh's friend had handed him.

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Josh comes up with a hammer raised like he's going to try and hit my husband.

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And then he doesn't do it. And instead, he unbelievably started hitting on his very most precious car all over and putting holes in the car.

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And then the police came and Josh ran and they chased him down.

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And they took him to juvenile detention where he spent several days waiting for a hearing.

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It was the story I told in the episode zero, the trailer for this podcast.

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And after it was over and he went to a hearing, they really didn't want to do much with him, but they said they would have a trial for him.

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And we could just take him home. And my husband said, well, we're his parents and we love him, but we're also the victims here.

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And the judge said, of course, of course. So they put him in Boys Town for three weeks, which was a very wonderful experience.

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He learned to work the program well, well enough that every week he was the star resident in that program.

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Those are just some of the things that happened in the 15 years because then he's moving into his 20s.

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He finishes high school finally at age 20 and nothing has really changed much.

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He would have times when he would spend time with people who were positive in his life and he would choose to make good decisions.

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And he would say, I really want to walk with God.

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But then something would upset him or old friends enter his life and and he's back on the wilderness journey again.

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One of the things that drove us a little crazy was that he was allergic to work.

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He just he would work a little and then he would manage to slough off and not get much done.

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My husband's a pretty hardworking person and it was really hard for him to watch Josh not work.

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So that was a concern to us. How will he ever make it in life?

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He started dating a young woman and eventually they got married.

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And that lasted actually a number of years, but it was always a difficult time together.

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A difficult marriage because they were doing drugs and alcohol.

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Josh told me at one point he says, I think maybe we were drunk or high for our whole marriage.

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Anyway, they ended up getting a divorce and then he was regretting the divorce and one night he called me up.

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And he said, just pray I go to heaven and he hung up and I went, oh no, no, no.

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So I tried calling him back and he he didn't answer.

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So I called his best friend and I said, can you get him to not take his life and have him contact me?

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And so eventually Josh texted me so he hadn't taken his life yet.

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And we talked, texted back and forth for an hour and finally he put his gun down that he had in his head to take his life.

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And he came home instead or went to his home.

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That was not the only time that I talked him out of taking his life.

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Then a major turning point happened in Josh's life.

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He was like 29 by the side.

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The 20s were a blur.

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His grandfather, his beloved grandfather, who was the only man in his life in his young childhood and who still was a model to him, became very ill and was dying.

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And Josh could hardly stand to think of his grandfather dying.

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He says, what will I do without papa?

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And Steve and I were concerned that he would take his life for sure when papa died.

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But he didn't.

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Instead he said, I'm going to make papa proud.

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I'm going to be the kind of man that he'll be proud of and I'm going to take care of my grandmother.

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And that was a turning point in Josh's life.

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And though he still struggled with some things, he had this desire that he wanted to make good choices.

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He wanted to follow the Lord in where he would take him.

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And he began to make better decisions.

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He began to be a hard worker.

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It was pretty miraculous.

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And then he met Leslie, to whom he's been married for over six years now.

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And she also has been a sturdy, steady person in his life.

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When he was walking through the concerns for his grandfather, she says, I'll hang with you on this.

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But then just before they were getting married, she said, she had a at that time 12 year old daughter.

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And she says, I can't bring her into this marriage because you drink.

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He says, there's nothing wrong with drinking. She says, well, for you, there is.

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He says, I can have a few beers.

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And she said, no, I thought you could, but I see you can't.

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So if you want us to get married, you're going to have to quit drinking.

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And he did.

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And as far as I know, he's been sober for over seven years now.

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And it's made all the difference in the world and his life to not be drinking.

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And there's lots more story that you will hear over the weeks ahead.

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As we talk about the lessons that I learned and the things that God showed me in this prodigal wilderness walk,

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that I hope will encourage you and give you help and give you hope for the prodigal that you love.

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Thanks for listening. Next week, we're going to begin to define what a prodigal is and understand why people might become a prodigal

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and begin to look at what the word of God says and will have in the future some professionals who will come in and help.

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We have a lot of help ahead and a lot of hope ahead.

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God bless you. Be sure to tell your friends so they can listen to.