I Am Sending You a Son (episode 2)

0:00 Do you love a prodigal? Do you feel like you are lost in a scary and endless wilderness? Welcome to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. I am Judy Douglass and I spent more than 15 years in that wilderness. I believe together we will discover help and hope for your journey. Welcome to the second episode of When You Love a Prodigal podcast. I am Judy Douglass. Last week I took some time to introduce myself.

0:40 Just a very brief summary. I'm from Texas, grew up in Dallas. I loved riding and horses. Riding and riding. Majored in journalism at the University of Texas. Had a wonderful experience meeting Jesus at a Young Life camp in Colorado. Changed my life. And the most important thing that you would have heard about me then from what I told you last time was the fact that I always wanted my own way. And meeting Jesus set me on a path to make choices for his way instead of my way. And then I told you at the very end last time about the boy that God said he was sending.

1:26 So now I want to tell you about that boy. We were in the process of moving from California where the headquarters of our ministry, Campus Crusade for Christ, was moving to Florida where we still are. And we had a happy family. We were doing our ministry. We had two girls. They played soccer. Michelle the younger was looking into art a lot. We were content. I was writing and speaking and God said, I'm sending you a son. And my response was, no thank you.

2:09 And God said, yes, I'm sending you a son. He will be a gift. When we got to Florida, it was only a few weeks before a new friend said, do you know someone who could take an eight-year-old boy? I just froze. Tears came down my cheeks. She said, why are you crying? And I said, because God told me that someone would ask if we could take a boy. And she said, well, this boy really needs a family. Josh's mother, she'd been adopted and she had a lot of issues.

2:52 And she came in high school an addict, a drug addict and drinking and had a brief marriage and a daughter who the grandparents were raising. And then she had this boy and she kept him even though she was really not qualified to take care of him because she went off on binges or she disappeared with some guy. They lived in a little trailer that the grandparents set up for them and there were men in and out, drug deals went down, somebody got stabbed there. They never knew if they were having enough food. And finally the county stepped in and took Josh from his mother and put him with his grandparents whom he knew and loved and that was comfortable.

3:44 But they were planning on not putting him back with his mother unless she met some strong requirements to get him back. And so they were going to put Josh preferably with the grandparents. But the grandparents said, we're too old, we're too tired, we're already raising his sister, we can't do it. And so he was going into foster care. And this wonderful friend who asked me was their best friend, the grandparents, and said, I'm going to find one of those campus crusade families moving here. They'll take him. And so God knew all of that and he'd already prepared our minds and our hearts.

4:26 And so we said a tentative yes, we would enter the process. We had to go through training, we got to spend some time with Josh. But it was almost a year before it actually happened and he was declared our foster child. And that day he came home with us and he thought he was coming for the weekend like he'd done a couple of times before. Oh no, he was coming to live with us. And he was in shock and we were in shock. But here are the things that were shocking for him. He was absolutely shocked that he had to go to bed at a certain time, that he couldn't watch TV all night, anything he wanted, that we sat down at a table to eat dinner every night and that he went to school every day.

5:16 Oh yeah, and we went to church. Just so many things that he couldn't believe were going to be true for him. It was shocking for us too. He just had so many needs, this high, high need for center of attention. And we found out that when people live in poverty, a lot of times, do you know what the main source of their vegetables is? It's ketchup. And so anytime they go to a fast food place, they'll grab a whole bunch of the ketchup packets and take them home. And so sure enough, I found a whole hoard of ketchup packets in his drawer.

5:58 It was just hard to get used to each other and where he came from. And even though they had told us he would probably have reactive attachment disorder, which means because he had been abandoned in essence, his dad never showed up. His mother usually chose her addictions. Even his wonderful grandparents couldn't take him. It's like he doesn't trust anybody. He's sure nobody will be there for him. And he's on his own for the rest of his life. And so he won't attach to us. He put up barriers to protect himself from us.

6:39 But there were other things as well. He was almost 10, but he was going into third grade, which is an eight year old thing, and he could barely read or write. And so we get him in school and we get some tutoring for him and some other help to make up for what he's missed. And that was helpful, but it certainly wasn't enough for all that he needed. He had a lot of woundedness because he'd been neglected and abandoned and even abused. And so that was hard. And his mother was doing drugs and alcohol when she was carrying him. And that leads to fetal alcohol syndrome.

7:22 And one of the things that's very impactful from fetal alcohol syndrome is the prevention in the brain of a fetus when they're being formed, the means to do cause and effect reasoning. Now think about that. They can't decide, understand that if you do this, this happens. It just makes no sense to them at all. And we would think, why doesn't he see the consequence of what he's doing? Because he couldn't. It takes patterns over and over and over to build those synapses, so to speak, to make that understandable.

8:04 He also had ADD. He had several learning disabilities. It was hard. School was very, very difficult for him. He had to be center of attention. And so he was always disruptive in class. And his ADD made him disruptive in class. And so he spent a lot of his time in middle school in alternative classroom. He thought everyone spent time in alternative classroom. It was just a lot of things that he had that had been hard for him that were not his fault. They were the things that happened to him and were done to him.

8:46 After three years of foster care, they terminated his mother's rights. Oh my goodness, that was a very challenging day. We were at court. We'd been to court. We had to go every six months to get renewed as the foster care for him. And we went to court. And his grandfather was there with his mother, the grandfather's daughter. And I was there with Josh. And the court separated them so they didn't see each other. And his mother knew she wouldn't get him, but she wanted to fight for him, probably for the first time in her life. And so she's over here crying with her father.

9:27 And Josh is over crying with me. And then grandfather and I traded. And I went to comfort her. And he went to comfort Josh. And it was a hard day. And Josh was declared that she was no longer his mother. And he was devastated. And he didn't know what that meant for his future. And we didn't either. The county said, he is now up for adoption and you get first choice. Well, my family had to make a decision on that because it had been a hard three years that he had been with us. And did we really want to sign up for life? He also had to make a decision because he was 12 now.

10:11 Did he want to be adopted by us? Well, here was his response. It was like he turned his head and looked around and he went, I don't see anything better so I guess I'm fine with it. And we had to make that decision. And the Lord assured us that he had not sent us this son for three years, but for life. So we went to court to adopt him. And the judge kept wanting to know why we wanted to adopt him. And since we were all a little nervous about it anyway, we probably didn't give him all the answers that he wanted. And he finally said, do you love him?

10:53 And that really caused a pause for me anyway, because he had done nothing to help love each other. He was sure that he could never love me as his mother because that would betray his birth mother. And therefore, he withheld any sense of connection or affection with me. But it was like, do I love him? I really do love him. God had given me an amazing love for him. We'll talk more about that later next time. So we said, yes, we would adopt him. And we hoped that he would feel loved and secure and not abandoned, that we would be there for him.

11:36 And therefore, we would get a more peaceful home. No, because that's when he entered middle school. And it got a lot worse. And the journey in the wilderness really began at that point. And next week, we'll talk about that. Thank you for joining me today on the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Your review helps the show reach more people with the hope and encouragement of Jesus.

12:18 Don't forget, take a look at the show notes. And for more helpful information, resources, and books, check out judydouglass.com. That's Douglass with two S's. You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram at JudyDouglass417. Until next week.