Confessing… July 25th, 2015

 Jonathots Daily Blog

(2643)

XII.

I confess so I can heal.

If I deny, I remain sick.

I suppose I could lie and tell you it only happened one time. But there’s really no sense in confessing to error if you’re going to leave out important details.

Actually, it was the fifth time that my wife and I slipped out of the house after we were sure that our four-year-old and three-year-old sons were sound asleep, and drove ten miles to see a movie, and returned to joyously find our young boys still deep in sleeper land.

But on that fifth time, something changed.

Apparently there was a noise that awakened our two little fellas, and they started screaming and hollering for us–so much that the neighbors, who lived just below, called the police. So when we arrived after seeing our movie, we found the house vacant.

There was no note–no explanation. So we weren’t sure if our children had been abducted or vanished in the Rapture.

Being in our early twenties and extremely immature, we went downstairs and pounded on our neighbors’ door to find out what they might know. Without opening up, they explained that the children had been taken away, and that the best thing would be to go to the local police to find out what was going on.

I remember having the audacity to be angry. It didn’t even occur to me that we were the ones in the wrong and that my boys had been taken away for their own protection.

We spent the next four hours searching for anyone who could give us details, only to discover that our guys were in foster homes and there would be a hearing about the case in six weeks.

Six weeks.

We were devastated.

Honestly, it took us about two weeks to settle down and realize that we had made a very bad mistake, and that we were the ones who were in the wrong instead of slighted.

I will never forget those forty-two days without my kids. And going to court was very painful.

The accusations were strong and had it not been for four weeks worth of tears and repentance, we might have recoiled and gotten viciously defensive, ending up losing the opportunity to become Mom and Dad again.

But because the judge found us to be truly sorry, we were given a second chance.

I remember the day we picked up our two boys. They were a little frightened of us, partially because they had acclimated to a new environment and also because they had been told that we had deserted them.

It took a long time to build back trust.

Although this story seems to be an extreme–something some folks would swear they would never do–I must tell you that the inclination to find undesirable paths when each of us feels inconvenienced gnaws at the conscience everyday.

So even though I am ashamed to share this story with you, I use it as a cautionary tale to myself, to remind my ever-present ego that simply because I can get by with something and have a really good plan on pulling it off, does not make it right.

 

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