Thank you so much for your kind and insightful post.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 12:26 AM
Subject: Attention Angel


>     Angel, I have been married for just about 35 years to the
> same woman.  We have 3 grown children, and almost 7 grandchildren.
> Come March, it will be seven.  When I started creeping up on 50
> years of age, nearly 5 years ago now, I decided to take stock of
> my life as a Christian, husband, and father.  When I did this, I
> wasn't too happy with what I saw.  Yes, it was true my oldest son
> was married and had a great job with two lovely little girls.  It
> was also true that he had to get married.  I also kicked him out
> of my house when he was 20 years old due to his sinful life style
> and his disrespect to his parents.  My daughter has lived a life
> of rebellion against God since she was literally a little girl.
> She has had at least one abortion, been arrested 3 times, and has
> a felony drug record and she just turned 28 years of age.  I have
> kicked my daughter out of my home 3 times.  The first time, she
> was only 15 years old but was living so ungodly, I had no choice.
> I told her before I kicked her out that I would go down to the
> police station and register her as a run away.  This I did after
> she left.  She told me at that time, she did not want to be any F
> ing Christians.  When we found her 3 months later, she was
> pregnant.  The second time I kicked her out, she was 16 and her
> baby, my oldest grandson who is now 11 years old, was only a year
> old.  It was the hardest thing I ever did in my life.  The third
> time I kicked her out, she had two children, was married, and they
> all lived in my basement because we have a one bedroom apartment
> downstairs.  My daughter was already heavily into drugs and was
> sexually unfaithful to her husband multiple times.  My daughter
> was probably 20 years old at that time.  She is divorced now and
> Sandy and I have legal custody of her 11 year old son.  My
> daughter has stolen from her parents many times including
> jewelry, electronics, car stereos that belonged to her brother,
> cash we had, and probably things we will never know.  She has sold
> things she took from our house at pawn shops.  She has tried
> returning a cell phone that we had gotten her and tried to say it
> wasn't working and she wanted her money back.  She used my credit
> card several times, signing my name, and lied about it when I
> caught her by reading my monthly statement online.  My youngest
> son is 24 years of age.  He saw how his sister lived her life,
> and also saw what it did to his parents when his older brother had
> to get married, and decided he would not live as they did.  He
> hasn't either and he lives a Godly life and really loves the Lord
> with all of his heart.  As a parent, therefore, regardless of how
> I raised my children in a Christian home, with rules, going to
> church, and teaching my children how to live by Biblical
> principles, I would be judged as a bad parent.
>
>     During the past 17 years, I have had two, what used to be
> called, nervous break downs.  They don't call it that much any
> more, unless you have an old doctor, but now they want to diagnose
> it as bipolar, Obsessive compulsive Disorder, Post Traumatic
> Stress Disorder, General Anxiety Disorder, and a whole bunch of
> other letters of the alphabet that are almost meaningless.  Why
> did I emotionally break down?  One real good reason, I decided,
> was due to the fact I think I was a failure at being a Godly
> Christian father.  In other words, I was a lousy parent.  The
> other reason?  I was a lousy parent, a failure at parenting,
> because, it just had to be that I was also a lousy Christian.  I
> crashed and burned not once but twice as a result.  Now I know
> those two things were lies but I had been deceived into believing
> they were true.
>
>     Kathy stated we were kind of rough on her but in her case,
> based upon some of her reports, I was concerned about her physical
> safety.  Plus, I often sounded harsher than I meant to be simply
> because I had experienced much of what she was facing and I hate
> watching others go through the same things I have experienced
> relating to parenting.  Plus, I'm a little cocky sometimes and
> act like I know more than I really do.  Pride is what that is
> called.  I'm still learning.  I especially get bent out of shape
> when a son picks on his mom, sort of speak, so I have a tendency
> to come off more aggressively in such cases.  In my case, that was
> never a problem, that is, I was never concerned about my physical
> safety.  In short, I have no doubt that some people, that know me,
> considered I was a bad, or poor, parent.  I considered myself such
> a parent.  I don't any longer but I still worry about them.  It is
> tough to know how to work with any given child.  They are all so
> different and their different ages, as well as so many other
> factors that must be figured in, making being a good parent down
> right impossible as far as I am concerned.  We all will look back
> and say, I wish I would have done better.
>
> Phil.
>