Hi Everyone,
Wow! Thanks for praying! You won’t believe all that has been happening
this morning. I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible, and I hope that
you don’t get confused in my telling, but anyway, here goes.
The conversation between Chris and Greg went okay. Greg held pretty firm
about Chris not driving our car and wanting more respect around home and
more obedience to our rules. Chris wasn’t happy, but he didn’t blow up,
so that was good, especially since Greg was driving around in order for
this conversation to take place. Chris is only admitting to having used
pot twice and he told Greg that he didn’t like it. He also said that he
would stop drinking, but, of course, we are smart enough to take a wait
and see approach and keep up the spying just in case this is a false
truce. We’re at war, remember?
Well, the conversation was a good start, but it’s the things that have
been happening today that are giving me real hope. Our denomination has a
home for juvanile delinquents in the state of Connecticut which is only
supposed to be for residents of that state, but our conference
superintendent has spoken to the C.E.O. on our behalf and they are going
to try to get Chris in, after his court appearance in January, for a 45
day evaluation, and the beginning of some family therapy. Talk about
connections, the C.E.O. remembers Greg from seminary, hopefully, fondly
and he is really motivated to help. Also, we were told to let Chris’s
school counselor know that he has been using, so we’ve done that and he
will now have to pay a visit to a drug counselor at school. We’ve talked
to a few more people who will be bringing up our case to the probation
officer that Chris will have and we have been advised to have a meeting
with that officer before the court date to not only learn what to expect,
but also to see if we can have some say in his probation requirements. We
may be able to impose a curfew that he must respect and we may be able to
enforce counseling. If he violates his probation, he may end up in a
juvinal center for anywhere from two to ten days, for starters. The
person that I talked to this morning said that most kids don’t want to go
back after that so they straighten up. Anyway, we’re starting to feel
like there is hope and like the wagons are circling, finally. Nothing is
definite though, but please pray that through all of this we will know
the right steps to take. Of course, the big push is not only out of love
for Chris just because of who he is, but we also realize that we are
racing against time. We have been assured that if he doesn’t change when
he is 18, the system will be much less forgiving. We just pray that this
will sink in.
God bless,
Kathy

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