Sometimes They Break Your Heart

I have discovered the downside of motherhood.

(If you are a newer reader, and you are confused about my parenting status, you can see what the heck I am talking about here and here)

The downside is just what I stated in the title of this post...

Sometimes they break your heart.

You can love them beyond human capacity. You can spend days that add up to years welcoming them into your life. You can have the honor of walking beside them through laughter and heartache, conquest and failure. You can have the joy of introducing them to Christ, and watch as they allow him to invade their lives and dreams. You can spend hours praying with them, and spend many tears praying for them.

But in the end, they make their own choices, and they make their own mistakes.

Right now a child I love, a child my heart aches for, a child I have spent countless hours and sleepless nights in prayer for, is astray.

She is only 13. She has grown up surrounded by some of the very ugly things the world has to offer. And right now she is gone. She is a runaway, in every sense of the word.

I won't invade her privacy by revealing her name, but I ask that you would please pray for her. If you pray over the sweet faces in my Youth for Christ pictures, you will surely pray for her many times. God knows her name, and God knows her heart. Pray for her as God would lead, and I wouldn't mind a prayer too. Love can be hard.