Susan LaffertySeveral years ago, in the upheaval of an unexpected move to a different country, I’m struggling.
Questions speak loud. Wake me in the night.
What if it’s the wrong place?
What if it doesn’t work?
What if we can’t get permission to stay?
What if…?
Doubts about the future linger. Rising from underlying fear. In a long season of unanswered questions.
The shifting in our souls comes unbidden. Change is on the way. Undefined and unexplained. Untraceable.
Yet we know.
This surprises. Perplexes. How do we leave the incomplete? People we love? Those yet to turn and follow Christ?
We bring questions and loose ends before Him. Wrestle in prayer. Wanting specifics, really.
Silence.
“How did he turn out that way?” my teenaged son asks. We’re standing at the kitchen table. On summer vacation in Arizona.
He’s distressed. Witnessing up close the rage and deceit of someone he’s trusted and admired. The downhill slide is shocking.
“It probably started with one lie,” I say. “Then another. And another. Until finally he was living a lie.”
What I do not know at the time of that conversation will come to light a month later. The fact that our son has been lying to us. For a while.
And has moved to “a far country” of deceit fueled by anxiety. Even as he lives within the four walls of our home.
Prodigal.
The father of lies is after his very soul.