Yesterday our town's news stations were covering a tragic death that happened over the weekend. A high school senior girl was shot in the chest early evening on Saturday. As the day wore on, yesterday, more information was being released about how this tragedy happened. What became immediately clear, to me, was that the kids involved were trying to cover their own asses before taking action to save this young girls life.
It made me think about the kind of situations our kids will be in when they grow up and how standing up for what is right, no matter what the consequences will be, is the choice I want our kids to choose. I thought that this would be a story I wanted Anna to know and to understand what choices she will eventually have but what choices I would expect from her.
This story was playing on the radio while Tony was driving the kids home from school yesterday so when I started to tell Anna about it she knew some of the details. I explained to her that as a teenager there will be situations she will get into that Tony and I would not approve of. However, that does not mean she should try and cover it up, but that she should always do the right thing and know, that no matter what, I will always love her. I went on to explained how different this young girl's life could have been, if the minute she saw there was a gun, she left. Or if there had just been someone at that house that would have immediately called 911 the story might have a different ending.
And then we watched Intervention...as a family...
While putting Anna to bed, at the 8:30 commercial break, I kissed her goodnight and told her that I loved her so much. Anna hugged my neck hard and said that she knew, but that even if I loved her to death, if she ever did drugs she couldn't live in our house. I hugged her back and said yes, baby, you are right there are consequences for bad decisions, but I hope you will not make that choice. As I was walking to her door, right before I shut it, she said, and you won't raise my baby either.
The indoctrination is working, "I ain't raisin' no babies".
wow..It is sometimes hard to talk about those things but I am so glad you did. I had to talk about some of those same things with my daughter, Someone she knows told her she was pregnant and then told her she took care of it. She was very upset. So we had to talk about actions and consequences and about abortion and what God says about it. But I believe we are closer for the talking as you are with your daughter too.
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