I went to a graduation party last night for a certain step-family member.  She has had a rough time of it.  Her parents are dysfunctional at best, although I will credit her father with keeping food on the table, a roof over her head and looking after her physical well being.  Her mom gave up the children when she and her husband divorced.  She now lives with a man who is married to someone else, and he lives with her part of the time, and his wife part of the time.

Anyway, the young lady has been in trouble with the law, and came to live with her grandparents.  Her mother soon followed-in an attempt to play "mother", which basically consisted of telling the young woman she didn't have to go to church while living under her grandparents' roof, even though they told her that was one condition of her living there.  Her mother also told her just to quit school and go to work at McDonald's.

My heart has ached for this young lady.  She has been shuffled from home to home her whole life-dad, mom, grandparents, dad, grandparents, etc.  She was at the point of suicide before she went to live with her grandparents.  Her brother was leaving for college, and was terrified for her safety-he was afraid his dad's live-in girlfriend would kill her (she had already tried to pay some kids at school to beat her up badly).  He wasn't going to go to college-he wanted to stay home and look after his sister's safety.  This is when she went to her grandparents' house, and her brother went off to college, secure in the knowledge of sister's physical well being.  I had tried to help the grandmother find a good Christian girl's home where she could be in an atmosphere of love, structure and encouragement, but the mother would have none of that.  I had thought about taking her in myself, but when it came out about the drug problem, I could no longer consider that-I could not have that potential problem in my house of teenagers.  We did include her in church youth activites, etc, until her mother put a stop to that.

The young lady went back to her father's house last summer, and when she returned to her grandparent's house in time for school to start, she also had to report to her parole officer.  She failed her drug test again-she had been doing drugs over the summer, and had brought some home with her.  She was put into an alternative school at this point. 

She worked hard this last year, and finished school a year early with a basic high school diploma.  Last night was her graduation.  We didn't make it to the graduation, but we made it to her party to celebrate her graduation.  All of her family was there-cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, brother, grandparents and friends.  It was a great time. 

I watched her last night, and I was filled with trepidation.  This poor young woman has not really had a mother.  She doesn't know lots of things.  Her mother considers her job finished, and is for all intents and purposes, turning her loose in the world.   I looked at her last night-she had on the cutest little white gauzy dress for graduation-with a black bra and a green thong on underneath.  Yep, everybody in the world could see right through that dress-no slip, no non-descript white undies to disappear under the white dress.  Her mother didn't even get her a slip to wear under it or tell her not to wear colored underwear under a white gauzy dress.  There were teenage boys at this party.......  The white dress bit isn't earth shattering, and is rather trivial, but it did cause me to wonder-what other things should this young woman know that her mother hasn't taught her?  It made me very sad.  First and foremost, this young woman doesn't know Christ.  Beyond that, there are so many basic day to day things that have not been modeled for her or taught to her.  Her grandmother and I have tried to do some of this, but her mother has stopped us in every way she could. 

Ladies-teach your children about Christ.  Teach them the day to day trivialities that make life a little easier.  Love them and spend time with them.  Model things for your daughter, so she will want to do it "like mama did it".  Model love, tenderness, compassion, steadfastness and honor before all your children.  So many children rarely see these qualities in action.

Blessings to you,

Karmann in Texas