Oh the age of the world wide web! Our lives have been consumed with this mind altering addiction....searching for an entertainment that disconnects us from the real world and with those we love.
This past weekend, at our little retreat in the middle of nowhere, our family spent some precious time celebrating an early Thanksgiving with my side of the family. My sister and her family are weeks away from returning home, after spending the past six months on furlough. I had already had the phone...and Internet...cut off for the winter. So NO WiFi was to be had...except at my mom's house which was 3 miles away. Cell signals are nonexistent also! I guess you can imagine how this environment effects those...teenagers...who get the shakes if they even loose a cell signal. To be honest ...it was really nice to have every one's attention without them distracted by an electronic world! We all had to actually converse with one another! That's such an old fashioned way to live...isn't it?
What I wasn't aware of was that our kids had been asking to go to grandma's house, so that they could get on the Internet. Often they had joked about just walking to her house. However the back country roads in the middle of nowhere didn't make this a safe option.That's the sad reality of our world now! I know too much! So, they have never attempted it. That was until this past weekend. Yes, two young ladies walking alone on the back country roads in the middle of nowhere. Neither of them were familiar enough with the area. With all that was going on I had no clue they were even gone until an hour later. We always take walks but rarely go past a certain point, which is about a mile down the road. They were gone much longer than they should have, so we sent one of the older kids to look for them. Reality hit when they returned without them. We were about two hours from dark and this was not funny. Now we have no less than 5 cars out driving all the back roads looking for them. After an hour of searching I made the dreaded 911 call. There is something so surreal about this whole experience. My mind going to places from real news stories I have only read about. The enemy tormenting me with the what ifs. None of this even making sense! Standing there giving the officer a description of our daughter was sucking the life out of me. Moments later hearing him request a canine search brought a fear that no mother should ever have to experience. How can 2 girls get so lost that even 5 adults driving around for an hour not be able to find them? Not to mention once the word got out, others in this small community joined in on the search. My heart jumped every time a car returned back to our house. But frustration came when the back seats were empty. Well,45 minutes after the 911 call, within moments of the officers leaving to join the search, a sight I longed to see came around the corner....OUR GIRLS HAD BEEN FOUND!!!!!!!! With tears in her eyes, our daughter was afraid we were mad. Mad doesn't even cover the feelings deep within my soul! The reality was .....they were lost. They took a left when they should have gone right. All for the pursuit of a WiFi signal!
Life is a lot like that! We set our hearts on something and tune all advise out. In the pursuit of our own selfish ambitions we forgo all counsel and wisdom from our elders. We go our own path with no knowledge of the journey ahead. We go left when we should have gone right. In the end...the wake of our choices touch the lives of those that love us the most. The ones who never stop loving us or doing all that they can to bring us back home.
Our lost sheep are home now. Safe from the fears of their family. Today I am counting the grace and mercy of the God I serve. I am thankful. I will never know why this all transpired. Why our girls came home safe and so many others don't ? I'm not even sure I want to go to the place of the what ifs.
If you are searching for WiFi today and find him.....Tell that dude he needs to permanently go away! He is destroying lives in ways we never even dreamed of. This generation of young people don't even know how to converse. They are escaping to a world where real people don't exist. We are loosing people to an addiction that causes them do things that makes no sense! Taking risk they never even dreamed of. A control that pulls them in a direction away from accountability of those that love them. Actions that prey on the fears of mother's like me.
With knowledge comes accountability...for the traveled path that's left behind.
What are you searching for today?
37 years of growing and learning to be a great big family!
