Runaway

Is this the third or fourth time? Is it the fifth or sixth? I can't keep count. I just know that my son does not want to be at home. He runs away, stays at shelters or new-found friends' houses or on the streets.

He even packed three suitcases. Left with another friend. He thinks that “out there” is truly something awesome—wild—satisfying. No matter the danger. The edge of the cliff is better than inland's boredom. So be it.

Yet I as a caring, loving father wonder. What am I to do? What can I say? Where can I go for help?

There are so many other parents out there who are dealing with this same strange occurrence. I don't suppose it is unique to our generation either. How could it be when Jesus used the prodigal as one of his chief teaching points two thousand years ago? Did not Jacob run away from home? And Cain? Let's go back further. Did not Adam run away from Father, doing “his own thing,” leaving the Garden home?

So it is not new. But it is new to me. This is the first time that my son has left my family. That is, this is the first child of mine who has pulled this caper. No matter what the historical backdrop, it is new history to me.

Do I call the police? Do I join a “support group”? Do I search library shelves for teen-care paperbacks? What about phoning an 800 number for free aid? Where do I turn?

I do know that when I go to the Bible to reread that worn tale of the wayward boy who left father and home for the pleasures “out there,” he ended up with the pigs. Sorry lot. Predictable. But tell that to a run-away-itched kid.

I also know from scouring that story that though the lad left hearth, Dad stayed at home. He did not do detective work in the alleys. He did not prowl about the dives in search of his son, ready to drag him screaming out of the dark dens into the safer corners and care of home.

Dad prayed. Dad loved. Dad stood on the front porch many an evening to scan the cityscape. But Jesus never mentions Dad leaving home to survey pigs' pens.

That gives me great comfort. I conclude too that I am not to leave the front porch for tramping the city streets, Salvation Army basements nor local hang outs. That is not part of my job description as a father with a run-away child.

What is expected of me is just what the parable father did. And I will do it—stay put, petition heaven, keep the Faith, keep fit so that when my boy “does come to himself”—his better self—his dad will still be in one piece.

Then who will go in search of his body and soul? Who will poke around the backlot, question the other kids and keep watch into the night? Who?

He goes here and there, up and down, in and out. That is His job; He is love; that is His beat.

How kind of God to do that for me. He goes where I cannot go—even into my boy's heart. He sees what I cannot see—even into my son's head.

I believe then that there really is hope for my wayward kid. If I stay at home, keeping sanity and sense, and God goes out to the byways, keeping search and site, we have excellent odds that my very own boy will come to himself.

And when he comes to himself, he will come home.