Thanking God for Small Favors

Well, the little baby girl that was stollen from her mother was found today. The woman that stole her has been arrested. While I can feel such wonderful relief for the mother, I still feel some sorrow for the woman that took the baby. Obviously she is in some serious mental dilemma to justify trying to kill the mother in order to steal a newborn baby. Having lived through the kidnapping of my own child, I can really feel for the mother that went through it.

Amanda was 6 weeks old when her father decided to take off with her. We were living in Reno, Nevada at the time. I was 19, he was 29. We married 4 month after we met, and we weren't doing too well as a married couple, all things considered. He told people that he worked with that I was screwing around with other men in the neighborhood and that I was a terrible mother, using drugs and leaving our child with strangers. Now, NONE of this was true. I had just given birth, I was staying home with Amanda and not leaving her with anyone, and I certainly wasn't using drugs... well I was smoking cigarettes, but I was stupid.. and I've apologized a hundred times to Amanda for smoking while I was pregnant with her. (Yes, Morgan, I've been in bad relationships before.. =-) )

While I was tearing up Reno looking for my child, I hired an attorney and got a custody order written, and filed for divorce, awaiting the time when he would get in touch with me. His family didn't know where he was, he'd left his job with no word, and nobody knew a thing. My parents and I filed a report in the paper regarding the kidnapping of my daughter and offered a reward for information or her return.

Anyway... 3 weeks after he took our baby, he called me from Oklahoma City, told me pack a bag, get on a plane and tell my family goodbye. I did in fact get on a plane and flew to OKC, he was supposed to bring the baby and meet me at the airport, my plan was to hand him the papers, get my daughter and go home. He fooled me and didn't show up with her, but drove me to the house he was staying at; the mother of a woman he worked with, people who helped him get a job and took care of the baby while he worked. Thanks to Jesus she was fine and fat and healthy. The woman from Reno called while I was there, and her mother told her I was there, we talked on the phone, the mother helped me get back to the airport and I went home with my daughter.

I'll always be grateful to the family in OKC that took care of my daughter and helped my ex-husband find a job. If not for them, only Jesus knows what might have become of her. He might have left her on the front steps of a church somewhere and I'd never seen her again, or God forbid something worse indeed.

That 3 week gap really threw a wrench into our lives as mother and daughter. That bonding period was disrupted for both of us, and our relationship has always suffered. We're more like step-sisters, I guess, or maybe step-mother and step-daughter. Though I will always be eternally grateful to Jesus for finding a way to send her home to me, and even more thankful that she's a healthy normal person, whose become a fine adult and a good mother, I'll always have a sadness in my heart because of what was taken from us, and wish that the mother and her newly found child won't have the same problem in their life.

Today, by the way, is my brother Rick's 50th birthday. He's not here to celebrate with me, he passed away 12 years ago. Rick was really a neat guy. He was loving and caring and a hell of an artist. Rick taught me to crochet. My mom couldn't figure out how to teach a left-handed child, but Rick was so patient and he just sat in front of me and I followed his hands, and every time I work on an afghan, I think of him. He spent a few years living in San Francisco, and was caught in an elevator during an earthquake there. Not very long later, he want to Arizona. He drew beautiful artwork, and spent better than half his life living in Tucson and Scottsdale, Arizona. He loved the desert and loved the warm weather. After his diagnosis of AIDS, he moved up to Washington to be with family, but there is no decent medical care here for AIDS people, and he decided to go back to Arizona. A year after he left, he died, surrounded by his dearest friends, who he considered family. The Tucson hospice at the veterans hospital was his final home. Our older brother Brian and his family and I went down to Tucson and gathered Ricks things and brought a good portion of it all home to Washington State. His clothes were donated to the hospice as well as most of his music and afghans. He was loving and caring, and though the disease centered in his brain and caused him to become a stranger to those of us that knew him best, he touched a lot of people and no one who ever met him would forget him.
I'm a bit sad today, but happy that Rick is out of pain, and with Jesus, who answers all our questions and gives a restful place to spend eternity safe and warm.