If you missed Part 1, please read that first, and then read this.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. We knew she had been smoking. For the past two months we had tried to get our relationship back on track, open some communications, and thought we were making some progress. She had confessed to trying some things. But we didn’t know this. We didn’t know any of it.  I spent the next two hours making a photocopy of the journal and then put it back on her floor, on the stack of notebooks that were lying there.

Telling my husband what was written in the journal was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  There was no way he could handle reading it. She had confessed to some things when we caught her with the cigarettes. It was the everything else that we didn’t know… that’s what was written in the journal. This set us to very quick action.  We didn’t feel it at the time, but God had a plan and the way that He worked it in this situation still amazes us.

I got online and began researching programs that help teenage girls. I felt something prompting me to call our local Teen Challenge men’s program, so I did that at 11:30 that night. The guy who answered the phone was so understanding. He prayed for us and directed me to the national Teen Challenge website.  A few more clicks, and I located the two closest TC girls’ programs to us: one in Arizona, and the other in Utah and sent emails to both.

She ran away two days later. It wasn’t a surprise, but it brought on a whole new round of fears: Where is she, who is she with, and is she safe?  She ended up at a family member’s house, which wasn’t the ideal situation (more contribution to her delinquency there) but we knew she had a safe place to stay.

As a mom, the last thing I wanted to do was spend hours on end searching for help for my 14 year old daughter.  God is so amazing though, and without my knowing He was directing us every step of the way. We had “chance” encounters with the right people at the right times, SO MANY TIMES. Over and over God provided us the prayer warriors, in friends and complete strangers. He provided the right timing for the strangest things!  He was there every step of the way.  We arranged to send our daughter to Teen Challenge, which in itself was a tricky situation. She wouldn’t come home. She wouldn’t talk to us. She needed a complete physical for admission. And, she was supposed to be WILLING!? As I said, our God is an awesome God.

Everything happened the way that it had to happen.  The Lord provided us the prayer support, the right people in the van with us, and the funds with which to do it.  Looking back after we came home from bringing her, the trail the Lord had led us on just literally glowed with the touch the Holy Spirit.  Looking back even that soon afterward, we could see everywhere that He had been with us. Getting her there was only half of the hard part. Leaving her there for a year was to be a test of faith in itself.

Part three begins HERE.