They Pulled Me Back...

It was a little modular building that was being used for a Police station. Just a little trailer.

I was 17 years old and I'd been caught stealing from a vending machine. I was 17 years old and mad as hell at the whole world. My folks had moved our family across the nation at the beginning of my Junior year of High School, which just poured buckets of gasoline on an already raging teenage fire.

To add insult to injury I'd been suspended from school for a week because of the theft and it just happened to be the day before my Grandparents (that I worshipped) arrived from driving across the country to visit. My grandfather was a retired State Policeman and Prison Warden. I'd been stealing from that machine for six months, but they had to catch me then. The shame was too much.

And now it's Saturday morning and my parents and I are sitting in a meeting with the Chief of Police to discuss "what we're going to do about..." ...me.

I looked at my parents. They'd been so angry when I told them what I'd done. I'd been making their life hell to the very best of my ability for a long time and now I'd shamed my father in front of his whole family. They were listening to the Police Chief.

Police Chief Terry Ringey was talking about the options I faced and the implications for age and criminal records and so on. I looked at my Dad, "the enforcer". He was strict, proud, tough and demanding. I'd never been able to measure up to what he wanted from me. Now I was dragging him down into the mud with me. I knew this wasn't going to go well.

Chief Ringey turned to me and asked me if I understood the gravity of what I had done. I told him that I did and that what I had done was wrong and that I was sorry. Yes, I would take whatever punishment would be needed to set things right...

Then the Chief turned to my parents and what came has left me stunned to this very day. My Mom and Dad had tears in their eyes.

Then they were explaining to Chief Ringey how they were standing behind me and that they'd help to make things right as Chief Ringey saw fit.

I don't know what was said next. I just remember sitting there stunned, watching my parents mouths move and being dumbfounded at the realization, "They still love me. They haven't given up on me."

I shoplifted one time after that, but afterwords I considered the thought of my folks learning about it and that I'd let them down. I took the item back to the store, told them what I'd done and I apologized to the owner. Thank you God, that he didn't press charges anyway.

People never knew that my life was saved that day in a little trailer being used as a Police station. If God had given me lesser parents, I would have been lost.

And I would have been lost, but God gave me parent's like Him.