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By Root 1044 0

personal with the crowd on that special night, something that is always difficult to admit as a parent. My son Tucker was back in jail for failing his mandatory drug test. His probation officer caught him with the prosthetic penis he’d been using to pass the tests. In a show of mercy, his parole officer gave him the opportunity to come back the following week to retest. He told him to go get clean, but my son couldn’t do it. If I was still a part of his day-to-day life, I would have made sure he showed up clean as a whistle the following week. Unfortunately, I was unaware of his situation until it was too late. Baby Lyssa came to me to say Tucker was so messed up on drugs. She was as worried as the rest of us. Even though my son and her brother betrayed us, he’s still my baby. I thought about the story in the Bible where Jesus asks God to forgive the guys who were crucifying him, by saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” I always wondered why he didn’t call upon ten thousand angels to set him free instead of asking the Lord to forgive his enemies. After the news of Tucker had broken, I received phone calls from all sorts of people offering to “take care” of Tucker for what he had done to me. That’s when it occurred to me that the love Jesus had for those men was the same as the love I feel for my son. No matter what happened, I had to forgive Tucker “for he knows not what he has done.” So when I heard he was back in prison, I worried someone would hurt him inside the joint. I put out the word and prayed others would understand that I had forgiven him and they should too.

Whether he wants it or not, I’m going to love him as much as I do Duane Lee, Leland, and all of my kids, for the rest of his life. The sad and ironic truth is that Tucker is back in prison for the exact reason I warned him about during our last phone call.

I’d spent too many sleepless nights worrying about Tucker in the short time we’d been estranged. Every time I heard an ambulance or siren in the middle of the night I’d pop up in bed and beg God, “Please, help Tucker. Don’t let that siren be for him.” Now, when I heard a siren I could take a deep breath and know for sure it wasn’t for him. He was safe in jail. Only a parent who has exhausted every other option can understand the strange sense of relief I felt knowing it was better that my child be locked up than on the street.

After I finished sharing this news with the audience that night, I looked up and saw parents putting their arms around their kids, to hold their child just a little closer. I looked into the front row and saw a bad-ass-looking, tatted up young man touch his mother’s knee. And then I noticed a little boy about Gary Boy’s age, certainly no older than nine or ten, lay his head on his mom’s chest and begin to cry. She was gently caressing him, consoling him because even this child knew that what I was saying was real. I don’t know the circumstances of that youngster’s life, but I’m positive drugs have touched his family in a way that scares him to death.

When I was done speaking, I literally felt like I had given all I had to the crowd. I was mentally exhausted and physically drained. I thought about the story in the Bible where Jesus was walking along a path to speak on top of a mountain. A large crowd was following him along the way. Jesus’s disciples were holding back the crowd, who were trying to reach out and touch the Savior. They believed He could create miracles if they could just have contact with Him. The Bible says there was a sick woman who touched the hem of His garment as He walked by, and when she did, Jesus stopped to ask John who had reached out to Him.

John pointed to the woman and said, “She did.”

Jesus said he felt like a lot of virtue had gone out of Him. He turned to the woman and said, “You are healed,” and then kept walking. I felt the exact same way when I was done speaking. All of my virtue was gone. I poured every bit of myself into the crowd. Hearing testimonials from people afterward made it all worthwhile. I can’t think of any