WE have raised our children, they are all gone from home except for one 20 yr old that is presently in a great decision making process of looking at voluntary service. We tried to teach all of them the same values and give them the same standard of living and life skills to the best of our abilities. now we are watching them as they go about life on their own. 2 have their own businesses and are doing well, another is getting ready for his frolic sat. on his new house. One is looking at giving his time in service for Christ. One is, due to circumstances out of her control, living with a family in another state that has taken her in out of love, while she looks for a job that is not easily aquired when you have a broken arm, and her car is broke too. Another is looking into joining a part of the armed services, and the last is living life as he wants to, while he blames his parents for not giving him what he thinks he was due, complains about his employers, his wages, makes as much as his dad did with 7 children to feed just a few yrs ago, is disrespectful to the couple that have taken him in out of love.

What makes us tick? what creates in us the standards by which we live our life, the choices we make and how we chose to perform them? What makes one child in a family choose what seems to be way off in left field to what we expect? What makes one choose to live a life of giving and the other a life of taking?

The other day as we were serving meals for the fire dept benefit, we worked beside a young man that moved here from Pittsburg just lately to live with a relative. He is 20 yrs old and has supported himself since he was 16 when he left home because his parents were drug addicts and he decided that he did not want to live that kind of life and wanted something better. but because he had to work to live, he had to drop out of school and did not get his diploma in the thing he wanted to do, work on cars and so he is having a hard time in the current work situation in our area of the country.
He is choosing to make a change in his life for the better as much as he can but he has little available resources. He was so respectful in his manner, I was amazed. And no I did not pick up that he was a christian either. But he has simply chosen to live a different life than the one he knew.

I guess I find the complexities of people fascinating. While I am having some severe difficulties with the choices that a couple of mine are making, I still wonder at it all. What is involved that is driving them in the direction they are taking? What has affected them to make them act this way? Why do some things affect some people openly and the same thing affect another in a totaly different way?

LL, I am assuming that the one, or ones, who are troubling you were younger when you began to have problems with the H church. The pain of a child who has to put up with the shunning of his parents, the humiliation of being part of such a family is unbelievable. The others were probably older and more stable when this happened. I would tend to blame a lot of the problems on this. I did the same thing you did, stayed in their midst trying to work things out for years. This meant my children stayed in their school and their social circles, but were basically treated the same as you were. It's a terrible thing to do to a child. Not by you, but by them. It causes incredible damage.

ML while I agree with you here, I also am reluctant to play the blame game here. I guess life is taking my mind in different directions anymore. When I look back on the things that have happened to me in my life and what I have survived, I can easily say "Why God did you allow this to happen to me?" I can fight against the pain and sorrows of this life and struggle for victory and recovery. I can keep being drug thru life kicking and screaming against the pain that keeps coming, as I have done for years. Or I can sit here now and look back and Thank God that he has given me a peace in my life that I did not have before and a sense of worth. I can meet that stranger on the street, online, on a random phone call, that God enables me to give hope and courage to, that friend that watched me grow up that never knew what kind of severe struggles I endured but wondered why some things were the way they were and why I reacted to life like I did, that now understands as they see God working in our lives as a family.
I can still be that mom that is there when my child, even though now an adult, needs to hear from mom, ask how to do something that they can't remember the details, give help when the jam batch is flopping...........

Just 2 weeks ago, we had the priviledge of meeting a couple from another state that is a reader here and spent the day showing them a bit of our beautiful state. One of our stops was at the buggy shop of an amish man that has 2 brothers that used to be H and has nephews and neices that are H, several of which are staff members. In the conversation with him, LM talked to him about his specialty, Locks. Did you know that buggies have ignitions? Actually it is a keyed switch that turns on the lights. He had some that were missing keys. LM brought one home and I took it back to him with keys last week when I made my journey to the Psychologist. He wanted to find out how to get more fixed. I said,"Easy, I come thru here every 2 weeks." "Whatever for?" " I go to see DR. C" He immediately told me,"Good for you, I admire you for that, I bet you wish you had done it sooner." He went on to tell me that his first wife had died in an accident and he remarried to a widow. He wanted her to change, she wanted him to change. They finally went for help. He said "I learned things that I did not learn in school and it was one of the best things we ever did. Everyone needs some help sometime."

But the couple we spent the day with, we would never have had the priviledge of meeting were it not for some of our circumstances that have been great struggles in life. Had we left the H church as soon as we were exed, we would not have met many of those that we have met in our altered circumstances or have the 2 dils and sil that we have, that are very special to us. My children would not be empathetic to others that are struggling In thier relationship with H conflict or even in other areas of life. They would be rather single minded and selfish instead.
My son that is thinking of going into VS has a good friend that can confide in him, knowing that he also knows what it is like to have a mother that became mentally ill and an uncle that is bipolar like his friend's mother and is working thru many things.

Tomorrow we will be burying TJ, He has H relatives that we will be with, from both sides of his family. Who are we gonna blame for his death? GOD? or the very special young man with a heart of gold that is crying his heart out because he was the apparent point of impact? Or the fact that he was playing ball? the list could go on, but it will not bring him back. His time came to an end in a split second.

I always remember the sermon I heard at the funeral of a 14 yr old amish boy that died of complications following a horse/equipment accident. I had a time following it as I am not very fluent in penn dutch. But I remember him saying "When you look at a tomb stone there is a hyphen between the date of birth and the date of death. It matters not whether you live one day or a hundred years, the length of that hyphen never changes. We all have a purpose for being here and our end has one also."

I know an H minister that left home as a teenager and joined the army, He managed to get out later and truly regretted it. but It makes him a better man now because he is able to relate to struggling teens in a manner that he could not have had he not been there himself.
But what made him do it in the first place? He and his brother were both struggling teens. Now they are both ministers and they both have several struggling teens of their own, that they are not able to help either. while their experiences are a great help to many people, they are not able to help those closest to them.

that is the kind of things that causes me to wonder often. what and how are we put into place to fill the need that God has for us. Do we know? We were talking about the people in the old testament a couple weeks ago in sss. the thought came to me. You know those people were just regular ordinary people like you and me. they had no idea that 2000 yrs later someone like us would be reading their stories looking at them as great people of God, trying to analyze what made them what they were.

My mother has been gone for 10 yrs. last week I had a man that I only remember meeting once maybe 30 yrs ago, walk up to me and know exactly who I was, because He said, "You look just like your mom." It's rather unsettling to have that happen. and yet it is a part of life that has a purpose. She was important to many people.

Am I living my life so that God can use it, when I have no clue, living the best I can for Christ, giving my best to others, Living in the center of God's will?
I think these are the kind of things I am dealing with now. Not placing blame anywhere, but the wondering How to deal with things in a manner that is redemptive, uncritical, not hurtful, Considerate of all involved. and drawing with love rather than provoking to anger and pushing away.
Don't know if that makes sense but that is kinda how I am looking at things lately.

"What makes us tick? what creates in us the standards by which we live our life, the choices we make and how we chose to perform them? What makes one child in a family choose what seems to be way off in left field to what we expect? What makes one choose to live a life of giving and the other a life of taking?"

It all comes down to the choices we make.  The difference is that some have the information to make right choices while others make wrong choices from lack of information. This is the duty of a parent. Give your child the information he/she needs to make the proper choices, then stand back and allow them to choose. Yes, other people and events have influence, but as the Bible says, "teach a child in the way he should go..."