protection

My daughter has called me overprotective on many occasions. "other kids get to do this .......fill in the blank" "sometimes you treat me like a baby" The words sting, I can't lie. They make me examine myself and wonder, am I hovering? Am I having trouble letting go? And sometimes I admit, the answer is yes. But after last nights incident here in town, and only a few blocks away, I think I'm right to be a little overprotective.

A man who was being served a warrant, holed himself up in his house, the S.W.A.T. team was called and when they busted down the door, they found him dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound. His offense? Child solicitation. I'm heartsick. Just heartsick. See ~ we've talked many times about O walking to school. But I have this thing in my head about the route she has to take and how it weaves in and around a mess of houses in behind us and how people can be lurking. It happened about three years ago actually. Some guy sitting in his car, police were called and he was escorted away. I know this because when I waited for my daughter to meet me at the designated spot after school, the crossing guard found me suspicious and got in my face.

I come from a big city where crime was at my doorstep most of the time. No joke, no lie. Sometimes while we were sleeping, people were burglarizing us. One time, we heard someone trying to break our door down. Thankfully we had a sturdy door. But coming from that, I have trouble just letting my kid walk all over the place unaccompanied. There aren't kids for her to walk w/to school in this neighborhood unfortunately, and I just can't bring myself to let her do it alone. I've walked w/her to school many times. Not to the door or anything, but to a certain point, made sure she got the rest of the way safely and then went for my own morning walk.

At what point do I finally learn to trust? I find myself wrestling w/it often. It's not trusting O that is the problem, it's all the other folks out there who may not care about my daughter and her safety. Having her run down to the drugstore for a needed item even makes me a little tense. I'm not as bad as I used to be, but I still have her call to let me know she got there ok. It's not just people approaching her, it's the crazy drivers and the possibility of getting hit by a car.

What will happen when she goes off to college? Will I be able to function, sleep, live? Or will I spend my days in constant worry and dread about what's happening w/her? I hear stories all the time about kids that end up missing, hurt, dead. The thought kills me inside. And yet I know that everything is in Gods control. So why can't I let that part of me that has that dread surrender to God and let Him take it? I guess that's something that I'm going to have to confess to Him and let Him deal w/in my life. I don't have much time. In a few years, this will be a reality in my life.

Guess I'd better go and start praying.

Blessings ~