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I did not want to drive Rick away by speaking too harsh or more directly to him than he could handle at this point in his life. In an effort to show him my love, I bought us some dinner and went to Rick’s apartment to watch a basketball game on television with him. I knew his wife had to work, so he would be alone with the boys. He met me at the door and wouldn’t let me in because he had other friends inside. The smell of marijuana drifted out the door, and one of his friends yelled in slurred speech, “Who the ********** is it? Is it the cops? How do ya get outta here anyway?”

Ricky tried to close the door behind him and said, “You don’t want to come in here, man. These aren’t your kind of people and this isn’t your kind of party.” His twin toddler boys heard my voice and came running to the door yelling my name. I hit the roof because not only was he downing some serious drugs, he had his boys in that environment. I insisted on taking my nephews with me to McDonald’s Playland until their mother got home later that night. He let me take them.

The varnish had long peeled off my plastic image of him. I saw him for what he was – selfish, self-focused, immoral, and getting hard-hearted. He would use anyone or anything to get what he wanted. The charm he used with our mother and other women was all a façade to try to manipulate people to do his will; whatever that was. Only God can change the heart; and only God could touch Ricky’s heart.

Ricky called me halfway through the fall semester. This time it was from jail. He needed $5,000 to get out, pay court costs and repay enough child support to not get arrested again. He was calling with his best, charming voice.

I refused. I shared with him that this was the Lord’s money, and that it would not honor the Lord for me to save him from suffering the consequences of his decisions and actions.

Because I would not give him the money, he said as soon as he got out, he would kill me. Literally.
This shocked me. What would drive someone to this level of desperation?

The next day, my mother called me for the first time since I started college.
This call came while I was in class. It was an emergency call from my mother. Of course, my first thought was that someone in the family had died, and I prayed it wasn’t Ricky.

Mom explained she was in dire need and wondered if I would help. Dad and she had not eaten in three weeks. She needed $5,000 to buy groceries. Could I send it to her right away? “After all,” she explained. “The Bible does say to honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days be long upon the earth.”

I told her I would have to think about it. Even though I “lack common sense,” as my mother frequently reminded me, I knew what was really going on.

I asked my father why they needed $5,000. We had rarely talked since my excommunication from the house that night he sat there watching it happen. I wondered out loud to him, “Since both you and Mom work at good paying jobs, and you had charged me $285 a month rent to stay with you over the summer, plus another $50 a month if I wanted to use your washer and dryer, then why do you need the money I had earned for college and graduate school sent to you? I am willing to help if there is a real need, but why is there a need?”

He thought their finances were great, and he did not know why my mother had called for money.

Apparently my father did not know she had been giving Ricky money all these years.

She had been giving Ricky money for rent, food and paid for his gas to get to work. Ricky’s money had been spent on drugs.

She was asking me now for the money to get him out of jail, because that much money would certainly be missed from their bank account if she took it out.

When my mother’s duplicity was discovered, she called me the next day for only the second time since I began college and told me to never contact her again. No more letters. No more calls. To her, I was dead, and had been for a very long time.

Eventually, Rick got out of jail and could not afford the gas to drive the 600 miles to college to kill me.

Rejoicing, On the Victory Side!

Beau

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