Scandalous

It seems like a good day to repost this.

I got caught shoplifting when I was 18 years old.

I know, I know.  REALLY late bloomer.  The security guard’s cold hand clenched my left wrist as I attempted to leave the store without paying for the pair of jeans that hid in my bag.  The crime took place in a Hudson’s department store in 1980 in a middle-class suburb of Detroit and my exposure to crime up to this point had been, oh, nil.  Actually, I was acting on the pressure of a certain girl-not-friend who aggressively befriended me after high school, so I went along for the ride.  Her dad was a Cadillac executive and I learned that she desperately needed friends and attention, which she habitually got by pulling daring and rebellious stunts like shoplifting and smoking.  Up to this point in my life, I was neither daring nor rebellious.   Like I said, late bloomer. 

A good counselor could throw together a viable list of excuses for this random act of thievery:  I was on my own, struggling financially, living through my parents’ divorce….

All true, but there was only one real reason I flopped into this silly situation: I was undefined.   I had not yet made key decisions about my own character, convictions and beliefs.  I hardly knew what it meant to have any of those things.

When the security guard’s freakishly gigantic hand grabbed my wrist, I immediately snapped out of the Impressing Friend Zone and back into my insecure, doe-eyed, innocent zone.  For the next two months, I would meander secretly through a petrifying court appearance and six weeks of one-on-one, counseling sessions with a kind woman who knew I was no dangerous, budding criminal.

Through it all, I told no one.

Somewhere along the way, I also had to move back home from the apartment I shared with my sister on Sylvan Lake because the owners wanted their rent money on time. (drat.)

Since we didn’t have phones that lived in our pockets, the weekly call to confirm my crime-counseling appointment would blast through the menacing white phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen.  Over by the window.

It was only a matter of time before someone else in the house would get to the phone before me.

When the scandal finally came spilling out all over the white Formica, and my tapestry of crime was revealed, I was so utterly relieved to end the secrecy, that I don’t remember being scared.  I only remember my eldest sister’s reaction.  Alice surprised me with her love.

“I’m so sad that you have gone through this whole experience all alone!”

Of all the responses I anticipated, this one remains one of the living examples of how I want to love others.  Thirty years later, I now tell this story to get laughs (mostly) and yet Alice’s response lives inside of me like it was yesterday.

Are we appalled when someone we know or love confesses something difficult? Do we see the pain that caused the transgression or do we condemn? Do we only see the foolish behavior or do we look into our own hearts and know that being lost and in pain are human truths for which we each hold a cure?

As my kids grow through teenage years and into adulthood I love each opportunity to demonstrate the great mercy of a loving God that I have known beyond measure.  It is so all connected!