I was visiting some people last week. One of the first things they told me was the mom’s old boyfriend had slashed the daughter’s tires (three of them) in the middle of the night. The husband had come back into the picture and the old boyfriend does not like this one bit. It seems there was a yelling match the night before I visited and the daughter threatened to call the police. This threat gave the boyfriend the right to slash those tires.
I had met the boyfriend but I do not think he said more than ten words to me over the course of those few months. But he did not seem very hostile.
We sat around just wondering what was going through the boyfriend’s head. He had asked the mom to leave her children to be with him. There are so many things wrong with that. I wondered if one of the contributing factors was loneliness. Loneliness is a very difficult weight to bear. If this is one of his problems (and I cannot confirm that it is) then I am sympathetic to his feelings but not his actions. But pain causes different responses from different people. Regardless of the reason for the pain, this guy is suffering. He needs prayer. Everyone in this situation needs prayer.
The husband and dad has only been back around for about three weeks. I am not sure what stories to believe about him but what I see now is a man working to be with his kids. He has cleaned up the house quite a bit. There are fewer people hanging around and taking advantage of the situation. It is amazing what a father does for a house, even those of us who do not know what we are doing.