Penance

A child of mine just started a Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP).

Another child of mine catapults between sugary sweetness and violent rages throughout the weekend.

And the vehicles we drive… One died after 69,000 miles, and another was in a collision on the way to pick up my dear daughter from the aforementioned program. It was her first day.

My children are in really tough places, and with a beat-up twelve passenger van a decade old, I’m definitely not riding in style. The way I see it - the two hours I spend in my tattered van are an opportunity for both prayer and penance.

We don't live in a fairy tale, yet we want the good guys to get the happy ending and the bad guys to be stopped. We want life to be beautiful and stories to have happy endings, but when they don't, human nature forces us to ask - where did we sin? Where did we make the wrong turn? How can we atone for our mistakes?

What if we can't, because we didn't make any?

What if the road we took was the right one, it was just far more difficult than we ever imagined possible?