Learning when to let go

I've always been the type of person that wants to solve each little mystery. I guess I enjoy the puzzle end of it. If there's a problem, then I want to figure out a solution for it. I love crossword puzzles and I take great pride in completing one.

At work, I'm a problem solver. I'm the one that everyone comes to whenever they have a problem they can't seem to work out. I may not have an answer but I can usually help them find that they had their own answer all along.

Then occasionally, a problem comes along that is so epic, so personal and so traumatic that it begs to be solved. There is almost a sense of knowing that if I don't solve it, I might not be anymore.

I have found such a problem.

I have two daughters. One is 25 and has three children and one on the way, the other is 18 and has a child as well. While they both have given me fits, the problem lies with the 25 year old.

This child has always been so very difficult. She has always had to have her way and would find a way to get her way even if it meant lying, cheating and stealing. She wasn't taught any of this, but she seemed to take to it like a fish to water anyhow.

In February 2007, I learned first hand what she was willing to risk to get her way. On February 13, 2007, Federal Marshals in cooperation with ICE (Immigration) raided my daughters house and took away her three children. She did a small amount of time in jail and was released on her own signature bond. Because the nature of her crime was defrauding the United States Government and the case originated in Virginia, many trips to Virginia from Ohio ensued over the past 15 months.

My daughter was helping illegal immigrants get documents and id's from the Department of Motor Vehicles here in Ohio. While I knew she had to be doing something wrong because she always had a big supply of cash and neither her nor her boyfriend worked, I didn't know exactly what it was she was doing.

This nightmare has drug on for over a year. Last week in Federal Court, she was sentenced to a year and one day in a Federal Penitentiary. She doesn't know which one yet. They delayed her report date because she is currently pregnant for her fourth child. One that I suspect she conceived in an effort to possibly avoid prison which failed miserably.

Her lies from the past are now coming back to haunt her one at a time. She didn't want to go to school so she'd make up wild excuses why she couldn't go and if I made her go anyhow, she'd make wild accusations to school officials. None of it was ever true or founded, however the damage was done as I had a file with Children's services in the state of Ohio. This has stopped me from being able to take her children. They are in foster care as I type this and they have been there for nearly fifteen months now.

She blames anyone and everyone for the mess she's put herself and her children in and has no accountability whatsoever for her actions.

Now the state is saying they will put the children up for adoption and there isn't one thing I can do about it. I've let it tear me apart. I've cried for days, weeks, months. I've made phone calls, I've contacted attorneys whom all say in Ohio, grandparents have no rights and are by and large overlooked as possibly places to place foster children. One attorney said he might be able to take the case with thirty thousand dollars up front and no guarantees that he could do anything.

She's fighting the state from trying to take the baby she is about to deliver even though she has no way to take care of it and she is going to prison in July of this year.

It's an impossible situation for which I have no solution and no resources to find one. The hardest thing in my life that I've ever had to do is what I'm about to do and that is just let go. Let go and put it in God's hands and pray that He will guide the children.

Part of me knows that this is for the best because my daughter cannot raise these children. She has far too many problems that will be compounded once she is released from prison and labeled a convicted felon and an ex-con. If by the grace of God I could've taken the children, she would've demanded them back upon her release. This way they will find families that will love them and help them grow and they'll be adopted so she cannot interfere.

I realize that a lot of you reading this will be shaking your heads going no way would I allow this to happen but trust me when I tell you, you can't possibly know until the decision is real and in your hands. This is a situation that you cannot feel the true depth of unless you are engrossed in it.

Making this decision was crucial for my own self preservation. I had to let it all go or let me go. One way or the other, some big change was coming. One was definitely not going to have the preferred outcome. That was letting me go. In the end, all you really have is yourself and your heart and your soul and what you believe to be right and wrong. If at the end of the day you can live with the decisions you've put forth, then you'll be all right. I think I'm going to be all right.

It's going to take a lot of time and a lot of compassion from strangers that I pray are going to give my babies what my family could not. I pray that they find homes that are full of love, passion, compassion, joy, honor, truth, dignity, fairness and full of God.

Sometimes you just have to know when to say when. Sometimes you just have to learn when to let go.