Making Beauty from Ashes

When he was still in high school, Craig Svensson's son walked away from the faith he'd been taught as a child.

He started making destructive choices, and as the years went on, he simply faded away from his family. There would be periods of time where there would be long periods where we wouldn't hear from him, and times when we would communicate with him, or times that he would reach out to us and appeal, he'd call us, like, I don't have any place to stay. Can you put me up? Or, I need this. I'm sick and I need this medicine and I can't afford it.

And of course, you're always worried. Is he going to use this resource to get drugs? This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at FamilyLifeToday.com. Finding the right balance between having an open door for your prodigal and yet not enabling their destructive behavior is difficult for parents.

We'll talk more with Craig Svensson about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. You know, as parents, when we see our kids headed down the wrong path, we so desperately want to go and pull them off and put them on a different path and fix things and take care of things. And there are things we can try to do, but ultimately, our kids are going to make their own decisions.

Ah, doesn't that stink? I want to make the decisions for them. I want to lock the doors, turn off the computer, turn off the TV, and just isolate. But we're called to have an impact on the world, and we're called to love Jesus, and the hardest thing is letting our kids go. Well, the thing I had to remember was, you know, ultimately, my parents molded and shaped my life, but my decisions were my decisions. When I got to be 18 or 19, I was making choices based on what I wanted to do, not on what my parents wanted me to do, much to their chagrin, I'm sure. Actually, you were doing that at 13 and 14. I don't think I really gave much thought to my parents at that age.

At 18, we were kind of doing our own thing. We're talking this week about kids who start making destructive choices and parents who are in the middle of that, watching that, trying to figure out what to do. Craig Svensson is joining us to have this conversation. Craig, welcome back.

Thanks for having me. Craig is, by training, a pharmacologist who teaches at Purdue University in the pharmacology department. He and his wife have been married for 36 years. They're parents of three children, including Eric, who we've been talking about this week, who was the youngest of the three, who continued to act out as he got out of elementary school, got into drugs in middle school, wound up in the judicial system, wound up in prison because of substance abuse. He reached the age of majority and the age where he was basically emancipated, making his own decisions while he was right in the middle of all of this, and all of a sudden, legally, you didn't have the same responsibilities or opportunities that you had had as parents when he was younger and in the home, right? You know, that even happened earlier. One of the challenges for a parent whose child gets into the judicial system is you lose parental control.

Wow. And so at the age of 15, when he first encountered the judicial system, as parents, you no longer have the control to decide what happens. And that's hard. That's a challenging situation to be in because the judges don't always make wise decisions.

Sometimes the decisions can be more harmful than helpful. And so we had that experience even earlier of now he's kind of out of our hands. He went through his system of being in a residential program as ordered by the court, and then he came back home. But things just went south right away, and he went back into drug use.

And ultimately, we had to come to a point where the danger of having him in our home, we had to say, you cannot stay here any longer. At what age was that? That was 18.

18. So he's now on his own. He's now on his own. And you said earlier, sometimes that was homelessness?

It was. And there were a couple of periods where he came back with us, so we made a move away from Iowa. I had mentioned that we had been there, and he asked, I'd like to come with you to Indiana.

He wasn't living in our home at that time, and we were very concerned. He had the same time, the idea of, again, getting him out from all the friends. If he didn't want to make a change, boy, this would be a time to do it. And you're always hopeful.

You are always hopeful. You want to leave that door open for your child to return, right? And so we gave him a period of time that he could come live with us when we moved. And then he would have to find a job and get on his own. And he really very quickly returned to drug use. So he gets to Indiana, and again, he immediately finds, who are the guys I can hang out, where can I get my stuff?

Yeah. And we had never been in that town before, let alone lived there. But people know where to go and where to find it when you're in the drug-using community.

It's amazing how quickly they can find drugs. And did you know right away he's right back into it? Well, we did because he came home intoxicated, and we just realized, well, this can't be. And so we actually had to shorten the time that we were going to allow him to live with us. Well, I mean, is it like change the locks? Is he wanting to bang on the door even after you say you're not going to live here? You know, he has never done that. You know, we had multiple times through the years where we might let him back in on certain conditions, and then he would violate those. And we'd say, I believe he never tried to force himself then.

We were fortunate. We've known of others where that has been an issue. But, you know, when you have a drug dealer sitting outside your house in a big SUV with darkened windows, you know you're not safe.

That's scary. And you can't have that adult living in your home under those conditions. What were your stipulations for him living with you? You know, it did vary from time to time, his age and where it was. But, you know, one of the bright lines we had is you can't bring and use drugs in our home.

I mean, you cross that line and you're immediately out. At times we've had other requirements for him. For example, at times we would say you'd have to go through counseling. And sometimes it was biblical counseling that he went through. You had to get a job and things like that.

You'd have a list of chores you had to do. Probably the most detailed time that we did that was he ultimately ended up in prison. I know I'm stepping forward here, but he left our home, was in Indiana for a while, and then went back to Iowa, ended up getting involved with drugs even more deeply, got involved with the judicial system again, and ended up in prison for three years. While he was in prison, he wrote and seemed to indicate that he had trusted Christ as his savior. And he wrote just really a wonderful letter to us that he was tired of trying to run his own life. He saw where it had led and it had really destroyed his life and he put his faith in Christ. And you're thinking our prayers have been answered.

Absolutely, absolutely. And we began with phone calls with him. I began a long-distance Bible study with him, went through 1 John.

There's so much of 1 John that challenges the truth of professed belief. And the answers we got just led us to hope. There were some red flags that would come up and we'd wonder and worry, but how much do you expect change in someone who's in a maximum security prison? But we then allowed him to come back to our home. And I tell the story in the book much more deeply, but we actually created a very specific contract with him. And we read some things on prisoner re-entry and stuff that stipulated a wide number of things that we would expect.

And if you're going back to our home, this is what's going to have to be. And he agreed to all of those. And within two weeks he brought drugs into the home and was intoxicated using drugs in the home. And clearly his profession had just been an effort to be able to come back in the home when he got out of prison. You mentioned even on the way home from prison you had some doubts. Because of the conversations that we had with him, he didn't want to have any spiritual conversations.

He made fun of the guards that were there and talked about how they got around all the rules and stuff that existed in the prison. And so my wife and I said to ourselves, this is not who we thought we were picking up at the prison. I mean, talk about that because, I mean, hope deferred. I mean, when hope rises and then it's crushed, it's like twice as bad as no hope. How did that feel? It was crushing.

Having a child make a false profession. And Eric had done that several times before, but this was probably the most dramatic and most intense and clearly was a manipulative effort to get into our home. And it was so very, very difficult to us.

It was completely crushing. And especially when we thought, God has done a work. God has finally answered our prayers. You know, I prayed for my son three times a day every day for his life. And to think now finally God has answered and then realize it was all phony. And of course you have to tell your friends who you had joyfully told God's done a work in our son.

Well, no, it really hasn't. It was absolutely crushing. When he's been home, he's now intoxicated and you've got to put him out again.

Yes. In fact, I actually didn't have to put him out. When I confronted him and he was using drugs, he knew that moment. I came downstairs. He came downstairs a few moments later, had packed his backpack and said goodbye because he knew.

I didn't even have to force him out. Now, as he walks out, is he mad? Is he sad?

Is he placid? He was resigned, I guess maybe. No, he wasn't mad.

He knew what the criteria were staying there. He knew he violated it. And he was probably more than anything sad about getting caught, sadly. I am crying. Like, think about just your heart, your wife's heart, like that for a parent is so crushing. It was.

It was horribly crushing. Sorry for all of that. You had mentioned that he had some sickness. Did he have bouts of sickness over the years? Well, there were numerous times we had to make trips to Iowa because he was hospitalized, he had lung problems, he had infections and things like that that arose from his drug use.

That sent him. And so what do you do? You get a call from the hospital, your son's in the ICU. He's got serious problems with one of his lungs.

And so, of course, you drop everything and you go. And then you think about, okay, he doesn't have a place to live right now. He's homeless. What do we do when he comes out of the hospital? You know, living on the streets when you're trying to recover from an ailment.

And do we put him up in a hotel? What do we do? And so we faced numerous challenges like that over the years. And you had years of this. You had almost a decade or more?

We had 15 years of it. Fifteen years of a son who's out on the streets on his own. You don't know from day to day whether he is continuing to use, how he's supporting himself.

You're pretty much like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, back on the farm praying and hoping but not knowing what your son's doing or the choices he's making. The only difference is we had cell phones and he didn't. There would be periods of time where there would be long periods where we wouldn't hear from him. And times when we would communicate with him. Or times that he would reach out to us and appeal. He'd call us. I don't have any place to stay.

Can you put me up? Or I need this. You know, I'm sick and I need this medicine and I can't afford it. And of course you're always worried.

Is he going to use this resource to get drugs? And that happened again and again. Well, I mean, I'm sure the listener who hasn't read your book is right now saying, okay, tell me the part where it all works out.

Tell us the part where this, where it comes home. For him, tragically it didn't. At the end of his 15 year journey, he died tragically on January 18th of 2017.

And that was the most crushing blow we could have experienced. He was living on his own. He was back in Indiana at that time. So he wasn't living too far from our home.

And I actually learned by a member from the county coroner's office coming to my office at the university. And showing me pictures of a body they found that they thought was our son. And that was the hardest moment of my life. And then rushed from there to go tell my wife.

I certainly didn't want her to hear from someone else. And it was a crushing blow because we knew our prodigal son would never come home. He died of an overdose?

He did not. He ended up dying of sepsis, of a blood infection. Because of his drug use, he had been in an accident that required multiple surgeries.

It really tore up his knee and he ended up with an infected knee and they just could not clear it. And he ended up with an infection. When they told us they found him, we thought for sure it probably was an overdose. He had just been resuscitated from an overdose just a month before. Many times he had been resuscitated from drug overdoses. Never were they enough to turn him from his drug-using ways.

But in the end it was a blood infection that took his life. When was the last time you talked with him? It was his birthday. We took him out for a meal for his birthday.

We had texted after that. This is how long before? So long before his death. So he was 30?

He was 30. What was that birthday dinner like? You know, it was a cordial dinner. But when your child is out of your home, they're living a destructive lifestyle, it's what do you talk about? What do you talk about that's not going to create conflict? How do you show love? How do you communicate love?

When you know there's this huge barrier there because of the choices that he's making, he knows it and you know it. But it was a cordial, a friendly dinner. There was never a time that our son parted from us that he didn't say, Love you, Pops.

He always called me Pops. And so we did not have the kind of relationship that we couldn't talk peacefully. And I know there are some of the prodigals and they can't.

They just can't communicate at all. So in the days leading up to his death where he was hospitalized with this infection, you didn't know any of this? Oh, no, we did. This was actually over a period of a couple of years because he had to have, in about 18 months, he had to have numerous reconstructive surgeries. And I took him to appointments and took him to surgeries and those kinds of things.

So yes, we did have communication with him in those times. And then he was living in an apartment that was, and this was a point in time where we actually decided we were going to pay for an apartment for him because he was recovering medically. We couldn't have him in our home because he would bring drugs, but yet he couldn't live on the street recovering from surgery.

But even during his recovery period of time, he just continued to use drugs. Was there any point that your other kids were either cheering you on or saying, Mom and Dad, you need to do something different? Because I've heard, I've had prodigals that the other siblings are angry at their parents for doing too much or not doing enough. We did not experience that. Of course, our children were far-flung in different parts of the country and not around all the time. But there was really nothing but encouragement from them. They understood the destructive choices.

We never felt from them that they thought we were doing anything inappropriate there. They were more concerned for us and Eric hurting us and putting us at risk more than anything else. When you learned that your son is dead, did you begin to revisit all of that what could we have done, what should we have done stuff that had come up earlier, or were you at peace with the choices you'd made as parents? Certainly some of that. I mean, you can't when you see the loss of a child that they've lost their life because of destructive choices. I can't imagine that you wouldn't sit back and say, could we have done something different?

Did we miss something? I'll tell you, though, one of the gifts that my son gave me that perhaps helped in that time, he said it once verbally, and then the very last Father's Day note that he gave me, the last Father's Day that he was alive, he wrote on a small, torn-out piece of notebook paper, just, Happy Father's Day, Dad. He said, I know I've made a lot of choices that have hurt you and that you disagree with, and I know I haven't gone the path that you wanted me to go, but I know that you love me and you'll always be there for me. The choices I've made, I've made because I wanted to, and I want you to know it's not your fault.

I came across that note just a couple weeks ago as I was cleaning some stuff out in my dresser. It was a gift from him to say that, to know that he didn't feel that his choices were a failure on our part. Now, God will be the judge as to how well we've done as parents, but I know that he didn't live with a sense of, my parents mistreated me, my parents really messed up with me, and all that's happened is my parents' fault.

And that, in some sense, was a gift that gave me a certain peace. Do you have any sense that maybe in a quiet moment there was a profession that never manifest itself in the fruit of repentance that we'd all like to see? Of course, we can't speak for his final hours. We weren't there.

Only God knows. What we do know is that our prayers that our prodigal would come home never happened, and that was hard to live with. You know, maybe one of the hardest moments for me was that next morning when I got on my knees and began my day in prayer, and I always prayed for each of our children, and now I was struck with the reality that there was one for whom I could no longer pray, and that my most earnest prayer hadn't been answered. So how do you regain confidence in prayer when a petition you've made for 30 years has been met with the silence of heaven?

Oh, how do you? For me, it was spending time in the Garden of Gethsemane with Jesus and at the cross. In the garden, Jesus prayed the most earnest prayer.

He pled to the Father, Let this cup pass from me. And his earnestness was so intense that he sweat great drops of blood. And then the next day, he's hanging on the cross, and the wrath of God is coming upon him.

And yet what did Jesus do? He later prayed again, and he prayed the greatest prayer of trust that has ever recorded in the Bible. He says, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

In that deepest, darkest moment, he's just about to step into death. He says, Father, I trust you completely. If Jesus can do that, I can follow his path, and I can trust the Father for the future. So pray.

Pray with confidence and pray with earnestness, because the Father can be trusted. What about your wife? Did she go through a similar journey in her faith?

I think yes. I think for her, probably the longest struggle is being able to experience joy again. I know a big part of the focus that you have here is strengthening marriages, and we've already talked about that.

And one of the things that we face is that reality that many couples who lose a child face is that we mourn differently. And I remember very distinctly how it happened. I came home from the university. It was probably about two weeks after our son's death. And something funny happened at the university.

And she's fixing dinner, and I tell her the story, and I chuckle, and she looks at me aghast. And it was, how can you laugh so soon after our son's death? And so we were just silent for a while, and then we had to have a conversation. We realized we were going to mourn differently, and that's okay. And we had to give each other space to do that and give each other understanding to mourn differently.

We did, and in some sense we do. You know, a mother has an affinity and an affection for a child that I just think is usually unmatched by a man, right? I mean, you carry that child in your womb, you nurse them, you nurture them in a way.

There's a bond that's there. For each of us, I think that there are different cues that strike sadness into our hearts. And there are certain things that cue her and bring that sadness back, and there are different cues for me. For her, I would probably say it was a darker journey through mourning than me, which is, I think, again, only natural for a mother. One of the greatest challenges for her was, I mentioned previously we work in the homeless ministry, and my wife is more involved than I am.

She leads it, so she's there a lot more. To go there, she had to drive by the house where her son died and coming back past the funeral home that we used every time she went. And it took an incredible fortitude for her to just strengthen herself and go and do what she needed to do. And often she had to pull over after passing those and just have a good cry before she could drive any further. But God gave her the grace to do that. I think there's so many times in grief when we haven't gotten what we've prayed for.

I had a sister that died of cancer when she was 45. And you pray for so long, and you never have the prayer answered the way you want. And I do remember after my sister had passed, going before the father on my knee saying, I'm mad at you, you didn't answer this the way I had wanted, it doesn't make sense to me, but I will follow you. At this point is an act of obedience because my heart feels so dead, but I will follow you as an act of my will.

And I think that's a good first step of just, and maybe it's not a first step, maybe it takes a while to get to that point. But there is a point that I felt like he carried me. I couldn't pull away from him because I needed him to carry me. And I'm sure your wife and you have felt that at times too, like you're desperate for him, for Jesus to heal your own heart. He's the only one that can do it, right?

Yeah. And the great promise in Scripture is that God will not leave us destitute of comfort. Tears may flood us in the night, but joy will come in the morning, and God will not leave us. That period of mourning may be different, that period of grief and testing may seem very long, but ultimately God will come and he will bring his comfort. Is that what you would say to a parent listening right now who's got a 15-year-old, 14-year-old, you know, back when you first started that journey, what would you say to them?

I'd say two things. One, remember that your hope is in God and not your children. You know, whatever your children do, God's not going to change. If you build your hope on your children and how they turn out, if they make wrong choices, the journey is going to be terrifying.

And if they end tragically, like ours, it's going to be absolutely devastating. But when you put your hope in God, no matter what happens, you know he'll see you through it. The second thing I would say to them is always hold out hope to the prodigal. You know, obviously there's different stages where people go through. Early on it's a little bit different than in the end when people live a destructive life and you look and see how messy their life has become and putting it back together seems like unscrambling an egg. It seems an impossible thing to do and it will to them as well. We've seen that desperate look in people in our homeless community. I mean, their lives are so fractured.

Every relationship they have, to put it all back together seems impossible. And what you want to do is hold out hope that it can be done in Christ and that you'll be there with them and you'll help them walk through it. And so if you can hold anything out to your prodigal, hold out hope.

Because we've all heard the stories of people who have borne very difficult things, whether it's people in concentration camps or people who live with horrendous illnesses, and what gets them through it, it's hope. And that's what we want to hold out for them. And the verse that's been echoing in my own head as you've been talking is the last verses in the book of Habakkuk where it's talking about agricultural stuff. You know, there's no fruit on the vine. There's no blossoms on the fig tree.

The olive plants are failing. And that's not what we're facing, but it can feel that way when you've got a child who's acting out, like there's no fruit on the vine. What we've been hoping for and praying for is not coming to pass.

What do you do? And Habakkuk says, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. That's where I'm going to find joy, not in the circumstances, not of life in a fallen world. I'm going to rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. You've got to go back there and say, Lord, restore the joy, because it's gone.

But you're my source of joy. God the Lord is my strength. And I think a lot of parents who are in difficult situations, you look at the difficult situation, the circumstances, and you go, where do I find hope? Where do I find joy? Where do I find peace? Where do I find, well, you find it in the Lord.

And you go to Him. And joy is something you have to decide to fight for every day. I am grateful, and I know our listeners are grateful, that you had the courage.

Yes. It really is courage, and you said, we're going to take our pain, and we're going to comfort others with the comfort with which we've been comforted, and try to use this redemptively in other people's lives. You've done that here on Family Life Today.

You've done it in your book. Thank you for doing that. Thank your wife for, I know you gave her the manuscript and said, I won't share this with anybody until you say so. And she said, yes, we need to share this. Thank you both.

Praise to God, and we just want to see Him bring beauty out of ashes. Craig's book is called The Painful Path of a Prodigal, Biblical Help and Hope for Those Who Love the Wayward and Rebellious. You can order a copy when you go to familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to get a copy of the book. Again, the book is called The Painful Path of a Prodigal by Craig Svensson. Order online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. You know, what we've talked about this week is just a reminder that in a marriage, in a family, there will be some very difficult seasons. All of us will experience them, and we need to be prepared for them. David Robbins, who's the president of Family Life, is here with us today. And David, we should not be surprised when we go through seasons in our marriage and our family when we need to reach out and get help. No doubt, Bob.

Navigating a family is guaranteed to be challenging because we have a bunch of people that have a mix of dignity and depravity inside of us. Thank goodness for Jesus, who's redeeming it. But He's in the process of redeeming it, and we need coaching. We need confidence to keep going the next day. And we need people to cheer us on that our labor's not in vain and that God is working and He continues to work in us. And I'm so grateful for an email I received recently that cheered me on about what we do at Family Life. And this listener emailed and said, Thank you for intentionally and authentically sharing the gospel.

Jesus is using Family Life mightily, and the ripple effect has begun with my family, friends, and my church. Words cannot express how much I appreciate you and your courageous ministry, especially in this chaotic world. And I just want to thank those of you who are partners with us and help fuel the ministry of Family Life. Our vision is to certainly bring help and hope to people, but to also equip people to be help and hope in their home and in their communities and in their church.

We are not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation. And I'm so thankful for you who help equip us to be able to bring the gospel to more people. Let me just quickly add that for those who can make a donation today to support the work of Family Life today, we'd love to send them as a thank you gift a resource Family Life has created called the 12 Names of Christmas, a collection of 12 Christmas ornaments you can use with your kids or your grandkids as the Christmas season draws near to help point them toward the reality of the one whose birth we celebrate at Christmas. The 12 Names of Christmas is our thank you gift when you make a donation today to support Family Life today.

Go online at familylifetoday.com to donate, or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to make your donation. And thanks in advance for whatever you're able to do. And thank you, David, for joining us. And we hope you have a great weekend. Hope that you and your family are able to worship together with your local church this weekend. And we hope you can join us on Monday when we're going to spend time with a couple that some of you already know from their online video blog, Harold and Rachel Earls. We're going to hear about their courtship, about their marriage, about Harold's adventure climbing Mount Everest. We'll get caught up with the Earls on Monday. Hope you can tune in for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapeen. Have a great weekend. We'll see you back Monday for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today, hope for tomorrow.