I Kidnapped a Baby

I am unsure if this makes me a really bad person or a really good parent to teach a life lesson.  Truth be told, I don’t even know who I’m teaching a lesson to…yet.  You see, someone is spending the night with my daughter and they have one of those dolls that is supposed to teach them to take responsibility for a baby.  It’s a high school class.

As I was walking down the driveway to my car, I noticed the car parked next to mine had an infant car seat in the back of their car.  I was a little confused because I don’t know any of my daughters’ friends who have a baby.

I looked in the window, and my heart almost stopped when I saw a baby in that carseat!  My heart and body reacted with fight or flight adrenaline as I thought, “Why is there a baby alone in a car?!” It was only a moment before I remembered that another of her friends had done the same thing earlier in the school year, not leaving a baby in the car, but had to take one home for an assignment.

Staring at that doll in the car seat, I started thinking about how irresponsible some young parents are and how many children are not well cared for and then I saw it….a sticker in the window that said “Proud Parent.” That stirred something in me and I kidnapped the baby.

I thought about taking the baby to the doctor’s office with me, but I don’t know when I’m coming home and whoever has this baby might need it for school today.  I assume that if they freak out and tell one of my daughters the baby is missing, my daughter might think to ask me before getting too upset.

When my youngest daughter learned to drive, she would leave her car key and wallet in her unlocked car.  I tried to talk to her about it over and over, but when she continued leaving it in the car I thought, “How can I make this a lesson that will stick?”  I would take the key and wallet and hide them in the house….that’s an easier lesson to learn than having someone get in her car overnight and steal the wallet or worse, take the car.  It seems to have been an effective lesson because most of the time, she brings both in now.

So back to today… I decided to put the baby in the garage. As I laid the baby down, it started crying, and I wanted to start crying because who leaves a crying baby in a garage? What kind of monster am I?  This was my parting thought, as I heard the desperate cries of that baby and the garage door lowered in front of me.

Whoever was responsible for this baby not only left the baby in the car, not buckled in the car seat, I might add, but they left their car door unlocked!

I considered texting my daughter and telling her that whoever’s baby that is, they are not taking good care of it, but what are they really going to learn from that?  I don’t even know whose car that is!  I could be teaching a perfect stranger a lesson.  Will they even notice the baby’s not there before they drive away?

What if they get mad that I kidnapped the baby?

What if they have to go to class and tell their teacher that they don’t know what happened to the baby?

Could they fail the class?

Am I being unkind?

I don’t think so. Whom the LORD LOVES, He chastens.

My girls bring many young women into my house. Friends they have known for years and years and people they just met.   Sometimes this can be a source of frustration for the other people in my house.

Who are all these people coming and going?  Sometimes even I don’t know.  The other day, my husband and I were walking out the front door at the same time and he asked, “Whose car is that?”  I told him I was not sure, and he asked me to please find out whose car that was before I leave for work.

I woke my 17-year-old up and asked her if she knows whose blue car is out front. She said, “If it’s not Mia’s, I don’t know whose it is.”

I texted my oldest daughter who was already at work and she said, “Oh… That’s my friend Tiana. She rode to work with me.”

A friend asked me recently why I allow my house to be like a subway station with people constantly coming and going?  Sometimes I ask myself the same thing.

My daughters are 17 and 20 years old.  These friends who come around, each of them a precious child of God, are right at the very beginning of their journey into adulthood. They have no idea that the places they go and the things that they do and experiences they have will affect them for the rest of their lives!  They are carelessly moving from moment to moment.

Whoever just had their baby kidnapped, if their heart suddenly skips a beat, and they are filled with concern, I hope it will be a lesson they will carry with them into their adulthood.

At a certain point in life, you have seen the life choices and the consequences of those choices play out dozens of times in real lives and you have the ability to trace those consequences back to choices and thought processes that were formed in childhood, middle school, high school and as young adults.

I think of Proverbs 1:20-21, “Wisdom calls aloud outside; she raises her voice in the open squares.  She cries out in the chief concourses at the opening of the gates in the city she speaks her words. ‘HOW LONG, you simple ones, will you love your simplicity?  For scorners delight in their scorning and fools hate knowledge.  Turn at my rebuke; surely I will pour out my spirit on you; I will make my words known to you.’”

I see these kids and my heart LONGS to impart wisdom to them, to show them all the pain I lived through because of my own foolishness over the years and yet I know that unless someone is looking for wisdom, wisdom could call out all day long and she will not be heard.

I’m turning 47 in June and I’ve not only seen people live out the consequences of the foolishness of their youth, I’ve seen people die of consequences of the foolishness of their youth.

I talked to my brother who is now a pastor and asked, “How do you do it?  It’s emotionally exhausting to see people continuing to act in opposition to both Biblical truth and natural wisdom and continue to have compassion.”  We both agreed that it’s super hard to continue offering wisdom when it is either ignored or resented, but as a wise young friend of mine explained, “I might act like I’m not listening, but someday those words will come back and be helpful to me.”

Maybe you’re wondering what happened with that baby?

Apparently the neglect started the day before.  The girl who was responsible for the baby wasn’t even staying at our house!  She was sick of the baby crying so she dropped the baby off on our front porch and drove away.

My neighbors were HORRIFIED when they didn’t see anyone come out to get the baby and the girl didn’t even knock on the door to announce that the baby was there.  They came over to check on the baby, only to find a doll.

My husband came home from work, saw the doll on the porch, rolled his eyes and went about his business.  The girls who I stole the baby doll from were only BABYSITTING.  They put the doll on “Daycare mode” to sleep through the night, drove the car the following afternoon without even realizing it had been kidnapped and it took until 3pm for them to notice it was gone.  They were walking out of my house saying, “We have to find the baby.  What could have happened?  I know I left it in the car.  Who would take a doll out of a car?”

I confessed to my crime and after them saying how mean that was, I talked to them about the purpose of the assignment and what the school is hoping for them to learn.  I said, “young girls think it would be fun to have a baby because they’re so cute.”  One of the girls piped up, “They are so cute!  Having a baby wouldn’t be nearly as hard as having this doll.  It was set on the hardest setting!”

I relayed a story of when my baby, their friend, was 3 weeks old and cried ALL night long and I couldn’t get her to stop crying, so my husband woke up to the baby crying and me crying back at the baby in her bouncy seat.  Parenting is hard and a huge responsibility.  They hadn’t thought about having a baby who is sick, overly tired, fussy, gassy or just plain unhappy.  You don’t have the luxury of leaving the baby in the car for a good night’s sleep.