I had another blog written for tonight and ready to “drip” out but breaking news has preempted that post. Everything I had hoped to avoid is starting to unfold here …


I returned from doing errands today to find a message on my answering machine. “If you are the mother of Amy Spoolstra, or if you can tell me how to find her, would you please call me back?” With great trepidation (something I realized I hadn’t felt for over a year and hadn’t missed at all) I called the number. It was a mom … a very worried mom. Seems her 21-year-old son moved in with Amy a week ago. This young man and Amy have had an online “relationship” for 6-7 months, and he moved here (over a half day's drive) to meet her in person. He has purchased a television, DVD player, queen sized mattress, and table and chairs for her. He believed her lies that her Dad had promised to resign her lease and then had reneged. She is being evicted on Friday and she has no plans, no place to go. (And yet all this new furniture????) The mom had a “bad feeling” when she saw the condition of the apartment, no food in the pantry, mattress on the floor. The good news is her kind, compassionate, helpful son put the mattress frame together for Amy that we bought her last year for Christmas ... so that mattress is not on the floor any longer.


As you can imagine, what I had to share about Amy didn’t make this mom feel any better. She said her son was a good kid and she had worked very hard to get him to age 21 without any major pitfalls along the way. She begged me to do what I could to get things straightened out. He was wanting to return to their home with Amy, and the mom was doing her "homework". That was why she researched our phone number. I made it crystal clear that I believed taking Amy into their home would be a huge mistake.


I quickly arranged for my neighbor to be here when the girls arrived home from school (Dora had her first half day today and it went well!) and I headed north to Amy’s apartment. I knocked and a tall, thin, shirtless young man answered. I introduced myself as Amy’s mom and he let me into the apartment. Amy looked at me first with shock and then with disgust and spat out … “How did they get YOUR number?” I said, “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to make sure he has the correct information? I'm here because his mother is worried about him.”


This seemingly nice young man put on a shirt and accompanied me outside, where we sat on the curb and I talked while he listened.


To be continued ...


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