Beyond a shadow of a doubt

My parents weren't perfect. Though that's not earth shattering news, when I first realized it, I had to work through it.

Up to a certain age, most children believe that their parents can do no wrong. Even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

I well remember coming to my parents' defense, when some well-meaning neighbor called social services to report that something seemed amiss in our family. When Mom told us that we should expect a visit from someone in authority, we immediately banded together to present a united and altogether wholesome front to whomever came through the door.

When I was 15, and in my sophomore year of high school, Danny wanted to take me to my school's Homecoming dance. Of course, I was happy to say yes, even though it meant getting special dispensation from school administrators. Danny was a student at Littleton High School and I attended Arvada High School. Fraternizing with members of the opposite sex from other schools wasn't encouraged in that day and age. The administration answered in the affirmative. We were all set. Or so I thought.

My coursework that semester included driver education, and one day, near the end of the course, the instructor informed three of us that on this particular day we would do our in-traffic driving immediately after school let out. Lacking the funds to call Mom from a pay phone to let her know I would be late, I pinned my hopes on beating her home from work. I joined the instructor and two classmates and we took turns behind the wheel, traveling mostly city streets on the west side of Denver, venturing out to Green Mountain before beginning to make our way back.

My anxiety increased as daylight gave way to Denver's extended twilight. One by one, the instructor dropped the other students off at their homes. I was last. And I could see Mom through the kitchen window when we pulled up.

When I walked in, Mom informed me that I was grounded for a month.

Now, being 15, almost 16, I was no stranger to being grounded. But this time I had a bona fide excuse for being late and I argued passionately against the injustice, knowing that a grounding of that duration meant no Homecoming dance for me.

Mom wouldn't listen. She even went so far as to claim that I was using an innocent man, parked across the street at the curb, as a convenient patsy for my obvious lie. Even offering to walk with her to speak to the man got me nowhere. I was grounded and that was that.

I chafed at the injustice at the time. Eventually, I was released from the grounding, well before the month was up, however after the Homecoming dance was past.

Many years later, Mom confessed that the dance and the accompanying costs, of a dress, shoes etc., were the motivating factors behind seizing any excuse to ground me.

All too often, I've discovered, decisions like the one Mom made that day, are made because there doesn't seem to be an acceptable alternate situation. I wasn't a "diva" daughter and couldn't have possibly cared less what I wore to the dance, but it must have been important to Mom that I have something nice. Since that wasn't in the offing, the dance was forfeited.

Nope, my parents weren't perfect. Nobody is. Yet, in the absence of full evidence to the contrary, I typically choose to give people "the benefit of the doubt," defined in the online Wicktionary as "a favorable judgement given in the absence of full evidence," because I learned it first from family. I don't know what struggles anyone may face from day-to-day. I don't know if the surly clerk is surly because she has bunions on both feet, or if it's just in her nature to expect the worst in any given situation, because that's what her life has taught her to expect. In either case, she has my sympathy, not my disdain.

How many times in our lives does our faith call us to give our Father "the benefit of the doubt"? Sudden death. Financial ruin. Broken families. Catastrophic storms. Long nights wrestling with angels named doubt, fear or unremitting loneliness. All seem to be the antithesis of justice. And all call us to reach deep into our limited understanding and to say with Job, even in the absence of full evidence...

"Yet I will trust him." (Job 13:15)