Elyse Fitzpatrick - When Good Kids Make Bad Choices: Help and Hope for Hurting Parents

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Cover by Harvest House Publishers, Inc., Eugene, Oregon, Katie Brady, designer

This book contains the opinions and ideas of its authors, and is intended to provide helpful information on the subjects it discusses. The authors and publisher are not rendering personal medical, counseling, or pastoral services through this book. You should always consult with your personal physician, counselor, or pastor before making any decision about how to help a child with a specific problem. Medicines a child is already taking should not be stopped except under the supervision of a doctor.

WHEN GOOD KIDS MAKE BAD CHOICES

Copyright 2005 by Elyse Fitzpatrick, Jim Newheiser, and Dr. Laura Hendrickson
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fitzpatrick, Elyse, 1950

When good kids make bad choices / Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jim Newheiser with Laura Hendrickson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-7369-1564-8 (pbk.)

1. Child rearingReligious aspectsChristianity. 2. ParentingReligious aspects Christianity. 3. Choice (Psychology)Religious aspectsChristianity. I. Newheiser, Jim.

II. Hendrickson, Laura. III. Title.

BV4529.F56 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 / DP-KB / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To all our suffering brothers and sisters:
Your sovereign God is also a suffering God,
who knows the pain of losing a child
and who will walk with you through this heartache.
May His presence comfort and sustain you.

I would like to thank the parents who have shared their experiences with me in counseling and by filling out the survey. I admire the steadfastness of your faith, and your Christlike love for your kids. I would also like to thank my fellow elders and the members of Grace Bible Church for being so supportive of this project.

And, I would like to thank each of my sons for working hard that we might have a loving relationship. Most of all, I am grateful for my wife, Caroline, who has been a model of selfless love and unceasing prayer.

Jim Newheiser

I am very grateful to George Scipione and Roger Wagner, my pastors and teachers, who taught me to think theologically about physical challenges. Physician-biblical counselor Michael Emlets audiotape My Body Made Me Do It?presented at the CCEF Living Faith 2002 conferencewas foundational to my treatment of the body and the heart in Chapter 6. I also want to thank George Scipione, Jim Newheiser, and Steve Miller of Harvest House for special assistance in clarifying the message of chapters 6 and 7. Thanks also go to my best friend and colleague Eileen Scipione, who has always believed in me, to my faith family, who prayed faithfully for me, and to challenged counselees and friends too numerous to name who, along with their families, have taught me so much. I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to my dear husband Dan thank you for all your love and support. And to my precious son, Eric you are the reason for it all.

Dr. Laura Hendrickson

Id like to thank Jim Newheiser and Laura Hendrickson for undertaking this project and sharing their wisdom with me. Thanks, also, to George Scipione, the brains behind this project (at least for me!). Thanks also to my pastors (Mark Lauterbach and Craig Cabannis) and my home group at Grace Church (SGM), who prayed for me and excused me from my obligations so that I could work on this project. Thanks also to Steve Miller, my perpetual ally in the struggle to get biblical books into believers hands. Thanks most of all to my family, Phil especially, who always understands and supports, and who will use this book with me as we counsel families together.

Elyse Fitzpatrick

Contents

Dr. Laura Hendrickson

Dr. Laura Hendrickson

Dr. Laura Hendrickson

U ntil three years ago, our family was all my wife and I (Jim) had hoped it would be when we married in 1979. I would have been pleased to invite you into our home to meet our three children. We had much to be proud of. My wife had faithfully homeschooled our sons for 14 years. Our sons could have told you about their studies of the great books from a Christian perspective. You would have observed their willing participation in our family devotions. All of them were active in our churchs youth group and in other profitable activities such as Christian worldview camps and summer missions trips.

I believed that every member of our lovely family was devoted to the church where I serve as pastor. I can fondly recall coming home after the evening service with my heart full of thanks to God and my family because we were of one heart serving Him together.

Two of our sons were National Merit Scholars with the ambition of using their gifts to serve the Lord. Our oldest son was attending a prestigious liberal arts college where he was involved in a sound church and an InterVarsity chapter. He had a good relationship with his pastor and the InterVarsity leader. And our second son was about to go off to a top-ranked engineering school.

If you had visited our happy home, you would have seen three young men who were polite, respectful, articulate, and helpful. We frequently practiced hospitality and you would have seen each member of our family participating in making you feel welcome. We were living the godly Christian family dream.

Our Dream Becomes a Nightmare

In light of all this, perhaps you can imagine our shock when our oldest son informed us that he no longer believed that Jesus Christ was the only way to God or that the Bible was authoritative. Although that phone conversation took place over three years ago, I still feel its aftereffects deeply. It was during this dark call that he told me he had left the solid evangelical church where we had settled him during his freshman year in college and joined a very liberal church which questioned or denied much of what he had learned. Furthermore, he told us that he had become involved in a serious romantic relationship with a Buddhist girl. For some time he had been hiding these changes from my wife and me, but then finally decided he needed to completely break away from us and live his life as he pleased.