Thanking God for Blessing us with a Prodigal - John and Fair Brocard
Andy Knight
Audio transcript
Fair:
Devotional Reading from Jesus Calling
Trust Me in the midst of a messy day. Your inner calm--your Peace in My Presence--need not be shaken by what is going on around you. Though you live in this temporal world, your innermost being is rooted and grounded in eternity. When you start to feel stressed, detach yourself from the disturbances around you. Instead of desperately striving to maintain order and control in your little world, relax and remember that circumstances cannot touch My Peace.
Seek My Face, and I will share My mind with you, opening your eyes to see things from My perspective. Do not let your heart be troubled, and do not be afraid. The Peace I give is sufficient for you.
John 16:33 ESV
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
Psalm 105:4 ESV
Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!
John 14:27 ESV
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
John: (5:50)
Out of Control
Why would you allow to strangers to come into your house in the middle of the night and remove your son from your home. On May 12, 1998. Fair and I did that. He was taken to a structured hard-core wilderness program in Loa, UT. He was in the 10th grade and totally out of control. He was using drugs. He was drinking. He was disrespectful. He was lying. He was cheating. He was manipulating. He used profanity. He was angry all the time at us. He would verbally abuse us. He would cuss me out. He would challenge me to a fight at night. He tried to hurt me once by pushing me down the steps. He wouldn't accept responsibility for anything. It was always someone else's fault. He was arrogant, selfish, and lazy. He had the entitlement attitude–we owed him. If his friends got gifts or cars or a larger allowance, he demanded the same, after all we owed it to him.
His outbursts of anger scared his older sister and his younger brother. They were afraid to be around him. His mood affected our whole household and our marriage. I remember coming home frequently and the first things out of my mouth were not, "Honey did you have a good day?" But, "What kinda mood is Bubba in?" because he set the tone in our home. If he was in a foul mood I could sense it as soon as I walked in the door.
Tearing a Family Apart
He had a new set of friends that used marijuana. They partied all the time. They drank all the time. He didn't appreciate anything we did for him. He began to not only destroy himself but our marriage as well. At that time we had been married 20 years. He drained us of our time an attention so that we didn't have a whole lot left to give our other children. We were running on empty.
We couldn't communicate peacefully. It was always a yelling battle between me and him and I was always going to win the battle because I was louder, and that's just because of my competitive nature. It's not a virtue. It's something I'm admitting to you.
But despite all this, all the pain that we were in we still loved him unconditionally. So let me tell you how this impacted our marriage and our family. We've been marriage 43 years today, so we survived that hell.
We appeared to be the all-American family on the outside. Bubba was a popular 16 year-old, working on his Eagle scout award, swimming year-round, making good grades, attended church regularly. Then all of a sudden the wheels fell off. Fair was a staff member at church and felt like she couldn't share this embarrassing difficulty. Our marriage began to suffer. We were tired, stressed, and argued all the time. She blamed me. I blamed her. We thought about separating. It was tearing us up.
A Desperate Plan
We spent many months in counseling. We were told that Bubba had a self-esteem problem. We were shocked because he was so popular. After he pushed me down the stairs, we were advised by a very good therapist to hire escorts to remove him against his will from our home to get him help. Put him in a straight jacket if necessary. This was the most difficult decision we ever made in our marriage. We loved him, and this was tough love. He was out of control. We couldn't help him. This problem was bigger than we could handle.
We had to let go and let God be in control. Bubba was His before he was ours. When I made the phone call to the ranch in Utah to come pick him up, I kept hanging up the phone. I just couldn't do it. After the third time of hanging up the phone I heard God speaking in my heart, Let him go. He was mine before he was yours.
So I made the call. We had to wait a whole week. The program in Utah would be a 52 day hard core program where they give you a pack and a sleeping bag. They teach you how to pack your backpack. They give you food for a week at a time that you have to ration. You have a therapist on the trail with you. No electricity, running water, matches, nothing. No girls. No cars. No fast food. No alcohol. No drugs. Nothing.
The Night of the Transport
He got picked up at 3AM by two big men from Utah. Before that we had asked 3 sets of dear friends to pray for us who we knew wouldn't gossip. At 3AM, I was to have all the lower level lights on and have the garage door open. We did that. We couldn't sleep. I was sitting at the table with my Bible open with Fair. We had been crying. 22 years later, I still get emotional about it. The men who came in saw the Bible and asked, "Mr. Brocard are you believers?" They were too. One of them was a youth pastor who said that he did this on the side because he was a prodigal. The other one was a golden gloves boxing champion and worked for the state police, and he also did this on the side because he was a prodigal. They understood what it was like to have a son who was off the rails.
They asked Fair to leave because in their experience, if a young man sees their mother in the house before they take him, that it could trigger an emotion in him, so Fair left. I took them up to his room. He shot out of bed. I said, "Son it's okay. These men are gonna take you on a plane to Utah to a ranch to get you help. I signed the papers." He looked at me and looked at them and he growled and laid back down and covered his head with a blanket. I believe he felt like he was having a nightmare. I sat on the edge of his bed and was patting him on the back and said, "Son this is because we love you and these men are going to take care of you." And I left. I stood at the door to hear how it was going to go. I was afraid he was going to fight them because he was 6'2" 200 lbs and all muscle because he's a swimmer.
Answered Prayers
But all of a sudden I hear these two men started saying, "Hey Bubba I'm in Jim and this is Joe, and we're gonna take you to Utah. You're going to see shooting stars. You’re gonna see wild animals. It's gonna be an experience of your life. And they're just machine gunning him with information." And after all that Bubba says excitedly, "Well I've never been to Utah. What do I wear?" They convinced him it was going to be an adventure.
They didn't want him to see me, so I hid in the den and watched him walk him down their stairs and out to the car. I heard the car doors shut. Then one of the men came back in and said, "John, I want you to know that he is surrendered."
He went willingly. We had 3 prayers that morning that were answered immediately. (1) That the Lord would send me to get him who were believers. (2) That Bubba would go quietly without a fight (3) That he wouldn't wake up screaming and wake up his brother and sister.
Wilderness Experience
We had to write an "impact letter" and give it to Bubba on the plane to Salt Lake City.
When he got there he were told it was going to be a week before a spot at the ranch opened up, but they called us and told us a spot had opened up. We asked why, and he said it was because the kid who was supposed to come ran away from his parents at the airport. They didn't have him transported. We cried for them because we knew what they were going through to make that decision and then end like that. But Bubba took his place.
He's there at the ranch 52 days. While in treatment he learned (and we learned because they're in contact with us weekly) that he's got an anger management problem and uses marijuana and alcohol to self medicate to take away the anger. He learned how to positively deal with anger and lean on God.
We were allowed to write weekly and he wrote back. The first letters we got were hate mail, and we were warned that this would happen. After the third week the tone of his letters change. What happened then is that he was allowed to do a solo, where they take him from the group he was with and walked him to an area 2,000 yards away. They told him that he was going to be here alone for two days with just your thoughts, God, and nature.
During this time the Lord cracked that hard heart of his. He had become a believer in middle school, and like so many of us (me included) we strayed. The Lord started drawing him back, and his letters changed. He started thanking us. He said he could see why we did what we did. Although we were skeptical, like the Prodigal Son story in Luke, Bubba "came to his senses".
After 52 days we went out to his graduation and spent two nights with him in the desert, and they treated us as parents the way the kids got treated, so we would have a real life experience in the desert. He had to cook our food. He started a fire with a bow and string. No flash lights. We learned that Bubba had reached the highest rank possible (Eagle) for the time that he was there.
We met with him and his therapist while there. We had a long 3 page contract to for him, and we had a therapist review it with him and had him sign it in the presence of the therapist. It said, if you want to come back home these are the rules. It's pretty much just the rules of your household.
Back Home
When we got back we begin seeing the therapist again. Then God brought an angel into our life. His high school had a Young Life club that needed a new house to host their meetings and they contacted us and we said we'd do it because we thought maybe Bubba would go. Young Life is Christian ministry that teaches young people about Christ in a non-judgmental way. The Young Life leader named Hampton had heard about Bubba's story and kept contacting him and wanted to meet him. He was an outdoorsy guy who liked to fish, liked dogs. They developed a wonderful relationship. Bubba got very involved with Young Life.
His senior year of high school he starts playing football for the first time. Coaches had wanted him to play earlier but it got in the way of his partying.
Something very tragic occurred the summer of his senior year whenever they were at football camp. I believe his wilderness experience equipped him for being able to deal with this. All the boys went up the Athens Y football camp for a week. All the parents got a call saying that they had an emergency meeting and we needed to go back to the school to pick them up. They'd only been gone 24 hours. We knew something was wrong.
When the team arrived, they all had their heads down. One of the coaches came up to me and said, "You're son's a hero." I didn't know what he was talking about. I'm not bragging. It's just something the Lord used Bubba for. A freshmen boy went down the zip line and dropped off into the lake, but he never came up out of the water. When they realized it wasn't a joke, one of the coaches jumped in and got him to the surface and started CPR. The overweight coach got fatigued, so they called for Bubba to come because they knew he was a year-round swimmer with CPR training. He swam over there and continued to do CPR until they got him Life Flighted to the hospital. And the boy died the next day.
Bubba was able to do what he was asked to do because of his wilderness experience.
God's Grace
He graduated on time and went to started at Auburn University where he became a Young Life leader. He transferred to University of Texas San Antonio because he wanted to get into Ranch Management and then back to Kennesaw State and got a degree in Recreational Management. For about a year he worked with the company that does transportation of prodigal children. He understood what it was like. He ended up teaching special education at his alma mater high school. God has a sense of humor. He also becomes a lacrosse and football coach. He later gets married. He now owns his own crossfit gym and is raising a step son. He has stayed sober and clean. He's reconnected with God
Fair (32:30)
Lessons Learned
There is Hope.
We cannot fix that problem ourselves. We had to let go and and let God have control.
We learned the three C's: We didn't cause this. We can't control it. We can't cure it.
Natural consequences teach self-control
Be consistent with follow through.
Don't discipline out of anger
Stop and think before we speak
Establish family rules with all of our children together
Hold family meetings where all the kids got a chance to speak and share their feelings
Kids need and like structure even if they say they don't
Give your children your time. We are quick to lash out and not quick to listen. There may be things they are going through that you don't know about it.
Give grace when needed. Many times we should.
Love unconditionally, not only our own son but also other people's son. They're all struggling. Don't be judgmental. We used to be very judgmental. Get to know them and their heart.
Prayer is important. We had to have people praying for us.
Have a support group. Be with other people who understand and won't judge you.
Try not to miss the lessons and the blessings in the trials you go through. God spoke to us and changed us. God comforts us in our trouble so that we can comfort others because of what we have been through.