A follow-up letter to the family about our sister Duraye

Dear Delon, Durelle, Myreel and Corwin…

Thank you for your counsel and concerns about what is our next step in helping Duraye.

Let me share some feelings that I believe are overarching on everything we’re talking about here. Our discussion has suddenly turned from “how do we help Duraye because we love her” to “how do we rehabilitate Duraye because she’s a problem.” Please, I ask you not to allow our discussion to go there. 

Here’s why…

As we have all learned, one of the most divisive (if not THE most divisive) issues that can destroy relationships…especially between parents and children (including God and His children, for that matter)…is the lack of trust. 

That, of course, is why children get grounded or restricted in the parent-child relationship. But as children grow to adulthood, as parents, we must find ways to develop and nurture trust or we run the risk there will be no relationship. 

Duraye has broken trust with her family by her poor choices so now some of the consequences are falling upon us. We naturally resent that and sometimes think of her more as a child than our sister. 

On the other hand, we have broken trust with Duraye because we have withheld our love and support because we feel it’s our duty to judge and even “fix” her.

In short, we should not have an expectation that she’ll know how or even the desire to restore our trust. But, with the gospel perspective, the Lord expects us to restore trust with our sister so ultimately she’ll trust God.

In other words, in my opinion, we must not dictate or demand that she do anything differently to please us. We help her because we love her…she is our sister…and we trust she will make correct choices. That is not easy for us to accept when she’s broken our trust and our hearts over the years.

Still, just as the Lord’s merciful hand is constantly outstretched to us, we will win her trust again if we will learn to trust her. 

So, what does this all mean… (please forgive me for preaching)

We must set aside our fears that Duraye will go back to Mike...that Scottsdale will only lead to more evil...that she’ll never get or keep a job…that she can’t change unless she moves far away.

She needs to know we trust her and do not expect her to make any changes to please us. She needs to know that we will help her the best we can however much we can for as long as we can…because we love her, she is our sister! (Each of us must decide for ourselves how much and how long that is for each of us personally.)

We rejoice that she has chosen to leave Mike…after 16 years of a dead-end relationship. Please, let’s not try to direct her or insist that she go anywhere. Once we try to dictate where she must go, in her mind she becomes “our child…our project” and just another object of the “Lewis Family Rehabilitation Program” (her words) as she has seen most, if not all of us over the years, send some of our children to live with another family in hopes of correcting behavior.

I have asked Duraye, recognizing that both of her daughters are going to be in Utah by this January, if that is attractive at all to her. Would she like to find an apartment (or even possibly stay free with family) in Utah instead of Arizona? For a number of reasons, even though they may not make sense to us and may raise fears that she won’t change, she has no interest in going to Utah. She feels at home in Arizona and wants to remain here regardless of her daughters’ location. I trust her judgment that she’s making the right choice for herself.

So now we’re back to how do we help her break from Mike, get on her own, get stable financially, and ultimately get connected with a bishop?

We have two options that I can see right now:

1. We help her get into the apartment in Scottsdale. It’s a good apartment…not fancy but not run down…and it stays within the $1,000 / month budget that I asked her to stay within. She’s afraid to be alone, but she likes the apartment and the setting (it appears to be a safe neighborhood). Our natural reaction is: Hey, beggars can’t be  choosers. I don’t feel she’s being abusive of our generosity. She is very grateful to the family and feels badly that she has placed us in this position of having to rescue her…again. I don’t feel we should abuse her willingness to make a fresh start by requiring her to live in a dump. We want her to know that we desire for her to get a fresh start in a decent place.

The drawback is that there are no apartments…at least, decent apartments…that allow renters to pay month-to-month without a first-year lease. Fortunately, in this case they are not requiring a first and last payment, which is not uncommon.

Frankly, we don’t even know that she will qualify for this apartment…or for any apartment, for that matter. She has no current employment, a week employment history and a misdemeanor criminal record. Without a co-signer, she is trapped and may never be able to break.

Co-signing is a big risk, without a doubt. But a willingness on our part to co-sign sends her a HUGE message that we trust she will eventually get a good job where she can totally support herself in time….along with the Church’s help, her family's help and the Lord’s merciful hand.

If this is the option we choose, I need to pay the qualifying fee of $100 immediately so they can run credit and personal checks on both Duraye and me, as the co-signer ($50 per screening) and hold the apartment until the owner decides whether or not to accept Duraye.

The second option…

2. If the above is too much for us to swallow, then another option is for Duraye and Madelyn to stay in the apartment (yes, with Mike) for another few months. She and Mike are friends, but not romantic. In fact, Mike somewhat detests Duraye and tells her he hopes she’ll move. In her opinion, Mike wants to be a hermit. So she is a heart-broken, spurned woman and has no desire to stay, but Mike is decent to her and she is surviving on that tiny, sliver of security.

The plan would be to have Duraye stay in the apartment (Mike is picking up the rent, Duraye helps when she can) until the end of December, at which time Madelyn will leave for Utah (if she still plans to leave by then) and Duraye would move into an apartment somewhere in the Valley (I have tried to encourage her to find a place close to the freeway so she can get to a job most anywhere in the Valley). Hopefully by then she’d have a job to help her make the break or, if not, we, as family, hopefully would be willing to help her as best as we can as per option #1.

If she remains in the apartment with Mike for the next four months, there are several downsides: (1) we/she can’t seek church assistance, (2) there’s the chance she’ll give up and change her mind, and (3) she’ll still need immediate family assistance (she is destitute with debt)...if we’re willing to provide it under the status of co-habitating (I realize that’s going to be a hard pill to swallow for some, if not all).

Fortunately, her current living expenses are not exorbitant. They include:

$300 / month auto rental from Jordan, Madelyn’s old boyfriend who “flips” cars and as been very generous to Duraye to help her; otherwise, with her record, she’d be hard pressed to get a car; she obviously needs a car to seek and fulfill employment

$34 / month for auto insurance

$120 / month for phone (we know this is expensive, but her previous employer required it and now Duraye can’t get out from under it for a while)

$88 / month for the Interlock device on the car she must rent or lease so she can drive

$80 / month for the storage unit that she and Mike share ($160 / mo)

I’ve encouraged her to apply for food stamps (she didn’t know she’d qualify), which she is doing. So with other incidental living expenses, she can stay above water with assistance from the family of $600 / month…until she can land a job at which time the family assistance would no longer be needed…recognizing that we may be looking at implementing Option #1 in January, if she doesn’t have steady employment by then or can’t qualify to get into her own apartment.

I’m open to any other options you want to explore. I only ask that everything we do sends a signal to her that we love her and trust her…that we are willing to do all that we can, however long we can, so she’ll know—as never before—that we love her, trust her and we want to be family with her.

I hope this helps,

Crismon