What If This Were Your Child?

This is reposted in it’s entirety from http://melaniecrutchfield.com/2012/07/15/i-cant-even-imagine-linnea-lomax/ in an effort to help locate this close friend of someone I admire very much, my friend Heidi who responded with me to the disaster in Haiti.

What if this were your child?

I’ve written before about how parenting is really, really hard. Part of the reason it’s so hard is because you’re forced to love people a whole lot. You don’t have a choice. Whatever your kids do, you still freaking love them. They’re part of you. Part of the fiber of your being. Part of you that you have little to no control over.

So if your kid goes missing—a part of you goes missing too. A part that you love with a deep, sacrificial love that you can’t turn off. And that’s what is happening with Craig and Marianne Lomax in Sacramento ever since their daughter, Linnea Lomax, went missing on June 26, 2012, after leaving an out-patient mental health facility.

Here’s part of a letter they wrote to their missing daughter in the Sacramento Bee:

We love you beyond what words can express. We have cherished you from your first breath and our affection has only increased with each day. We never imagined loving anyone as much as we love you and your brother and sister. No matter what happens, our love for you will not falter. We will never stop loving you passionately. Never.

Read more here

That’s what I’d say, too. That’s what I’d say to my girl if I couldn’t find her—if I didn’t know where she was. Those are the words that would race through my mind with every waking moment.

So, I’m putting this poster on my blog, because if it were my kid, I’d want a random stranger to post my girl’s face out there so that I could maybe hear from her and know she’s safe. I just can’t imagine how frightened these parents are. Well, I actually have a pretty active imagination, so I can…I just don’t want to.

Please keep your eyes open for this young woman if you live anywhere near California.

I’ll hold out hope from here that Linnea Lomax will find her way back to her family, safe and sound. Blessings to all her family and friends.

I have almost never asked the community to share a post widely, Today I ask, PLEASE repost this with the same passion you would if it were your child.

In Her Service,
Peter Dybing