22 April 2026, Freewriters Community Daily Writing Prompt Day 3081: I’m just drifting
“So, I'm reaching out because I'm just drifting, Uncle, and there's a lot of temptation out here in the wake of the hurricanes, and I need to be delivered from temptation and taken in.”
“Nephew, I need you to know that Jesus is still on the mainline, and He told you not to call here but call His Father for any deliverance of temptation you do not have strength enough to do for yourelf.”
Mrs. Melissa Trent wrapped herself around her husband, Sgt. Vincent Trent, knowing he was talking to one of the “lost boys” … one of the sons of his lost brothers who were following in their dead fathers' criminal footsteps, though less successfully.
“I need you to give up on crime, because the family talent for it missed you,” he had once said to one of them before hanging up on one of the most youthfully exuberant cuss-outs Mrs. Trent had ever heard.
“But see, he should be in music – the boy's rhyming skills are unmatched,” Sgt. Trent said … and, quietly, Cousin Van had figured it out, and was a heavy user of his cousin Melvin's beats in teaching the younger man how to find a better way to succeed than crime. Van Trent was now a successful music producer, helping to divert young people from the pathway to criminality into positive activity.
“One down, so many to go,” his uncle had said.
The next one had called, realizing his uncle was going to give him tough love and shove him in the right direction.
“Wait – you're not going to take me in?” this particular nephew said.
“Of course not, nephew. You're one of those who has shed blood to get what you want, and so I can't have you around my wife and children because you are not safe for them and they definitely are not safe for you. You're a puppy dog in violence, asking to move in with a 20-year hardened veteran so you can get jealous of the life your cousins have lived because they have their father, do something dumb, and have their father shed every drop of your blood down to the ground like you are not even my nephew. That's why you need to call somebody else, or just stop drifting and come to port in one of those re-entry programs for young offenders my father-in-law funds.”
“Man, you know I hate to be tied down!”
“Man, you better understand how to make a good choice of commitment before you get a real felony as an adult and don't have a choice for a decade about being tied down. Worse things can happen. Did I mention your grandma is over here?”
Mrs. Trent almost started laughing because she could hear the flinch of the young man through the phone about his grandmother, Gladys Jubilee Trent.
“Look, if she asks, tell her I said hello and that I'm getting into re-entry, like, now!” he said, and Sgt. Trent chuckled darkly.
“Now, see, I'm going back to what I said at first. Grandma is who y'all all fear, but you need to fear God like that and get your lives in order with Him – Jesus is on the mainline that you need to be calling.”
“Uncle, here's the thing: Jesus is not giving us the options we want out here!”
“Nephew, every man wants a path to being respected and admired, but the Lord's path is humility first. Reject that path, and you may get what you want for a time – but you are going to lose so much more in the end. Glendon Trent your father should be 44 this year. Where is he, Glendon Jr.?”
Silence, and then Glendon Jr. tried it.
“Jesus could have given him another chance, though – just one more! I hate God for taking my father – I hate Him!”
Sgt. Trent waited on the phone with Glendon Trent Jr. as the heart of the matter at last came out between the rage-filled tears.
“I'm drifting because what else am I supposed to do? I was nine, man – just nine when it happened! How am I supposed to trust a God that would take a nine-year-old's dad from him, man? That don't even make sense!”
“It doesn't make sense because it isn't true, Glendon,” Sgt. Trent said gently, but firmly. “I am your father's elder brother. You don't think your grandfather and I didn't have conversations like this with him, warning him that if he kept going as he was, he was going to face deadly consequences? You don't think we didn't step in where we could, and then listen to him talking about he was going to do better and walk right back into the mess just as soon as he thought he had beaten the rap? God didn't take your father. Your father chose the life, and the life took him like it takes everybody in it – because crime does pay. The wages of sin always is death.”
There was long silence, and then deep, painful, awful sobbing.
Sgt. Trent put the phone on mute, called up an app, worked it, and then said, “He's not coming here, but I am going to him – don't wait up. Tell the kids I'm checking on a cousin.”
Glendon Trent Jr. was at a bus stop on a bus route that wasn't even running during the pandemic, so, completely alone in the middle of nowhere, having a complete breakdown – however, the instant he heard a footstep, he was up and ready – and had the gun knocked clean out of his hands.
“Like I said, nephew, you're a puppy dog compared to me.”
“Uncle Vincent!”
The sergeant opened his arms, and the nephew ran into them, sobbing. They drove around Lofton County for the next six hours, just working everything out … and Glendon Trent Jr. came to Christ as Savior, and entered re-entry that night, beginning his new life as a redeemed man. He and his uncle would talk every day, and Glendon Jr. would successfully complete the program and join his Cousins Van and Melvin in business.
Sgt. Trent came home at midnight to see his wife and his mother, Glendon's grandmother, waiting up on the porch.
“Glendon was lost, but now is found,” he said, and they came and embraced him.