DailySusan Humor Blog

‘I WATCHED MY DAUGHTER BE DESPERATE’
(Third in a special series on gambling this week. Please forward this story and direct people to www.DailySusan.blogspot.com for more. Thanks!)

By the time your child becomes an adult, you’d think your job as a parent is done. Now you can sit back, relax, and reap the rewards. But not Shirley*. Her daughter got swept up in a gambling addiction that basically destroyed her life and her family.

And now Shirley is praying daily that Nebraska voters will not authorize casinos in the Cornhusker State -- because she doesn’t want any other mother to have to go through what she has.

‘’I watched my daughter be desperate,’’ the Omahan said. ‘’She went through hell with it. It’s a terrible, terrible thing.’’

The daughter was in a bad marriage, and got frustrated and depressed. To cope, she started going over to the casinos in Council Bluffs. She gambled as a diversion -- a distraction from her personal problems. Before long, she was ‘’off the deep end’’ financially, her mother says.

The daughter left her husband, moved back in with her aging parents, and wrote bad checks on her mother’s account for gambling cash. Then the mother had to make good on them, or her daughter would have had to go to jail for forgery.

Although Shirley is sorry now, she did bail her daughter out of financial crises a couple of times. The daughter got right back into gambling trouble after just a short time of abstinence. Shirley calls it “the lure of the boats.’’

Finally, Shirley realized that ‘’helping’’ her daughter was just extending her agony. So she cut off the gravy train.

‘’I had to stand there and say, ‘No more.’ I told her I didn’t care if she went to jail or the pen, that I’d take the grandkids and do anything else that I could to help. But I wouldn’t bail her out any more, and I and her siblings would not issue her any more money.”

It has been very difficult for the whole family. But for the moment, the gambling addiction appears to be under control. The daughter attends support group meetings for gambling addicts, and is in the process of repairing the many relationships she damaged or destroyed over the past few years.

Shirley is passionately against the spread of organized gambling, especially casinos, in Nebraska because of the destruction she knows they will cause to many families. She also is passionately for free counseling for gambling addicts, which she sees as the key to dealing with the existing problems that the nearby casinos in Iowa have already caused Nebraskans.

She urges churches and civic groups to do everything in their power to aid the existing overstressed network of gambling help that would only be even more overstressed if casinos are voted in.

“If we let them in, we’re just asking for it,” she says. “I pray every day that we won’t. That’s all I can do.’’

* Not her real name.

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Prayer request: Lord, we lift up another faithful political leader, State Sen. Pam Redfield of Omaha. She has been circulating a chart which is tremendously helpful to see how additional tax income from gambling casinos in Nebraska would be minuscule, compared to the healthy taxes that would be generated by new, bona fide business developments in retail, manufacturing, services or other legitimate pursuits. In Iowa, for every $1,000 gambled away at the casinos, only $15.48 in total taxes are generated. But that same $1,000 at a Wal-Mart generates $70 in total taxes -- almost five times MORE! In addition, $1,000 in wagers at an Iowa riverboat produces just $14.05 in payroll . . . but that $1,000 spent at a Wal-Mart produces $400 worth of payroll. Obviously, our best bet would be to develop bona fide businesses for Nebraska, not expanded gambling. That’s what we should point toward, Lord -- funding our public services in ways that help each other, not hurt our neediest and most vulnerable. (Psalm 37:16)