ditto, levis (08/04/07),this is my last comment on the subject. The Lord knows, I have enough of my own issues to deal with, my prayers are with you Mrs. Smith and your family.

I’m curious about the comment about if the preacher gets divorced he will lose his job.  I once attended a Baptist church where the preacher got divorced and he didn’t lose his job. He’s still there in fact.  So why would her husband lose his job?

There are more important things for people out there to dwell on, leave this one alone! You have to ask yourself ” What If This Was You” and your family has told the world that you had a problem with drugs and were mentally not stable, would you have come back and faced this ? apperently she loves her children alot more than your giving her credit for, she came back despite having to face all of you, not just her friends and family! You never know what goes on in someone elses house, she had to have good reason to leave in the first place and its not anyones business but hers!

Her family could at least go on record thanking the public for all of their support, and then ask us to give them some time to sort this out.  The public and media’s support of them is what brought her home in the first place.  She didn’t come home until she got caught requesting her teaching certificate to teach in New York, so even a week ago, she had no intention of coming back.  Now all of the sudden, “it is none of the public’s business?”  The family made it our business by reporting extremely personal details about her life in the first place.

Her family sure wanted the “public” to pray for her and help find her when she was gone. Now that she’s back and there are so many questions,  her friends and family can’t just expect people to forget about this case that has been in the news so much, even the national news.

Some people say what she did is not the public’s business but if she plans to go back into the classroom that is the business of anyone who has a child that might have her for a teacher.  She left her own kids behind to wonder what happened to her. So why should the state of Alabama entrust other people’s kids to her now? I’m glad she was found and I hope she gets the help she needs, but I wouldn’t want my kid to have her as a teacher.

Mrs. Smith is an adult woman, her choices are her own and she has no obligations to the public regarding “explanations,“what-so-ever.Judging her definitely is not the place of the public. I say leave her be and she might be able to get her life back in some kind of order, and to the suprise of “all of the critics,” you might even approve of it!

beth, i do not think that you should read the negative comments people are saying about you. believe me i know what you are and were going through. the people in this town are so nosy and love to judge because they are so bored and have nothing else to do. they also don’t admit to any problem they may have in their personal lives, they just spend time judging others to make themselves feel better. keep your head up!

Ms. Smith doesn’t owe the public an explanation.  She broke no law and her reasons are her own.  Sometimes news can become gossip.

The comment was made that men do this ALL the time, but the thing is they usually dont come back and say “Oh I love and miss my kids”. First off a GOOD mother would have NEVER ever walked off from her children no matter what the circumstances are. all she had to do was tell SOMEONE. I can’t imagine the emotional damage she has done to those children, our children hear every single day in school that they are responsible for their own actions and there are consequences to those actions. This woman needs help. Maybe her husband will have her examined (let’s hope)