Today was just like any other day. I take myself from the land of the living into the land of the struggling.
I sat in my car arranging and warming myself before taking
off for another day of visiting with children, parents, and their safe
families. I paused as I watched a
somewhat large SUV pull up in front on my neighbor’s house. A mother probably about my age hopped out of
the vehicle and gently pulled her young son out of the back, carefully
holding his hand as they walked over the ice.
Their world seemed so … together and appropriate. The way it should be.
This woman could have been me any day. I love my kids with an unconditional love and
I don’t want them to fall on the ice either.
I finish situating myself and start my drive. I text the young Mom I’m meeting, because
I’ll be late… again.
I try to play music from my ipod, but in the process I accidently
find K-Love. A song is playing,
“Give me your eyes for just one second. Give me your eyes so I can see. Everything that I keep missing, give me your
love for humanity. Give me your arms for
the broken hearted. Those that are far
beyond my reach. Give me your heart for
the one’s forgotten, Give me your eyes so I can see.”
It makes me tear up as I’m trying to finish up my mascara
before pulling into the young moms drive way.
But I’m not sure where the tears come from.
Maybe because I know so many of us live in the land of
safety and security never realizing the world of struggle happening right down
the street.
Or maybe that’s not really it. Maybe the picture of the mom holding her
son’s hand as they walked carefully over the ice sat in stark contrast to the
mom I was about to pick up. She too held
her son’s hand as he trudged through the snow. One mom walks to her friend’s house; warm and full of life, for a play
date perhaps. Another mom walks out of
her house that has no heat and puts her two year old in the back of my car with
a heavy heart. We’re going to meet the
family that will keep her son for a month while she job hunts and tries to find
daycare for her boys.
I ask about her family.
They don’t help her. They won’t
babysit for her boys. The dad is out of
the picture. She can’t work without
daycare or putting her boys in the hands of people she doesn’t trust.
Same ol’ story really.
But it’s a sad one. Simply
put: she has no one.
When we sign paperwork for placing children in Safe
Families, the biological parent has to choose a person to release their child
to in the event that something would happen to them during placement. A close family member, a parent, an aunt,
etc.
Do you know how many blank looks I get when they come to
this part? They hover the pen above the
line. They look up and scratch their
chin. They put the pen down. They say, “um, I’m gonna come back to that
one.”
They don’t have anyone.
I tell them they have to choose someone.
They write down a neighbor.
An estranged relative.
It always breaks my heart.
Sometimes I try and talk myself through it.
I tell myself that maybe it’s their fault they don’t have anyone. Maybe they’ve made bad choices and pushed
people away, and maybe I don’t need to feel bad for them.
My next thought reminds me that maybe I’ve made bad choices
and pushed people away. I was a hard
working selfish athlete in High School.
I took diet pills and punched my Mom in the arm one day. I judged people who didn’t look presentable
and stayed away from them. I sometimes
told lies to my parents and made bad choices and pushed people away.
But those people still love me, they still care for me, and they still help me when I need it.
There’s a dad who’s placed his kids’ with Safe Families, and
I’ve grown particularly fond of him. He’s
changing the trajectory of his life and his kids’ lives, because he doesn’t
want them to grow up the way he did.
“My parent’s really
didn’t seem to care about what I did. If
I would have had someone pointing me in the right direction, or telling me that
I shouldn’t do certain things, I mean… I would have listened.”
I wondered if this was true but he went on.
“I ran cross country, and I was good. I loved running and I’d run for miles. My dad came to one meet. One. I
was best in the county and he came to one meet.
I was a different person during cross-country season. But then when it was over, I just went back
to being, ya know, greasy or whatever.”
My heart sinks. This
is sad. I picture him crossing a finish
line and no one is there to see it. I
marvel to myself that not one person in his school or life outside took the
opportunity to pour into him. My head
nods slightly, and I keep listening.
“Sometimes, even when it wasn’t season, I just used to take
off running. I’d run for miles and miles
and miles, and I didn’t even know why. And
then when I’d stop, I’d just start crying.
Because nobody knew and nobody cared.”
In my head, I see a skinny kid in high school running like
Forrest Gump. As incomplete as that moment seems in my head, I think, someone did see him. I think Someone saw him, and Someone
remembered him.
There’s a reason he’s in my car. There’s also a reason his kids landed in
top-notch safe family homes. The type
that were willing to pay for his son’s optometrist appointment out of pocket if
they had to. The type that agree to
continue to keep the kids when a 30 day placement becomes 3 months. The type that picked him up on Christmas
Day and made sure he had a chance to give presents to his kids, and they type that go out of their way to take him to church on Sunday.
The Almighty God saw him when he thought no one was looking, and now, through people, he’s receiving a selfless love from others that's every bit of divine.
But maybe God is parting the waters for him now because he’s
done with his crooked life and because God is laying down a straight path from him to follow. Maybe God is about redeeming and restoring people after all, and maybe he likes to use people to show His love.
Maybe the song on K-Love made me tear up because…sometimes I
get this odd sensation that I get to see things from a certain vantage point
that others don’t, and maybe I’m supposed to share their stories, so we can all
get to know each other a little better.
Since we’re neighbors living world’s apart.
These worlds. They
collide and they run straight into mine.
I feel, I should give others the opportunity to see what I see more
often.
January 29, 2014
