Two World's Collide

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.

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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.  

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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

A Day in the Life at Safe Families...

It always seems as though my entries are a long time coming.

I procrastinate intentionally.

I usually know what I want to say.  I just don't know how I'm going to say it.

I have taken a new job.  It's not really a job though, I don't look at it that way.

Miracles happen here, miracles of self discovery and new found love.  So it's hard to define it as just a job.

Calls are made, emails and text messages are sent, voicemails are left.  It all seems so... jobby.  But it's not.  At the end of those emails and text messages are meetings that look like every day events.  One mom meets another in a parking lot.  One takes a child out of the car and hands him off to the next.  They talk about diapers and nap times and such.  It all seems so normal.  But really it's a miracle that these two mothers are joining forces to take care of another mothers child.  A mother who desperately loves her child but whose mind is not well.  A mother who desperately needed a break and had no one to turn to.

Her child is given rest, another pair of arms to love him, until his own mother's are ready for him.

Another woman is homeless.  There are such severe connotations with that word: homeless.  All it means is she had a squabble with her roommate.  One has to leave and it is her.  But she has no where else to go.  No where that she and her kids can live.  So she calls Safe Families.  She requests a placement and says good bye to her children until she finds a home.

Some people have major issues with helping "these" people.  The type that need help.  Their stories are always messy.  They make babies with men who don't stick around.  They buy too much pop with their food stamps or brand names for their children although they have no roof to stand under.

They are easy to judge.  They are easy to separate ourselves from because they look nothing like us.  We would never feed that to our kids or neglect our bills for brand names.  We can't understand being homeless.  We would call a sibling, or a parent, or a friend.  Because we don't understand it, we judge and we separate ourselves from them.

It's much easier.

Judging these people makes my job more like a real job.  It allows me to close a case at the end of the day and go home.  It allows me keep myself separate, declaring the splinter in their eye before acknowledging the log in my own.

But maybe there is something else to see.

Maybe we aren't so different after all.

Sure I pay close attention to what I feed my children, and I pay my bills on time and do most of my shopping at garage sales.

But could I truly stand blameless before these people and legitimately shake my finger at them?  If someone was looking over my shoulder the same way I'm looking over theirs... what would be found?  Would my file be squeaking clean?  Or would I find a few smudges?  Would I find some wasted dollars here and there?... or some bad decisions made during my younger years?  Would I really be spotless and justified to point that finger?

Many times we are put into the position of being that all-seeing eye in someone's life.  We see all that they do, we look at it carefully, and judge it according to our own standard.  But don't we have an all-seeing eye peering into our own life?  Does not the God of the heavens and earth see each and every one of us?  If we were to stop and consider this...what might be seen?

I'm speaking from experience here.  I came out of High School and went into College making harsh judgments about other people's lives compared to my own.  At one point during my Freshman year I believe, I remember seeing a girl whose right side of her face had become completely paralyzed because of stress.  I remember looking at her while she tried to talk to me with only half of her mouth and thinking, "Really?  What could be so stressful about college that her face would become paralyzed?  I have to take full-time classes AND a 4 hour gymnastics practice every day.  Give me a break."

My next mission was to apply the same shallow view to my brand new marriage.  I judged and weighed Jeremy's actions against my own often enough to drive him away from me.  Our suffering started off almost immediately and it took 5 years of hacking it out until I finally began to submit myself to the idea that perhaps my slate wasn't so clean after all.  Maybe, just maybe I had a few smudges on my own record too.  I soon felt the sting of acknowledging my own guilty conscience.  I knew I hadn't been squeaky clean, although Jeremy was aware of that far before I was.

I'm thankful that God was kind toward me when I finally came around and saw my own shortcomings. He didn't shame me or say, "I told you so."  I felt like a fool and he would tell me that it's ok.  God's love began to feel real to me in these places.

I began the long process of removing the log from my our own eye, and I can see a little better now.  I can see these people who need help and resist judgement.  In their own world, yes, they have made mistakes... but so have I.

Jesus comes as the great Equalizer, placing us all under his feet.  I might be looking into their life, but I know I have someone looking into mine as well.

And besides.... if we listen closely to these people from another world, we might be blown away.  We might find that they are prophets and truth seekers.

One woman tells me about her son named from the Bible because she asked God to give her a name for her son and he did.  She goes onto explain that his middle name comes from an older cousin who acted as an angel in her life, taking her in under his wing and protecting her from the abuse happening in her home as a young girl.

Another woman sits in my kitchen.  She tells me about the drama at work, and how people are becoming more and more heartless and crazy these days.  At the end of it all she decides the whole world just needs Jesus and that's about it.

The true hands and feet of Jesus in this whole Safe Families gig are our host families.  Have you ever tried loving a child that is not your own?  It can be difficult.  Taking in a child that is not your own with no financial reimburesment is not easy.  You may be wiping a bottom that doesn't even belong to you, wondering what in the world his mom is doing.

It is very difficult to love others with the same love we have been given...with no strings attached.

This is where the rubber meets the road, where we get to put our faith into action, extending the grace and love we have been given to another who may not even understand it.

But just as they may not understand our love and our sacrifice, we who claim the Name are still called to it.  Think of the sacrifice that Jesus made and how many of us walk the earth this very day not understanding it.

This isn't a job.  This is loving others as I have been loved.  This is measuring others with the same measure used against myself.

It isn't easy.  But it's our call from above.  Working for Safe Families, or volunteering to open up your home, or loving someone so different from yourself...it's living out the thickest part of the New Testament.  It's reaching a clean hand into another's messy life and trusting the God who sees all of us to create a straight path out of the mud and the mire.

Maybe in the end we will all be changed.

"Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did." 1 John 2:6