Watch Out -- I feel a RANT coming on

I am asking myself this question today:

How can I continue to recruit people to take on kids that are SO hard?

All day long I've been hearing about horrible situations with kids trying to get through the adjustment period and of parents having to live through it. Once you've done it several times, it seems easier to take, but people going through it for the first time often just don't make it.

I have also been hearing stories about "the system" putting families through all kinds of nasty stuff because people can't get their act together. Most of the time I can justify some things, but if I told you some of the things I've heard, you would be appalled at the way that families are treated.

And then I think of the court system and how many families like ours end up there -- either because we are accused of something falsely, because we are supporting a child who needs residential treatment, or because we are sitting with them as they deal with juvenile charges filed against them. I am thinking that there may be two people in the room who are not self-preserving -- the bailiff and the court reporter. Everyone else has an agenda that includes covering their butts and making sure that their integrity, reputation, and future employment is not jeapordized by anything they say. This being the case, how can the best interest of the child really be served?

So, I am saying:

How would you like to go through endless scrutinization, piles of paperwork, infinite red tape, be abused by the system, have your character smerged in court, and live with people who, by nature, are going to make your life a living hell WHILE they try to recover from the hell they have lived through?

Come on, sign up!

Not a long line. Hmmm.

Today I am not ranting because of what has happened to us, because our lives are cake in comparison to many people I know. But I speak for all of us when I say:

We are doing something HARD, but it is something GOOD. Do not act as though we are the problem or the cause. We are supposed to be the ones who are rescuing these kids. Aren't rescuers treated as heroes? Instead we are victimized, blamed, put on trial, condemned without proof, drug through the mud, forced to file for bankruptcy, and left emotionally exhausted in the wake of being denied services until we don't know where to turn.

But the bottom line is this. Just becuase something is HARD doesn't mean people shouldn't do it. And the impact and the rewards are too great.

So once again, I'll stop my rant, because even though it is not our fault, it is not the kids fault either. Nobody asks to be born into an abusive or neglectful situation. Every child starts life as a helpless baby and where they are taken from there they should not be blamed for. Somebody has to meet them where they are and walk with them to become the best person they are capable of becoming.

And since I can't do it for them all, I have to have help, so I will continue to recruit. After all, didn't Somebody once say, "Take my yolk upon you and learn from me, for my yolk is easy and my burden is light." Yup, the same Someone who was destined to die a criminal death in my place when He was totally innocent, when He should have been the hero, he was spat upon, taken to court, mistreated, blamed, and scorned. And though like us, He was the victim of supreme injustice, He had the power to stop it all and yet He did not . . . He chose to go through it for us.

Nothing else on earth has ever made me understand more what it might feel like to be God than parenting hurt children. And today I see the clear correlation between what Jesus did for me and what Bart and I are doing for our children.

Maybe this should be my new recruitment verse:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.