Definition of a Good Day

My definition of a good day is when the day is over and everyone I love is safe and sound. It is also defined as to whether or not I have been able to make a difference in the very narrow focus of my life.

When I was younger, I heard a speaker talk about how if you want to cut deeply you need a narrow wedge. He suggested that we choose on thing and drive it deep and that that was the best way to make a difference.

in viewing the overwhelmingly huge problem that is called our Child Protection System it is hard to know where to begin in working to deal with it. There are so many needs, from recruitment to post-adoption support, from legislative change to best practice, that it is hard to even know what to do first.

So I have found my one thing -- and even it is a HUGE one thing -- and that is getting kids out of the system and getting them home.

Working today with Joe, a guy from Adoption Advocacy, has been very encouraging because he is doing a great job of finding families, most of them African American, in rural South Carolina and finding children to match with them. I am incredibly impressed, after spending two days wtih him, at how he does what he does -- he works hard, he works fast, he works all the time, passionate about finding homes for kids -- not perfect homes, but homes. Many of the kids he places are kids who might not find another family interested in them.

And so I will go to bed in a few minutes, having spent three hours speaking, 2 hours driving, a couple hours eating and strategizing over meals, and many hours at my computer knowing that something I did today will give a kid a family.

And the fact that those that I love are safe, sound, and relatively happy, and that another kid will get a home because of what I did today, makes for a good day, at least according to my definition.