Coffee Shop Fantasies

I'm going to head to Dunn Brothers. I need a change of scenery. And even though I don't have to go anywhere (no stress here, I'd actually be home alone) I want to get out and rub shoulders with normal people who have different lives. At this particular place, lots of people (I'm assuming who have home offices) go there to work. Often they talk on the phone about business stuff and I like it. I like to eavesdrop and think about what it would be like to have a job that wasn't so all-consuming. Dealing with people's lives all the time can get exhausting. It really is a burden at times, one that I carry with me 24/7. I dream about my job and I think about it most of the time.

So call me a sicko, but I go to the coffee shop and fantasize a bit while I work on hard things. I think about what it might be like to have a job where the worst thing that you could do to a "client" is mess up their website, or install their garage door wrong, or provide them with a logo that they thought was the wrong color. Now, I'm not saying that those things don't produce stress, but the fact is, they can be done over. They can be fixed.

Placing a child in a family is a much different kind of thing. Once it is done, it is done and there is no way to do it over. Suddenly everyone's life is changed and there is no going back. There are times when children are hurt further by families and times when family's lives are destroyed by the issues children bring them combined with fighting the system to try and get services for them.

I have to take a paragraph to repeat what I've said before -- that the most difficult part of placing kids for me knowing what will happen if the parents need support. In attempting to advocate for their children, they will often embark upon a journey of blame, shame and frustration. They will most likely be denied the services they need and will sometimes be taken to court and accused of abandonment or neglect. They will have people intruding into their lives and making judgments. They will make one or two statements in frustration that are written down and repeated as the players attempt to build a case against the parents, proving that they are the cause of the behaviors the kids had long before they moved in.

So yeah. Holding that stop sign on the highway might be a hot and physically exhausting job, but those people don't stay awake at night second guessing themselves. They don't wonder if maybe they could have messed up someone's life because they held the sign too high or two low.

So give me a break people, and let me fantasize about other occupations for just a few minutes today while I help people make their dreams come true.

And pray with me that their dreams don't become nightmares, that their faith and strength will help them through the hard times that come, and that like me, even after walking through fire they can say look back and say it was worth it.