I’m Bbbaaaaccckkkk!!! After a long sleepless hiatus, I have
been thinking it is time to re-engage my brain and start blogging. Nothing
really SPECTACULAR has come to mind. A few angry retorts to the anit-breast
feeding freaks have come to mind, maybe a post or two about the sanctity of
life and America’s disinterest in that subject.
(sidebar: was talking to the guy running for state Senate on
Sunday. I asked him if he was prolife
and he said that he was personally but he did not think it was the governments
job to mandate such things and that everyone should be allowed to live their
life how they want. I guess that everyone does not include the unborn.)
But today I had an experience that I want to share. First, I will be honest. I have a bad
attitude about Packs of Hope, a ministry at church. Packs of Hope are backpacks
filled with necessities for kids that are suddenly removed from their homes and
left with nothing. Let me be clear, I am
not against the child. I am against a government that takes the responsibility
to remove a child and then leaves them with nothing. When I got my pack and
opened it, I was even irked by one of the statements “This may be the only new
clothes this child has ever received”. As a constant shopper of used clothing
(I don’t even buy new for myself), this irked me as well. It seems to insinuate that the child may have
been deprived by wearing used clothing.
But this year I sucked it up and got two packs. Lori O “checked” me out and
told me she heard that people sometimes got a discount at Walmart and Target if
they showed the Packs of Hope certificate.
At my shopping trip at Target today, I found a few items, so
at check-out I showed her my little piece of paper and ask her about the discount.
She didn’t know (and like a good associate radioed to ask) but then she said “
When did they start this? “
me (ignorant and
barely paying attention),” I don’t know, a few years ago”
Target girl, “Cause they didn’t have this when I went into
foster care. “
Me (suddenly paying attention and already ashamed because of
my bad attitude),” I am so sorry.”
And since nobody knew the answer to my question about the discount,
she and I got a chance to chat while a few different people were radioed. To be honest, I think she was so open because
she looked at my kids and figured I had adopted and/or fostered and that I
would get it. I did. She told me that she was “dropped off” at her foster home
at midnight with nothing. She told me how she and one sibling were together but
the other two siblings lived in another foster home. They were all together for
one hour per week. I asked if she was ever reunited with her parents and she
was reunited with her mom and eventually her mom got all four kids back. She
told me she loved her foster family. They were still family, and the situation
made her family bigger. And as you can imagine the exchange made me a little
teary. I told her how happy for her I was that things worked out so well. I left and
went home.
I don’t have a final verdict to give about foster care
system and all of its many problems. And probably none of my bigger picture beliefs
have changed. But right at the moment that this young girl and I began our exchange about
her PERSONAL experience in the foster care system, I felt that God was telling
me to get over myself. I needed to offer
this tiny bit of help and use another platform to share my big picture ideals.
Thanks for sharing Samantha. I wondered too about a government that would take a child with nothing that belongs to him or her. What about a comfort item? They should understand that sometimes a little bit of normalcy just might be more important than a shred of evidence.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad too that you were able to share with the gal at Target. It's good to hear that perspective.