Two Worlds Collide

Today was just like any other day.  I take myself from the land of the easy-living into the land of the struggling-to-survive.

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 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 accidentally 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 mom’s drive way. I’m not sure where the tears are coming 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 unheated house 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 and won’t put her boys in the hands of people she doesn’t trust.

It’s one of those stories of someone struggling to survive. And It’s a sad one. She has no one.

Sometimes, just sometimes, with Safe Families, they get someone.  God sees their struggle, and I marvel at the perfectly-equipped host homes He delivers at just the right time.

On this particular day, we drove to what I like to call a “meet and greet.” It’s where our host families have a chance to meet our biological families before placement begins.  The host family for this mom’s son is a sweet retired couple who buy her pizza and make eyes at her son.  They ask her about her interests, goals, and ambitions.  By the end of the sitting, smiles are happening from all around the table and her little boy wants to see them again soon!

Often times I describe Safe Families as less of a program and more of a movement.  A movement that restores the Church to caring for the fatherless, defending the widows, and coming alongside other people in love.

Maybe the song on K-Love made me tear up that morning, because sometimes I get this odd sensation that I get to see things from a certain vantage point that others don’t. I feel like maybe I’m supposed to share their stories, so we can all get to know each other a little better. We may seem worlds apart, but we are still neighbors.

Daily, these worlds collide and run straight into mine.  I feel fortunate to give others the opportunity to see what I see.