Greek's Pizza Fundraiser

Join Safe Families for Children/Madison County on Sunday, March 30th at Greek's Pizzeria in Anderson for our Greek's Pizza Fundraiser! Greek’s will graciously donate 20% off all dine-in and carry out sales if you mention Safe Families when ordering! Offer is good from open until close on Sunday, March 30. Also, join us from 5:30-7:30 for an in-house concert at Greek’s while you eat! Derek Bishop and Sam Young will provide the music, so bring your friends and family and help support Safe Families!

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.

Holiday Greetings for Safe Families

In honor of Nicole Sellers, we are hosting an event to build support for Safe Families for Children/Madison County. This will be an opportunity for those looking to serve the Safe Families movement to discover their area of calling. We will have coffee, dessert and music as we hear personal testimonies about the difference Safe Families has made in the lives of families in Madison County. There will be multiple ways to get involved, including "adopting" a child and/or parent for holiday's and birthday's, supporting a local host family with respite care, volunteering with clothing and furniture donations, volunteering as a mentor or support person, or even volunteering to help with transportation! Join us to hear more about this Kingdom movement and how you might be called to help stand in the gap for these children and families in crisis.

A Grandmother's Journey . . . Part I

I’m a parent of an extremely small and strong-willed 8-year-old daughter, and an equally small and very high-energy son.  I work for a non-profit called Safe Families for Children and homeschool my kids three days a week.  I have this theory that educating my kids at home will give them a larger dose of life that they can feel, touch, taste and smell.  I want them to be raised with the awareness that we are always learning and exploring life, and that God is in so much more than Sunday mornings.

Some days my theory holds up and other days we struggle and I contemplate our choices; and still other days we grab our books, get in the car and my kids go to work with me.

Last Friday my 2 kids and I drove to Anderson to pick up Mary and her 5-year-old granddaughter, Anna.  We have been giving Mary weekend respite placements with Safe Families because Mary is not only an exhausted Grandma with custody of her granddaughter, she also has terminal cancer.  A few months ago, Mary shared that she had no options for Anna after she passed.  Anna’s mother was incapable of caring for her because of a drug problem and Mary would need to find a family to adopt her granddaughter.  On this day, it was time for Mary to meet the family that would, God-willing, be Anna’s forever-family.  We picked up Mary and Anna at the tiny apartment in Anderson they call home.  Anna squeezed in the back of my small car and Mary attempted to make herself comfortable in my passenger seat.

We sat with a bit of awkwardness for a while.

“Are you hot?  How about some air…”

“Yes I am hot.  I wasn’t gonna say nothing but, shew!”

I laugh to myself.  I love Mary and her straightforwardness.

The visit between Mary and Anna’s Safe Family went extremely well.  The kids entertained themselves and as I watched, I prayed again that all of the pieces would fall together to allow this miracle for this child to take place.

We leave Anna for the weekend with her Safe Family.  She cheerfully waves goodbye to her Grandma and skips away.

My kids, Mary, and myself re-enter the Jetta for the drive home.  Again I make small talk and Mary nods off in between sentences.  She wakes herself either when she starts to cough or feels the tap of the breaks.  Part of her cancer is obstructing her esophagus and excessive coughing cannot be helped.  She probably feels slightly embarrassed and my heart goes out to her.

My inquisitive daughter doesn’t notice her exhaustion and jumps right in with her questions, and I let her.

“Mom?  Why is Anna getting adopted?”

I asked Mary’s permission to tell her the truth and she consents.

“Because,” I felt needles on my skin.  “Mary has cancer and she won’t live long enough to raise Anna.”

“How does she know she has cancer?”

“Because the doctor told her she did.”

“But how does he know? Doctor’s don’t know everything. Maybe he just thinks she has cancer but she doesn’t.”

Mary snickers and shakes her head. My daughter continues.

“Does Anna know that Mary has cancer?”

Mary replies an emphatic, “Yes.”

Long pause.

I ask Mary about Anna’s mom. She is an addict and has put herself on life support more than once by overdosing.

Mary replies, “Yeah… she comes around and ‘plays’ mother with Anna every now and then. She says, ‘Hi baby, Bye baby’ and waltzes out the door again.”

My daughter pipes up again.

“Mom?  Why won’t Anna’s mom be her mom?”  She is unable to fathom a mother who doesn’t want her child.

“Because… she has different priorities in life. Unfortunately she’s putting something in front of being a mom to Anna and, because of that, she’ll probably never be able to really be her mom.”

“What is it?”

“We’ll talk about that later.”

We drop Mary off at her apartment.  I tell her goodbye. I want to give her a hug but I feel that she feels I am too young and innocent to hug her. I want to tell her I’m not. I also want to take her to church on Sunday, and my son had the idea of taking her flowers and making her a picture.

My daughter’s mind is not settled and on the way home she asks, “Why do you think Anna is happy? Why does she just run and play like nothing’s wrong?”

“Well, because she doesn’t realize entirely all the sadness around her yet. She will start to when her Grandma dies. But right now it’s just her life. We can be happy, though, that there is a family that wants to keep her as a part of their forever-family. So we can pray that they get to adopt her and keep her forever.”

“Why don’t they just take her now?”

“Because her mom has to terminate her rights first. She has to put her name on a piece of paper that says she’s not going to be Anna’s mom ever again.”

“Oh. Well, I hope she does that.”

“Me too. It’s definitely something to pray for.”

We get home, walk in the house, and the kids turn on the umpteenth episode of Little House on the Prairie, and I have a feeling we have all learned something today and maybe it’s ok that we didn’t finish all of our schoolwork.

Discovering a Community Spirit

Two years ago, I traveled to a land called Haiti. It was my first time visiting a less-developed country, and I expected to have a myriad of depressing emotions about those living in poverty. And I did.It was hard to watch people work so incredibly hard for such little return, hard to see their dirt-floor homes and naked children, hard to see those suffering from ailments that pain reliever could’ve taken care of and it was hard to see the children without parents, the orphans.

My heart was set on half-empty from the start, and I was sure it would only become emptier and emptier as the week went on.

But I was wrong.

I found something I didn’t expect to find in a country mired in hardship. I found that life didn’t cease to exist just because the people were poor. They don’t stop celebrating birthdays or Christmas or being joyful over the birth of a baby just because they live in poverty. They were poor by measure of worldly possessions and, although their struggle is one of heart wrenching intensity, I realized that these people certainly held a key to living life to its fullest.

I saw it when our group was invited into the home of a friend of Dr. Mark Fulton, our leader on the trip. This generous Haitian man was thrilled to bring our entire group to his house, and, though his floors were made of dirt, he generously brought out 25 chairs and insisted each of us drink a cold soda pop and relax in his yard, sectioned off by tarp.

I saw it when we attended church with the villagers. They worshiped under a tent, in the heat, for a solid three hours. Their children sat together and a few young ones even wandered over to our laps while their mothers sat with eyes closed and hands raised.

I saw it each time we set up the medical clinics in various villages. I was in charge of taking blood pressures, and I prioritized getting to the elderly and pregnant women first. In one village, I noticed I was running furiously from station to station taking back-to-back blood pressures. I looked to the line at the door and realized that the entire village had decided to let the elderly go first.

I saw it after we packed up each and every clinic. After pulling teeth, treating bee stings and high blood pressure, everyone in the entire village would scrape together all they had to feed us.
I learned the most, though, from watching the orphans. Our compound was divided between a hospital and an orphanage. We stayed in a building between the two, and, whenever they could, the orphans would wander over to our building, play games with us, braid our hair, and, at day’s end, they would gather together in a circle to sing and pray. I was drawn to them and, most evenings, I would wedge myself into their circle and eavesdrop on their singing. I was interested in their dependence on one another, the joy the kids brought to each other. They weren’t in competition with each other; they weren’t comparing tennis shoes or brand names. They weren’t pairing off in groups of “cool” and “not cool”. They looked out for one another and they shared clothes and beds. The younger looked up to the older and the older in turn took care of the younger.

I didn’t understand at first that these kids were okay. They counted themselves as blessed to have three meals a day and a bed when kids on the other side of the wall might have none of those things. Sure they were orphans, but they had something I didn’t recognize, some glue that bonded them together. Almost all of the Haitians had this. It was what made the villagers escort the elderly to the front of the line, what made the man with a dirt floor give 25 soda pops to strangers, what made the villagers feed us though they had nothing, and what allowed the mothers to worship while their children toddled over to strangers, and what made the orphans bond so beautifully.

It was a strong sense of community. It was the presence of people who choose to depend on one another, honor one another and trust one another. They weren’t only people characterized by a fierce independence, but also an intense interdependence.

I see the beauty of this now in the work that I do and the way I live my life. I’ve learned that it’s not weakness to depend on others. I’ve also learned that some of the most incredible things can happen when you don’t even try to do it all by yourself.

Safe Families is now up and running in Madison County, and it has been incredible to see other kids receiving the same blessings as the four kids we hosted later on. The YMCA has continued to open their doors to host families, allowing a place for families with a few extras to participate in group exercise classes and kids’ activities. Imagine If has given Safe Families kids’ spots in both their summer program and after-school program. Spending a week in Haiti ended up having a tremendous impact on me in ways I never expected. I see depending on others in my community as strength instead of weakness. I have been floored by our programs in Madison County that have come along to help children and parents alike get to a place of peace.

In Madison County, I find a glimmer of the Haitian community. I find people and programs whose hearts are set to help those in need, to give generously and receive generously, and to trust the helping hands of others. That’s what being a loving family is all about.

The Story of Safe Families in Madison County

Has your heart ever been torn to shreds after reading a tragic news story about a child who suffered because there weren’t enough people who cared?  Have you ever wished there was something you could do about it?

I’m going to tell you a story about how a tragic story broke our hearts in such a way that it would change our actions.

Quite a few years back, when my husband still had a desk job, he managed to pass the hours by keeping up on current news stories. My husband is a musician with a bit of a bleeding heart and many times he would come home and share a particularly difficult story that would cause us both to lower our eyes in despair because there was simply nothing to say. There was one article in particular about a boy named Robert whose story left a mark.

The story was tragic. Robert, 7, had been court mandated to have visitation with his mother, although his father had fought hard for full custody.  On one of his mandatory weekend visits, he was so severely beaten by his mother’s boyfriend that Robert died. My husband read about his kind disposition and how he was known to be a sweet child who always gave his teachers lots of hugs.  When I gazed at his 2nd grade picture, his innocent little face even reminded us of our own son.

This story broke my husband in a way I hadn’t seen before; it was the icing on the cake for him. We had struggled through quite a few other tragedies in our life, but for some reason this little boy did him in.  I could see the depression sink in as he struggled to reconcile the tragic reality of our world with his faith.

This little boy left a spot on our souls. His story left us with the feeling that living this life for the pursuit of the almighty dollar or even for just ourselves wasn’t enough.  Something in us changed.

A few years passed by.  During the summer of 2012 I offered to let my neighbor’s daughter come over to hang with us while her dad worked.  She liked our house so I let my neighbor know she was always welcome. Eventually the little girl started coming over with her cousin.  I could tell things weren’t very stable with the little girl’s cousin and she would say things like, “I think my house is a hotel…” I didn’t ask many questions, but let my neighbor know the girls were welcome anytime for as long as they needed to stay.

The girls would spend the night and stay whenever they needed.  My husband—remarkably—was ok with this. He was patient with these girls, loving and kind. We happened to be in the middle of a huge bathroom tear-out and the cousin became curious, following my husband around the house as he worked on completing our bathroom project.  I was blown away by his patience and willingness to allow her to help him.  He didn’t know what her life was like at home, why she was living in a hotel, or if she had a daddy or not.  But he showed kindness to the young strangers in our home that summer.

Little did we know that allowing a few neighbor girls to spend time with us was laying the foundation for something bigger to happen. We were being prepared for the moment when my neighbor's sister would call us because she was at the end of her rope and thought perhaps we could be of some help. We were being prepared for the moment God would call us to be a Safe Family so that we could provide a temporary home for the little girl (and her younger brother), who had been living in a hotel while their mother worked hard to get back on her feet. It was our opportunity to act, to do something about all those tragic news stories.

Right now, in Madison County, there are kids on the brink of abuse and neglect because their parents are in crisis.  Maybe they can't find work.  Maybe they were evicted.  Maybe there is no one they can depend on. 

Safe Families is unique in that the parent chooses to  place their children in the home of a “safe family.” Doing so gives the parent time to get back on their feet and in many cases deflects the need for the foster care system.  Safe Families is a movement of compassion that returns the church to the forefront of caring for the weak and the needy.  We are not funded through State, but through churches, grants and benevolent people. 

Consider how God may be promoting you to get involved--maybe you can volunteer your time as a host family, or maybe your talent as a professional, or maybe even your treasure.  Our family never would have guessed that two years later we would still be tightly bonded to the mother of the little girl we helped.  You can check out her story HERE.  You never know how your life might be changed when we choose to open our hearts, our homes and our resources to families that are in crisis.    

Emma Johnson
Safe Families for Children, Madison County
ejohnson@safefamilies.net
SFFC National: www.safe-families.org
SFFC Indiana: www.insafefamilies.org
SFFC Madison County Facebook

Life at 'Safe Families'

Safe Families for Children has come to Madison County, and I have found myself being the new director. Miracles happen here, miracles of self discovery and new found love. It’s hard to call it a job.

Calls are made, emails and text messages are sent, voice-mails are left. At the end of those emails and text messages are meetings that look like every day events. One mom meets another in a parking lot. One takes a child out of the car and hands him off to the next. They talk about diapers and nap times and such.  It all looks so normal. It all seems so…jobby. But it’s not.

In reality, it’s a miracle. These two mothers are joining forces to take care of another mother’s child. A mother who desperately loves her child but whose mind is not well. A mother who desperately needed a break and had no one to turn to. Her child is given rest in another pair of arms to love him, until his own mother’s arms are ready for him.

Another woman is homeless. Many severe connotations come with the word “homeless.” All it means is she had a squabble with her roommate. She has to leave but has no where to go; no where that she and her kids can live. She calls Safe Families, requests a placement, and says goodbye to her children until she finds a home.

Some people have issues helping “these” people – whose stories look messier than their own. ‘We would never feed that to our kids or neglect our bills.’ It’s hard to understand being homeless.  ‘Why don’t they just call a sibling, or a parent, or a friend.’ We separate ourselves from it. It’s much easier.

Judging these people makes my job a job. I can close a case at the end of the day and go home.  It keeps myself separate, declaring the splinter in their eye before acknowledging the log in my own.

Sure I pay close attention to what I feed my children, pay my bills on time, and do most of my shopping at garage sales. But could I truly stand blameless before these people and legitimately shake my finger at them? If someone was looking over my shoulder the same way I’m looking over theirs, what would be found? Would my file be squeaky clean? Would I find some wasted dollars? Some bad decisions?  Would I really be spotless and justified to point that finger?

A few years ago, I began the long process of removing the log from my our own eye, and I can see a little better now.  I can now see these people with a clean heart and resist judgement.  Yes, they have made mistakes. Me too.

Safe Families rely on host families. Taking in a child that is not your own with no financial reimbursement is not easy.  You may be wiping a bottom that has no relation to you, wondering what in the world his mom is doing.

This is love with no strings attached. And it’s hard. This is where the rubber meets the road; perpetuating the grace and love we have been given to another who may not understand it right now.

This isn’t a job.

It’s a calling.  This is loving others as I have been loved. This is loving others as I love myself.

It isn’t easy.  But it’s our calling.  Working for Safe Families, or volunteering to open up your home, or loving someone different than yourself is reaching a clean hand into another’s messy life.

Only then can we all be changed.