I see monsters

As I've mentioned before, I work at a daycare.  A job, I love by the way, but I just had to go through my annual learning certificates (which help me keep the job I love, but I don't love quite as much as the job itself).  Turns out, the state requires that I know certain things so I'm fully equipped to work with children.

Will I remember anything I learned?  Almost certainly not.  Sometimes I get panicked when I realize that I've been issued a CRP certificate and I might one day be called upon to perform actual CPR on an actual person.  I feel like I would be one of those people who just like start hyperventilating and don't accomplish anything helpful.  Though one time I was in a situation where someone's foot got run over by a car, and I was the only person who kept her cool and got the situation sorted out.  So... maybe I'd be okay?

But that's not what this is about.

In addition to superfun times in my Communicable Diseases class (sarcasm alert) I took a class on child abuse prevention.  I add the "prevention" because I kept referring to it as just "child abuse," but those conversations got awkward.  "What was that thing you had last night?"  "Oh, I had this child abuse thing I had to do.  I mean, I didn't abuse children.  I learned how not to.  Not that I ever did before.  Just...  prevention.  It was a prevention class."

Anyhow, it was sort of terrifying.  As we all know, I work with kids all the time.  During the week at my daycare, I work with fabulous children who have (from what I know, anyhow) solid homes and loving and nurturing families.  On the weekends with Sunday School I work with fabulous children who have slightly less happy homes.  I mean, they might be happy homes, but they're not stable.  They might be loving, but I can't help but think that they're probably not very nurturing.  It's a sad fact, but a lot of broken families are exactly that; broken.  I spend time with kids who have these unavoidably warped views on life, who mistrust men, authority figures, and basically everyone.  Kids who curse like sailors and stay up till four in the morning watching questionable movies because nobody ever tells them they shouldn't.  That's life for them.

Something else they have to deal with?  Abuse.  I won't go into the specifics, mostly because I take the mantle of trust that they've placed in me very seriously, but I know kids who have been abused.  In various ways and by different people.  But it's horrifying.  No child should have to worry about things like that.  But these kids, my kids, have to worry about this.  Nobody is there to protect them--mommy works two jobs to support them and her boyfriend (who is on disability, you know, because of his back, because I've learned it's always the back).  These are kids who are raised by sheer force of will, guidance from TV, and the occasional grandmother.

It shouldn't be like that.  In my child abuse class they talked about the different indicators and whatever of child abuse.  Kids you should keep your eyes open for because either they are showing indications of being abused, or their home life is such that would lend itself to abuse.

It made me upset at the world in which we live.  That we have to learn to look for the monsters in the closet.  That I work at a daycare, with only kids who are younger than school-age, and we are mandated by the state to keep our eyes open for kids who might be abused at home.  I'm not saying there's ever a good age to start abusing kids, but the little defenseless ones are especially not okay to abuse.

This is rambley and doesn't make much sense, but I just...  have been feeling sad about the whole thing.  That I know kids who have told me about being abused, that I live in a world where I have to look for it, that I live in a world where there really are monsters in the closet.

And it makes me hope that in my small corner of the world, I can maybe be another influence in these lives.  I can't pretend to be the changing force in anybody's life (that is, in fact, the Lord's job, I'm thankful to say, and not a burden on my shoulders), but I know that I can be there for the kids I do have.  These are kids who move a lot (which always makes me muchly sorrowful), but while they're here, living in "my" neighborhood, my prayer is that the Lord can use me in their lives in whatever way I can.  If that means waking up early on a Saturday morning and going to a track meet, I'll be there.  If it means helping with homework, I'll be there.  Hugs, the occasional birthday party, and basketball (some of my favorite memories from last summer are actually being coached in basketball by some of my older Sunday School boys--because secretly I love basketball), those are things I can be there for.  Some kids will never share the deeper parts of their lives with me.  But for the kids who do entrust parts of their lives to me, I want to be able to cope, and to share with them the only One Who could ever handle the pain they've been given in their short lives.  It's only through God's grace that my life is so together.  I can't reverse their lives and somehow change it to make sense.  But I so greatly desire to help them see that through God, their lives can make sense.  We so often mourn, at my house, the lives we see with so much potential to be something, yet equally with so much potential to go off-course and become one more statistic.  Not like we expect the worst, per se, we're just pretty practical about it.

And it's sad.  Sad that we live in a world where we have to be practical about kids who might one day become statistics.  Kids who know monsters personally and try to leave the ugly parts of live behind when they get older, but end up making a mess of their lives, because they don't know how to do differently.

So that's the rant of the week.  Life makes me sad.  I mean, I know there's so much more to life, and I'd like to think that the real and perfect power of God will make a difference right now, today, in some of these lives, but I know that a lot of these stories have a lot of twists and turns before surrendering to the Lord.  And I know I won't always be there for these parts of their lives.  As much as I want to somehow be there for them, always, I know life doesn't work like that.

But I'm so thankful for these days I have been given with them.  For the privilege of being able to be with them in these days, even if they're numbered.  That's okay--the message of hope never dims.  What they learn about the Lord now will never change.  When their lives have changed, when their circumstances aren't what they always dreamed of, Jesus Christ will be there, the same yesterday, and today, and forever.

And that's a lot more than I say for myself, any day of the week.

A penny for your secret

For some reason, people often come up to me and tell me their life story. That's fine with me, I don't mind, but it's just interesting to me, because I don't usually feel comfortable telling total strangers things about me. I even hesitate before giving out my name. My first name! But no, I have people regularly share with me whatever is on their mind, be it their worst family dinner (one example: right after her husband died, one lady's daughter-in-law ruined their Thanksgiving dinner by announcing that she was leaving her husband. He didn't know about it until then), their plans for the next few years (those are less interesting, and usually have to do with owning mechanic shops or opening an art-supply store), or whatever else comes to mind (favorite time of year, best childhood memory, why they wish they had a different car). As I said, I find this stuff interesting.

But in all the things I've heard, I've never heard someone tell me "Now, I'm going to tell you a secret that I've never told anyone else." Maybe I've heard people's secrets (the beauty of it is, since I don't know them, I don't know which part they're telling me is a secret or common knowledge), but in general, I just think I hear lonely people finding an outlet for some words.

There's a project you may or may not be aware of, and whose website I won't direct you to, because there are a lot of rather icky secrets you shouldn't have to be exposed to, but it's called PostSecret. Some guy one time decided to get a post office box and have people mail him their secrets, ones that they've never before shared. Weird part is? They do. He's published several books, keeps an active blog, and gets many postcards from strangers, glad to have an outlet to share their secret.

The concept is compelling, this much is true. Being able to anonymously share a secret? What's not to like?

What brings this to mind is that the library near where I work (the one at which I want to get married) just did a PostSecret event, where you were supposed to submit secrets anonymously. The display hasn't gone up yet, but when I last talked to the librarian about it, they hadn't gotten many submissions. "Did you put a secret in?" I had to admit that I hadn't. In return I asked her about it, and she sheepishly said that she hadn't put one in, either.

So, if it's so cool, why hadn't we put in secrets? Well, I can't answer for her, but I know why I didn't. First of all, say I did have a cool secret. What if someone I knew saw it on the wall, and just somehow knew it was me? I don't have secrets of that caliber, truth be told, which is why I didn't even bother putting one in. Anything I could think to say (and I tried! I put thought into this!) was just... lame. I don't think it's because I live secret-free, because all who know me can attest to my distaste of sharing personal information, but there's no secret stewing inside of me. If you want to know something, you can ask. I might choose to withhold the information from you, but it's not because it's a big national secret, rather that I've chosen not to reveal that particular piece of information.

But we do love our secrets. I love to read other people's secrets, and I sometimes love when I have a little secret of my own. There are secrets I'd rather not have, but that's all part of what makes us human--carrying burdens for ourself, and for others, knowing that your secrets are safe. As safe as they can be, anyhow, in light of our human tendency to spout off at the mouth whenever possible.

But it's sort of a fun thing to do, to ponder what you'd share, if you dared. It's worth pondering, if for no other reason than to make yourself face the secrets you rarely think about. But all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do. Secrets are kind of meaningless, if you think about it. A nice perk of being a child of God--There's no awkward "well, we've known each other for a while, so I should probably tell you that...." conversation. He knows full well everything you're not telling Him.

We See Jesus

This past weekend (Easter, good times), there was a lot of talk about making Jesus the focus of our lives. And I needed that. It's so easy it get bogged down in the little things of life, and even easy to get bogged down in the small details of what this particular verse or doctrine might really mean. But you know what? We see Jesus.

He's the Author and Finisher of our faith. The One Who upholdeth all things with His power. The First, Last, Beginning, and the End. There's no variableness or shadow of dwelling in Him, He never changes.

When we stop to realize that, it puts things into perspective. The focus should be on Him, and Him alone. If I remember nothing else for the entirety of today, I still will have been encouraged, because I can remember the simple verse from Hebrews.

But we see Jesus.