my job

a post about my job?  sounds simple.  but here's the truth: it's a little bit hard to pin down exactly what i do.  but i'll do my best.  :)


I work for Safe Families for Children of Central Indiana.  Check out their website, blog, facebook and twitter for more information!  :)

Short Version:  We take children in crisis situations and place them in loving, Christian homes.  We are an alternative to foster care or DCS where the children are taken from their parents.  Rather we work with the biological parents and allow them to retain parental custody.  Sometimes we only have the children for a couple of days (if, for instance, we were providing respite for a tired single mother).  Other times the children stay with us for several months at a time.  In the meantime, the child is being loved on and cared for by a volunteer family (we call them Safe Families).  These family integrate them as one of their own while reminding the child that they will return to their parents.  The families pray for the parents of the children and set up visits between the parents and children.  We visit the children in the homes, arrange visits, act as a liaison between biological families and Safe Families, provide support, etc.

Long Version:  I work with people.  That means that each day is a beautiful mess.

Some days it seems that all I see is the mess.  Broken people.  Hopeless situations.  Impossible barriers.  We spend several hours getting a plan in place only to have someone call it off.  But this is not the whole story  There is more.

There is beauty in the mess.

There is beauty in seeing a mom care of another's child as her own.  There is beauty is watching volunteers spend hours working on projects.  There is beauty in seeing one family envelope another in love.  There is beauty woven in and around this mess.

The question is, will I enter the mess in order to find the beauty?

The answer:  I must.  I must because Someone else entered the horrific, decrepit mess of my life.  And He makes beauty out of my life. 

He is a God who erases statistics - I love that about Him!  Those hopeless situations I wrote of?  He brings hope...He makes the impossible possible!  He knows about pain and suffering...the Bible says he was a "man of sorrows, acquainted with grief."  He can be near and dear to these families in need.  He knows what it is like to have a child ripped away and to watch them suffer. 

This Man brings beauty out of my oh-so-messy-life.  These families that I work with?  This Man wants to bring beauty out of their oh-so-messy-life.  And He wants to do the same to yours.

So my job is indeed a beautiful mess.

But I'm really just following His example.  :)