I Carry Them in My Pocket

I married well. I married a woman who is incredibly dedicated to her family and yet manages to work with foster kids and their families to make their lives better. Her passion is family, she just happens to include a whole bunch of "our kiddos" (foster kids) in that family.

Foster care and management is difficult work. Even with a part time job, she's often coming back from a late night visit or placement and then doing paperwork until midnight. She has to slog through mountains of documentation, deal with overworked caseworkers, foster parents trying to do their best and doing her best to help shattered kids - kids who come from hard places and are difficult to reach and understand, for whom she has infinite patience, grace and warmth. They also end up having really unique challenges.

We were in our local grocery store last week. "I want to check out the toys before we go" she said. Well, 'tis the season. She went to the Lego section and started checking out the smaller sets, I assumed for our youngest child who has never met a box he didn't love. I started trying to figure out just how much the markup for Lego Star Wars vs regular Lego actually was, when she says "Max carries 3 Lego people in his pocket. He told his foster mom that way, if he's picked up from school and taken somewhere else, he has something to remember them by."

I paused my calculations. "Come again?"

"Max. His mom had no interest in his life, his dad dropped him off with some friends four years ago and disappeared. He has no concept of family and he's been in and out of several homes, usually with no warning. He likes the people he's with now, so every morning he puts his Lego people in his pocket in case he isn't allowed to come back for them."

Now, understand this ain't my first rodeo when it comes to awful kid stories. Shop talk among former child welfare investigators and child protective services workers is terrifying for the rest of us. A Tuesday for them is probably in the top 5 worst days ever for the rest of us. I had heard all the awful stories. But this just sucker punched me. The thought that every morning, this little seven year old carefully placing these figures in his pocket so he can have some anchor to this present that the rest of us so readily take for granted just made me sick. In retrospect, part of it is that I've seen my boys play with those same figures and know that they could always just put them back on the shelf and come back to them later. Max can't.

So in this season of giving, as you daily put the things in your pocket that connect you to your loved ones, as you leave the home you know you're coming back to, give a thought to Max. Think of the kids who all too often throw the meager contents of their lives into a black shopping bag to go to the next unknown. How are they hanging on to what they love? How are we hanging on to who we love? What belongs in your pocket?

Together We Rise.