this weekend I...

...thought about cutting most of my hair off.
...decided not to.
...went to church, and decided that whatever the girl's name is that sings at Newspring is my hero.
...stalled for a birthday party by going grocery shopping.
...went to my second NeedToBreathe concert in three weeks. It was incredible.
...realized that I am loved more than anyone could ever deserve.
...made a decision to always make people around me feel like my friends made me feel yesterday.
...fell in love with a place that will (with any luck) be the love of the next three years of my life.
...remembered why I want to adopt children one day.
...wished I could adopt them all right now.
...understood how vital love is to life, especially the life of a child, and how the lack of it can leave you broken.

This weekend we went to Helping Hands, an emergency foster home where children stay immediately after they are pulled out of abusive/neglectful homes (when their situation is considered too serious to wait) until they can find a more permanent place to send them. I understood that it was important, and I was prepared to work and wash buses and play with kids all morning and run around until I dropped.

I was not prepared for a seven-year-old to ask me if she can call me Mom, since hers didn't love her.

I was not prepared to be told that I had to pull away from a very confused little girl who just wanted someone to hold her hand, because we couldn't get "too attached" to them, or that I probably shouldn't hug a child who might not have ever gotten a real hug in her life.

I wasn't prepared for it, nor am I prepared to go back. I won't ever be prepared to explain to that seven-year-old why she can't come home with me, or why she feels the need to physically beat herself up when she gets angry because that's all she's ever known from anyone who was angry with her. I don't ever want to be too prepared for that. I'm not prepared to go back but I'm going anyway, knowing that those kids can't stay for more than four months and I'll be upset every time one of them has to leave. Knowing that I can't let them climb all over me like normal crazy active kids do or grab my hand or get "too attached." If you saw and heard what I did, you'd go back too.

I'm going to adopt at least one of those kids one day. Not them, but kids just like them. I know it's hard, and I know they're trouble, and I know they have way too much pain for me to fix and they have anger problems and they'll probably drive me crazy and maybe it won't ever do them any good. But it might. Love is an incredibly powerful thing, whether we fully understand it or not. And I know that the love I've been shown through grace and through the indescribable people I have the privilege of knowing has been the only thing that has ever had a chance of healing the pain I've acquired in my life--I don't think I'm allowed to be selfish with that. I've wondered for a long time why I wanted to adopt one day; now, years later, I know why. There's more than enough reasons, and I met a lot of them yesterday. They let me play on their playground.