HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

I was at a dinner party the other night where I overheard part of a conversation. It was not intentional to eavesdrop, but my ears couldn’t help but perk up when I heard the snippet “…so we took her in and raised her as our own.”


It’s nice to know in this day and age of the ‘what’s-in-it-for-me’ mentality there are still people who will do just that. Seeing a child (or even siblings) in need, there are those among us who will step up and offer their homes, their heart and their wallets. Most of the time this is done on the fly, off the cuff, and under the radar of child protective services.  The children are never formally adopted, but become part of a family.

I’m sure this is nothing new. I first became aware of such a phenomenon through a friend whose mother had been taken in by a family during the Great Depression. She and her sister lived with a neighbor for many years, never knowing what happened to her mother and father. Perhaps they were in prison, or thought it was the best thing for her and her sister to have a new family. They never knew and died calling their neighbors Uma and Dada.

I know of three other circumstances where lives were changed in countless ways. Two concerned blood relatives, and another was a husband and wife with no children who decided to help a co- worker out. Just like that. They raised their ‘daughter’ from age 7 to young womanhood, without notarized documents or legal papers. The contracts were between heart to heart, and have never been broken. They experienced the sleepless nights of chicken pox and mumps, suffered through the teenage angst of dating and late curfews. All this was done while Mom visited on the weekends. No contract, no money exchanged. Just love.

Sometimes it’s a blood relative who offers the help, and other times its complete strangers or a friend of a friend who heard about some kid who needs help. The most recent example is the movie “The Blind Side” where a Christian family down south takes in a homeless teenager and who later becomes a NFL star. A heartwarming and true story, the circumstances provided just enough drama to make a great movie. Hollywood knows how to play our heartstrings, and overlooks the dark side of what can happen.

Not all stories are as easily packaged. There are times when the ‘help’ is not needed or even wanted. The attempt to help is really meant as control, to make the parent(s) feel they are incapable of raising the child, or are “doing it all wrong.” It’s a slippery slope to be sure, and just as heartbreaking as if they had lost their child at birth. They are never the same and it doesn’t help the child.  Worse still are those who do it as a misplaced sense of altruism, or a calculated act to be repaid later at their request and in the manner of their choosing.

So my thought this Monday morning is to be thankful for those people who take on such responsibility in the spirit of love and compassion. They stand with an open heart and no strings attached. Touching the life of a child who has their arms open waiting for a faceless hug, it surely reserves their place in heaven for as long as we need them here on earth.