A Long Distance

Last night, I facilitated a closing session for a family that has decided to adopt two boys. The kids have been with them for years and years. Combined, the kids have made suicidal and homicidal threats, dressed in women’s clothing, putting holes in walls,  put plastic bags over their heads, had secret trysts with mentally ill family, stolen from countless people and places and hurled untold insults and invectives against them and one another.

And then, last year, one of the kids sexually offended against a family member.

It is a major miracle that the foster parents’ marriage has survived, that the kids have stayed in their home and that now, they are making a legal commitment.

In honor of them, and of Friday, in honor of our little trip to Asheville and in honor of the one year anniversary of my marriage to my wife and also, of course, in honor of my own future as a foster parent, I’d like to leave you with a quote:

“A mother is likened unto a mountain spring that nourishes the tree at its root, but one who mothers another’s child is likened unto a water that rises into a cloud and goes a long distance to nourish a lone tree in the desert.”

– Talmud