Never let go.

I have been struggling for the past couple weeks with my career choice. As I am sure most of you know, I started my social work field placement at the end of August. I am an intern at an agency in Milwaukee that offers support to parents and families. Most of the families who come are at a higher risk of potentially abusing their children because of stress factors like poverty, single parenthood, mental illness or disabilities. Some participants are ordered by the court to attend parenting classes, or support groups in order to get back custody of their children. 

I was super excited to get this placement. Undergrad placements dealing with families are somewhat rare, and since I want to work with children and their parents one day, it was a perfect fit. 

I always thought of the issue of child abuse, or neglect as pretty straight forward. If parents abused their kids, give the kids to another family. Children abusers were pretty much the worst of the worse in my book. And people who sexually abused children might as well be hung in the public square. My excessive love of Law and Order: SVU only made that opinion stronger.
Then I started working at my agency. A part of our agency is supervised visits. Basically I take notes on visits that happen between non-custodial parents ad their kids or between parents who have had their children removed from their custody by the state. I try to stay impartial as I watch a parent's heart break or a toddler who cries as he is driven away.
Slowly I have begun to feel the hard feelings slip away as my heart tries to understand the lives of those parents. I have began to think that maybe the issue is not as straight forward and easy to execute as I once thought. I have began to wonder if I want to do this for the rest of my life. And, after seeing some hopeless cases, I have started to wonder if the pain is worth it.
These were the thoughts I was having last week, as I drove home from my internship. I was struggling with my anger that some people who appeared to by trying to succeed just keep messing up. It made me sad, because these people were clearly making the same mistakes over and over again, and I want them so badly to change that it was making ME emotionally tired. I felt made because it seemed that I cared more about their lives than they do. And then a horribly overplayed Christian song on the radio broke through my thoughts. The song was, "Never Let Go". I heard it like it was the first time I ever had.
The only reason I am not an abusive, alcoholic parent was because God hadn't given up on me. He hadn't given up on my mom when she was completely living for herself. He hadn't given up on my Dad, whose intellectual workaholic self had blocked him out for so long. And he had absolutely no intention of giving up on these people I am now working with, or the people I will work with. He sees EVERY singly mistake and the horrible consequences that follow. Every single moment millions of people He Loves are hurt, hurt others and hurt themselves. And EVERY single time that happens He is yelling... "Alright, I believe in you! You can change! We can do this! Let me help you! We can do this together! Here I am, let me help!" And time and time again we don't listen to Him and we fail and then it starts again... "You can do it this time! Just let me help..."
I was reminded of Peter, Jesus' friend. On the day Jesus needed him the most he had one of the most epic betrayals in history. Peter said, "No, I don't know Jesus." (his best friend) not once, not twice, but three times. The next time Jesus saw him he didn't say, "Well, you blew it. That's it. I give up on your sorry a**." Jesus told Peter he would build his entire church in Peter. Jesus even gave him a name that means rock. And look what Peter did. Maybe knowing how much his best friend believed in him helped him accomplish all he did in his life.

Now, I am by no means Jesus. But, in all I do I will strive to follow the examples he set for me.

So, maybe this is the perfect career for me. Not the easiest, but the most perfect.