Tonight, we had our staff banquet at work. It was a lot of fun, good food, lots of laughter. It's kind of our last "hurrah" before things pick back up and get in gear. Every year we have a theme as a staff. This year it's more of a song, but still a theme. It's "Love them Like Jesus" by Casting Crowns. (I'm blog illiterate, so I have no idea how to add music or links...help anyone?) My boss talked about how we need to love our kids like Jesus does, that this is evident in our actions. We also had a testimony by a friend of a former resident who talked about the impact that our agency had on her life.
I got an update on some of my kids (once Miss Ashley's kid, always Miss Ashley's kid) and my heart just broke. I wanted to run right to them and wrap them in my arms and love on them. Love the pain away. Love the lies away. Love the anger away. Love the disappointment away. Love the hate and hurt away. To love them like Jesus. These kids are so dear to me. It's one of the few times that I can say that it really got to me, that I "brought work home with me." I remember the sleepless nights, the feeling of total and utter helplessness, of my hands being tied, being unable to do anything, feeling sick at my stomach. I love these kids as if they were my own. I was in the trenches with them for nearly two years. Talk about seeing the good, the bad, and the really ugly. I cried with them, I laughed with them. (one of them even threw up in my car...now that's devotion. LOL)
I watched as my worst fear came true. I was helpless. Nothing at all that I could do. At times like this, is when I question my calling. Did I hear God right? Social Worker??? I'm not a miracle worker. I have to remember that God is in control and is sovereign, even when it doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't have to make sense to me. My job is to simply love them, love them like Jesus. So I'll love them when my heart hurts, I'll love them when they hurt. I'll love them like Jesus. Who do you need to love like Jesus?
4 comments:
Hey! I enjoyed your blog this evening....
I have camp coming up in less than 3 weeks...so I need to love my kids like Jesus... I am excited and nervous about it (my first year as a counselor)...
The week is a great week...and I always leave a bit changed from the kids.
S.
hey there ashley!
as for the links... it's been awhile since my blog has been on blogspot, but if they havent changed the dashboard too much in the last year, on your compose screen, at the top there should be icons (like for bold, italics, etc.) and one of those icons should look like a globe with a couple of links of chain in front of it. thats the one you use to put links in your post (get it, chain links... links). anyway, if you want to link to an article, you throw open a new tab, go to that article, copy the URL, go back to your compose screen, highlight the text you want to serve as your link, click tht icon i was just telling you about, paste the URL you just copied into the little dialog that's gonna pop up when you click the icon, then click "OK" and you now have a link on your post. clear as mud? (i'll have to go to my old blog and look at the compose screen before i get into how to embed a video into a blog post. well, this was purty fun and light for my first comment on your blog now, wasn't it...
okee, back again...
to embed a video into a blog post... go to the video you want to embed (like at youtube) and there on the youtube page you'll see a place next to the video that says "embed." you copy that text from the embed box, go back to your compose page and in the upper right corner of where you type in your post, you'll see a tab that says "edit html"... click that and your text will change over to show all your html code. you put your cursor in there wherever in the body of your post you want the video to show up and paste that embed code in there and then click back on the "compose" tab that's right next to the "edit html" tab and continue typing your l'il heart out. btw, while i was checking the compose page out for this i double checked the icon for inserting links, and it's right next to the icon for text color, which is right after the icons for bold and italics.
also you don't allow anonymous comments so i have to be signed in with my old blogger account to comment here, so the url that shows up links to my old blogger blog. you can link to my new blog from there, or you can just go to http://deancirelli.com
either way, it's awesome...
great post. i enjoyed reading it! and thanks for entering to win on my blog!
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