a confession and a true story

I feel like I'm a little shriveled, dried up blogger right now and I'm certainly not feeling very funny.

Actually, I have felt like crying all day long...............hhhmmmmm, I think I'll quote my lovely sister Kris right now "Trish, your period will be starting in 3 days." (she says that to me every month on the day I call her bawling about something. And guess what? She is always right!). In an attempt to keep it real here we go anyhow:

First my confession: My lovely friend Mara is making me do this. Yeah, she totally called me on it this afternoon while we were standing in the parking lot of our chiropractor chatting about the first day of school. So (just for you Mara) here is my confession:

Remember this post? Yep, my Blog Around the World feature post.

WEEEELLLLLLLL,

I was one of those PTA ladies standing there with my hand opened flat, ready and willing to accept the money.

It is all about the kids you know.

And besides, that post wasn't so much about the PTA as much as the process.

Oh yeah, and there really is not a band-aid usage fee...........yet.

Since I'm at it, Ben didn't get the IT teacher. He did however get the teacher he wanted and I am very happy with his teacher assignment also, so I guess that means we got our IT teacher.

Ben declared the first day of third grade 'AWESOME'.

What more could a mom ask for?

Now the true story: there is a little boy, we'll call him J. He and Ben went to Kindergarten together and the summer after kindergarten we discovered that J lived just around the corner from us. This discovery came because J would show up at our house at 9 am in the morning to play and would often times not leave until well past dinner. If we had to run errands or do anything away from home J would just head out to another neighbor kids house until we got back. This little boy was SIX years old. After a few days of this I started asking J questions. I was trying to figure out how a six year old boy could leave home in the morning, not return until evening and never be missed. Well it turns out that J, his teenage brother and his mom lived with his grandma and grandpa. Both grandparents worked full time and his mom was working a full time job AND a part-time job in attempts to get on her feet. J also told me that his dad "was in jail in Minnesota because my mom caught him doing bad things to me and my brother." So this left J in the daily care of his 15 year old brother who had much better things (read: play HALO all day) to do than take care of his little brother. So J wandered the neighborhood. He was a great kid and really was not a bother to have around. The few times I spoke to a grown-up in his household, no one seemed to care who I was. At one point that summer I even called the boys' kindergarten teacher to see if she thought this was a situation that needed reported to DSHS. I decided it wasn't because J was not "neglected" just left in the care of a couldn't care less teenager, and besides what good would it do to have the rest of his family torn apart?

The boys ended up in the same first grade class and one day J told me he wasn't going to be at our school anymore because he and his mom and brother were moving to their own apartment. I was happy to hear that his mom had been able to do that, but sad to think that he could possibly fall through the cracks elsewhere. We didn't see or hear from J again.

Until today.

I was at Ben's school when I saw him standing in line to go into his class. He instantly recognized me (good thing, seeings as I had fed him for three month!) and smiled a shy smile. I said "J you're back! Are you living at your grandparents again?" He replied, "yeah, my mom died."

And that's all I got from him before his line headed into the classroom.

Seriously.

Please pray for this little boys whose eight short years have been marked with more turmoil and strife than he deserves.

Please also pray for us as we figure out how to minister and serve him.