sometimes it's hard.

Today was movie and pajama day… the girls got to wear their pajamas and we watched movies before and after lunch. And despite having to tell them to quiet down a good bit, it was an okay day.

Until time to go home. There was a fight.

Casie and I split it up.

An angry mom comes in and we get preached at. First, we were being blamed and lots of raised voices. After she vented a while, she came around and was telling us how it wasn’t our fault by the time she left. Long story…

It is so incredibly draining. These girls are constantly on edge, constantly fighting, constantly disregarding anything we say to them.

And then knowing what they go home to – the poverty, the lack of love, the lack of discipline… it doesn’t surprise me. It all seems so hopeless sometimes.

Kay, who has written a book on inner city missions, says this is the worst she has ever seen it and doesn’t know where to go with it. How do you combat what they have grown up in and live in constantly? The only way to do it is to be with them all the time, which is not possible.

The school systems stink, after school programs that the schools began after Katrina stink, their home lives stink.

How do parents not love their children? I simply cannot fathom or understand it. And it makes me so incredibly angry.

And one of my girls told me this morning that she found out she has gonorrhea… she is 12. And let’s put it this way, I am not sure how accurate her information she gave me was, and I’m not sure how she got it, but I am one hundred percent sure that it was not from anything she did willingly.

This is the hopeless.

This is what I know I have been called to.

Kay and I were talking today, and one thing she shared in our conversation was this:

She remembers sitting a neighborhood after Katrina, looking up and down the street and only seeing houses flooded, full of water. Sitting there, she asked the Lord where she was to go from here. It seemed overwhelming and hopeless, but the Lord spoke to her and told her – maybe she couldn’t fix them all, but she could start with one. One at a time – that is how the difference is made.

Looking at the hopelessness and seeing that task ahead, I have to remind myself of that constantly.