The Ones the World Forgot

This morning, a two year old son of an NFL player was taken off life support and died soon after. This two year old was a victim of child abuse allegedly by his mother's boyfriend. He died of blunt trauma to the head. This story is filling up the media, as it should be. However, the sad part is that this is only one child who happens to be related to someone famous. There are so many tragic stories that don't end in death, although many come very close. And truthfully, death sometimes isn't even the worst ending to a story-- sometimes living through the abuse only to suffer it again and again and again and again... that's almost worse.

Something else happened today. In Chattanooga, a teenager who had been in the foster care system for seven years was adopted. He is now 16 and was granted a new life of sorts in a courtroom this morning. In the span of one morning, he received a new name, a family, a place to go home to at Christmas with his own family one day, and a birthright of belonging somewhere.

I'm not certain, but I think the first stories outnumber this story by about five to one.

Two weeks ago, we held our 10th annual retreat for middle school foster children. It's such a different time than our summer camp for elementary kids in foster care and I really felt it very acutely this year. I sat in the boys' service and looking around me at these boy-men... I saw them listen intently to Kevin's message and considered their futures. I watched that afternoon as they played in the field with the male staff members... one pair playing soccer, another throwing horseshoes, yet another tetherball, and a big group playing football... So many of these boys have no males in their home, no positive role model to look up to. You could feel their desperation for these men to be proud of them, to clap them on the back and tell them they had done well.

I listened to the girls talk to each other about school and friends. I knew without asking the struggle so many of them probably have socially, the way they feel isolated in their classes and among their peer groups. See, I don't know what it feels like to not feel wanted. I don't know what it would be like to seek acceptance from all the wrong people because you never got it from the most important people in your life.

The sad facts regarding foster care? 80% of the prison population was once in foster care and girls in foster care are 600% more likely than the general population to become pregnant before the age of 21. This is not to blame the foster care system or say that these are bad kids. They aren't. They are kids who have very little chance in life unless something dramatically turns around for them.

The turn could be in a mentor or a program like the Boys and Girls Club. It could be an experience like Royal Family, where they learn that people truly care about them. It could be one of those phenomenal foster homes or a group home that nurtures them like Tennessee Baptist. It could be a teacher who sees a potential in them that needs to be cultivated or a church that emphasizes orphan care and urges its members to involve themselves in foster care and adoption. It could be a social worker who pushes and fights and claws for them, against all odds, and for very little compensation or even thank you's.

Whatever it is, I pray it over them tonight and every day. I was overwhelmed this year as I looked at the middle schoolers at our retreat because it struck me that this is where the shift happens. Those kids in the summer get my heart because I fear what could happen to them and so desire to protect their vulnerable selves. These kids are at the point where their future is being determined. I worry more about what they will do themselves rather than what might be done to them. Boys, especially in certain geographic areas, will be heavily recruited by gangs. Girls will be at high risk for sexually active behavior, bringing with it pregnancy and STD's. Both will be in great danger of dropping out of school in the next few years.

We did something new this year at Royal Connection. We got paper lanterns and the kids wrote a hope or dream on them, then we lit them and sent them off into the night sky. It was beautiful and moving to consider the symbolism of the whole thing. They, who are so weighted down by this world and its difficulties, even at a young age, watching their dreams and hopes for the future rise above present circumstances.

I know what we do at Royal Family matters. And it is in moments like these that I know that we are making a difference in the life of one the world has forgotten.