Out of Control: Part 1

I like being in control.

(That wild cackling you hear?  That would be my family laughing their heads off at that little bit of understatement.)

Now I’ve lived long enough and had enough things happen that I know that control is merely an illusion and that we all live right on the razor’s edge of chaos at any given moment.  But still, most of the time I still operate under the illusion that given the right tools and circumstances I can make most things turn out right.

So it appears that God is feeling the need to teach me some lessons in this area.

JD has been involved on and off before and in the early years of our marriage with a national mentoring program.  Once we were here and settled in and knew that we’d be sticking around for the long haul he felt nudged to get involved with this program again.  After a long application process he was matched up with a little 7 year old boy.

In the interest of protecting his privacy, I’m not going to go into all the details of his story.  But the short version is that he lost both parents in a very horrific way on his fourth day of kindergarten.  This left him in the care of his very loving but devastated grandmother who suddenly found herself not only grieving the loss of her only child and daughter but suddenly being the full time parent to a 5 year old.  Add to the picture that she also suffers from a physical ailment which keeps her from moving very quickly or easily.

And they have no one else.

No one.

No family.

For several months we have been having “Sam” at our house.  He’s been hanging out with us and we’ve been getting to know him.  The girls have been so good at welcoming him into our home and our family.

So when his grandmother needed some medical procedures performed we were happy to offer to have him for the time she would need help.  She thought it would be about 4-5 days.  I knew it would be longer and we were fine with that.

We had him for two weeks.  It was both two of the most rewarding and challenging weeks of our lives.

The lessons we learned?  Stay tuned.