My Kentucky Kids

This Thanksgiving season I have thought a lot about family. Not just my family but the families the Lord has brought to my table of care. So I would I would share my thoughts: 

I love my family. I have an amazing wife of 31 years, three beautiful and successful daughters, one stinky son in-law and two gorgeous twin grand-babies! How can a heart and soul that is already SOOOOO full make room for more? Well, I have discovered it can because the power of love and compassion just enlarges your heart and soul to depths and width you never thought possible.

In May, we went from a family of eight to one whose numbers shift daily. On one residential campus, I can have a capacity of 48 and another campus a capacity of 46 of which neither take into account the numbers of children we have in therapeutic foster care and family preservation programs. Regardless of how many or where, I consider them MY kids. Why? Because thinking of them as my kids gives me the passion, energy and commitment to provide, protect and prepare them just as much as I did for my own biological kids.

Someone asked recently, “What is it that you exactly do for these children?” My answer was simple, “We help angels find their wings.” You see, when these precious children of God come to us, we find that their childhood innocence, naivety, idealism, unswerving trust, dreams and hope for tomorrow have been taken away. Survival for them is neither “what toy am I going to play with next” nor “wonder where we are going for family vacation this year?”

Through life experiences of being sexually abused by a loved one or “friend of the family”, abused physically (beaten, burned with cigarettes, etc.), sexually trafficked by a parent so that they could next their next drug fix, neglected and left to take care of self while mom or dad is passed out from drugs, become addicted to drugs because a parent fed it to them to sedate the child when they didn’t want to deal with them or some other more than imaginable trauma…they come to us with broken or completely ripped off wings!

Untreated trauma in the lives of the kids often manifest in negative behaviors, lack of boundaries, lack of respect for adults and others, and can ultimately lead to a diagnosable psychosis. Almost all of our kids exhibit substance abuse, highly aggressive behaviors, sexually acting out and self-harm/mutilation behaviors.

During our time with them we seek to give them a safe and healthy environment to reside, provide adults in their life that will not harm them, provide nutritious meals, provide therapeutic recreation activities, help them develop better coping and decision-making skills and eventually get to the root of the trauma they experienced. Providing a safe, healthy and secure environment for these kids is the first step in helping them adjust to community life and work the program that has been developed in concert with family, clinicians and campus staff.

This is hard work. This is heart-wrenching work. There are successes and there are failures. So in the spirit of It’s a Wonderful Life, a towering bell will be put on each campus and will only be rung for one occasion.

Each time we hear that bell ring on campus, we know that an angel has earned his/her wings and will be leaving as a graduate of our program and has been released to fly into a future full of health and hope! An Angel who has earned his/her wings, that’s what we are about...that is success!!