Loving My Neighbor

That was the topic at church yesterday....You should love your neighbor as yourself. It was odd timing, I thought, because all week I had been struggling with that very idea. This was all sparked by reading Little Bit's initial court report, the one that explains in detail why she was removed from her home, what happened to her, what someone failed to do for her....Reading court reports is hard. It brings me to tears every single time. Most days, I can compartmentalize things in my mind and convince myself that my children's stories are from a bad made-for-TV drama. In reality, though, their stories are real. Attached to those stories are the people who were supposed to care for them....my "neighbors". And so I find myself searching for the compassion I have felt for the families of previous kiddos. Maybe it is ok to have both feelings, though. Maybe I can feel compassion for a mother who doesn't have her child with her but still hate the reason why. Or maybe loving my neighbor is done by loving my neighbor's children while she can't.