My heart has changed...

Did you ever read something that really hit home and made you think... "UGH...I really blew it."?

I've been reading Slice of Humble's Compassion Series (Click on highlighted for part 1).

Each part of the series got me thinking in a different way. (Yeah, that smoke you smell - ignore it, that's me.)

Then it hit me.  No matter how hard I try, sometimes I lack compassion.

I have had a huge change of heart in a situation where I KNOW I was judgmental & I did not show an ounce of compassion.  While in some areas, I feel justified by my thoughts and feelings - there does come a time when people sometimes need to be cut a break.  Even for the REALLY BAD stuff.

The short one has been with us for over a year now.  When kids come to our home, we are given enough information on a situation in order to provide proper care.  Whatever it may be; emotional, physical, mental...whatever.

When the kids are placed with us, I am already on guard.  Their parent could be the sweetest thing on the planet - but I go by what I'm told.  When it's not good, I form the absolute worst mental image of the parent there may be.  I've been duped by a parent in the past, so no one gets cut a break with me without proving up.  Compassion isn't always easy to come by.

These kids sometimes come to us broken in more ways that I am able to say in print, making my heart and head feel nothing but contempt for these parents.

How could a mom / a parent allow bad things to happen to their children? What do they see when they look at their beautiful child, that allows them to ignore their paternal instincts to protect?

I didn't understand and ya know what, I didn't want to.

Yet the light in the kids' eyes never seem to dim.  They never stop loving.

When it came time for us to actually meet a parent, I didn't want to.  I knew I had to - but I'd rather they go on & do whatever it was they needed to do in there little lives.  Leave the short one with us and just go away.

That option was not afforded to us.  We had to go.  We had to face the mom.

...She was not what I expected.

Instead of being faced with this abusive horror of a woman - I saw a broken young woman.  A woman, who on so many levels, was defeated.  Someone who actually loved her child and was in many ways a child herself.  Someone at rock bottom with no one in her corner.  No one to help her. Someone with nothing.

This broken woman before us told stories of the short one with a smile & twinkle in her eye, amid tears of  pain and guilt for parenting gone horribly wrong.  Before us was a woman who had nothing left to give.

And there it was....compassion.

She doesn't get a pass for her mistakes or the things she allowed to happen.  That's on her.

She does deserve forgiveness.

Which is what I gave her...
As I was reminded the words which were the basis of another post,
"What if you were judged forever on the worst mistake you'd ever made?"

My heart has changed as I now think...What do I carry around?

What is it that I may have done that would be lifted from my heart, from my conscience if someone simply said -

You're forgiven.

...And showed me compassion.

Thank you for reading my blog!

~Jenn