There’s a parable I love about a village near a river. One day, someone noticed a baby floating in the river so the villagers pulled it out and cared for it. The next day, it happened again. And again. And again. One day, as they were pulling another baby out, someone started walking upstream. One of the villagers yelled to her, “Where are you going? We need help pulling these babies out!” She looked back and said, “I’m going to stop whoever is throwing them in there in the first place.”
I’ve been reminded time and time again in the past week just how much brokenness exists in our community and it’s utterly devastating.
Parents fighting so unbelievably hard to reunify with their kids and relapsing because of all they’ve been through. Kids dealing with the worst kind of horror with their mental health because of their trauma. People unable to have healthy, genuine relationships because they’ve never experienced real love or support.
Full transparency, I hit my emotional limit last night and could do nothing but cry thinking about it all. Not only was I heartbroken, I was angry. I prayed, “God, why couldn’t someone have been upstream for these families? Where were you 5, 10, 15 years ago when they needed someone to fight alongside them? Why couldn’t I have met them then and at least tried to help?”
And that’s when it clicked. We can’t go upstream from the brokenness happening around us right now, but right now we’re upstream from 5, 10, 15 years from now. Today it might feel like all we’re doing is pulling babies out of the water, but we can’t forget we’re also stopping others from being thrown in…and that’s a battle worth fighting every single day.
Will you join me in praying for the families that gather on our campus every Tuesday night for supervised visits? Pray that the generational cycle stops here, that their future looks different, that they know they are loved and championed by some strangers-turned-family in a church in Oronogo, and that they’re all home together soon.
Contact Maggie
