“There are no concerns.”

I stared at the paper, but the words didn’t change.  “There are no concerns.”  There it was, my handwriting in black ink on the medical chart.  In medical language, it means that the patient isn’t sick.  They don’t feel bad.  There is nothing wrong.  Normally that is a good thing.  But this time, as I sat filling out yet another medical form for yet another child entering the emergency foster shelter, I found myself overtaken with emotion.

                                               Anger.  Disgust.  Frustration.  Sadness.  Worry. 

I wrote that there were no concerns.  But that isn’t true.  I have concerns.  I have lots of concerns.  Concerns about these children.  About what they will think about and what they will feel when the lights go out at night and the shelter is quiet.  About where they will live next, and whether the family who takes them in will treat them as their own or merely as transients.  About whether their social worker will get to know them as human beings or just by a case number.  About when they will see their family again, and whether that reunion will be filled with joy or anger or fear. 

We should be concerned.  And may that concern fuel our actions.  May it compel us to get out of our comfortable lives where most of our concern is for ourselves, and to be concerned for someone else for a change.

I stopped watching the weather forecast a month ago.  That is when the weatherman said the dreaded words:

heat dome

In Oklahoma, we know what that means.  It means that a high pressure system is sitting right on top of us.  It means that the atmosphere has a lid right over our heads, a lid that allows the sun’s rays to find their way in but never out.  It means that you can fry an egg on the sidewalk, or cook dinner on your car hood if you wanted to. 

Heat.  Pressure.

His shoulders slumped slightly, as if he carried the world on them.  Quiet at first, but when I asked about his younger siblings, he spoke up, telling humorous stories about his attempts to keep them somewhat out of trouble.  The conversation shifted to his dad, and the quiet returned.  Alcoholic, violent, angry.  When dad was awake, the kids hid.  In their rooms, the garage, under the porch.  One day a neighbor saw the kids playing and brought them some lemonade.  A conversation started.  Over time, they felt safe.  Then one night, when they needed a hiding place, they ran to the neighbor’s house.  There are new challenges now, but no hiding.  No drunken rage.

Some kids feel heat and pressure every single day.  It doesn’t go away when the seasons change.  But it can be relieved when we are willing to be a refuge, a safe place for those around us who need it.

Will you be a refuge?

Recently I was asked to speak about the health needs of foster kids at a conference. As part of the preparation, the conference planners asked me to send them a bio, a paragraph about who I am, that they could use to introduce me. I quickly jotted down the standard stuff – pediatrician, faculty at a medical school, medical director for foster care, mom – and sent it off. But over the last few days, I have been haunted by some questions:

“Who am I? What is the first thing I want someone to be told about me? If what I am about could be summed up in a word or phrase, like an epitaph on a tombstone, what would it be?”

I love my job. And I love my role as a wife and a mom (well, at least when the kids are behaving…). And I can’t even begin to explain how much I love working with foster kids. But the truth is, that all of those answers are incomplete. They are a little hollow. Today, though, I found the right words, the right phrase.

I am an investor. An investor in people. An investor in the possibility that tomorrow can look different than today, that under the right circumstances a person’s life course can be altered in a positive way. An investor in the idea that a few people can change the world, and that maybe I can help push those few people along.

Investing is costly. It takes my energy, my money, my time, my reputation. It is also risky. Sometimes things don’t go the way I want them to. Sometimes people aren’t willing to be invested in. Sometimes they don’t seem to believe in themselves as much as I believe in them. But when we choose to invest in people, the dividend that is paid is priceless, more precious than anything else in the world.

      So if I was writing my bio, or designing my tombstone, I think I would want it to simply read:

Deb Shropshire, Investor in Humanity

What would you want your tombstone to read?

It was a balmy 95 degrees on the San Antonio river walk. As the boat drifted along its half-hour sightseeing voyage, I took in the sights, smells, and sounds of a city that was founded a century before the American Revolution. The captain was commenting on points of interest, and then he said something that caught my ear. He said, “Here in San Antonio we don’t like to get rid of things that are old. We prefer to rehabilitate them and make them into something that is new.”

The rest of the tour was lost on me, as my mind’s focus shifted to foster kids. I thought of a girl I met once. At 16, she was used to taking care of herself. From the few stories she shared, I knew that life had been chaos, and I suspected that what she spoke barely scratched the surface of what childhood was actually like for her. Her family tree included generations of substance abuse and domestic violence. I asked how she coped, and she laughed a little. “I used to smoke 2 packs of cigarettes a day – started when I was 7. By 10 I was drinking alcohol every day, and by 12 I was on meth. But all that is in the past now – been clean for a year.”

My usual poker face must have failed me, because she laughed again. “How?” is all I could muster. She went on to tell me how most people just saw her as yet another chapter in the old story of a broken family – a kid with no hope and no future. But then she met a teacher who was different. Who paid extra attention to her. Offered to help her after school so she could catch up with her peers. Believed in her. Told her how she could be different from her family history, how she could be somebody new.

I leaned back in my chair, unsure what to even say. The truth is that sometimes I see teens in foster care who I don’t believe are fixable. Who I don’t spend much time with because the yield seems so low, so unlikely to be worth anything of value. Who I don’t love as much as I should because I don’t think it will matter. And yet the truth is, we are not in this field to throw out kids, to deem them as old and useless, but rather to REdeem them, to give them opportunities to be made new and useful.

I need new eyes today – ones that can see what is possible.