Timeline photos
I know a husband and wife that are taking in 2 additional kids into their family. These are very young kids.
They have 2 elementary-aged kids of their own.
These are not wealthy people. In fact, I think finances are already difficult for them.
These 2 kids are from a family member who is addicted to drugs.
I keep coming back to this Anne Frank moral dilemma. “Would you take them in?”
These real-world moral questions are heavy for me because people have literally called me things like: the hands and feet of Jesus.
Yet I’m not at all sure I would have been brave enough to take in Anne Frank or these 2 kids. And it’s not like there is some threat to my life for taking in these kids like there would be with Anne Frank. It mostly would just be a disruption to my regularly scheduled programming.
But here’s the thing. I don’t need to tell you who this family is that is doing this amazing act of giving. It happens all the time. Every homeless woman who gives birth that I’ve known has had a family member take in their kid.
People are making these incredible sacrifices to help other people ALL. THE. TIME.
But yet, they are a small minority. Most of us turn away from giving and sacrificing for someone who isn’t in our nuclear family. And maybe that’s ok too.
Anne Frank died. Making that huge sacrifice didn’t really matter to Anne Frank. (And yet it’s one of the most famous stories of the holocaust.)
How likely is it that these 2 kids won’t struggle with addiction and probably mental illness due to being passed around and possibly their genetic mental illness that their mom probably has?
What good is going to come of any of it?
What’s the answer? Protect yourself and your own kids and spouse? Or give more to the community?
I know one thing that seems to be true: lower income people seem to do this work more than upper income people? What’s that about?
(This picture is just a stock photo of a kid. I don’t know him.)