Broken.

Yesterday the job got to me.

After working a 24 hour shift, I called Scotty on my drive home to see what he was up to. Little did I know, I would barely be able to choke out a few sentences before breaking into full sobs.

Last time it happened I was on my way to my nieces 5th and 7th birthday’s last August. I was just finishing up my shift and one of the girls was in a real sour mood. Before I headed down to the office to do shift change-over, I said goodbye to her. She was sitting on the floor painting her toenails. She didn’t even look up at me and only mumbled something, so I walked over to where she was brooding and I placed my hand on the top of her head. I turned her face upwards, looked her in the eyes and said goodbye again (I always want the girls to know that I care, and that no bad attitude is going to change that).

In that moment, it hit me like a ton of bricks: I was staring into the eyes of a child.

It can be very difficult to see these kids as their actual ages because they’ve been through so much, and many of them live so hard (mainly as a result of what they’ve been through).

I managed to get through my debrief with the next staff, but as soon as my keys turned in the ignition, the tears started to pour down my face.

16 years old. She had lived on the street in Toronto with her grandmother as a small child. She doesn’t know mom (she believes she lives somewhere in the downtown eastside). Dad has a mental illness. She’d been forced into “recruiting” (putting other girls into the sex trade), and dealt with a lot of guilt over that. Two years ago her friend (whom she recruited) was picked up by a trucker and his son… her body was found three days later. She had been drugged and then raped at a party, and a month later a pregnancy test revealed that she was carrying a baby. She tried so hard to “clean up” so that she could keep it, but she had been struggling with alcoholism for a few years, and it got the better of her. It seemed like this poor kid had been kicked down before she had ever learned to walk, and the blows just kept coming.

My sister, Tracey, found me on her doorstep in a puddle of tears. I had to sit on my nieces bunkbeds for 40 mins before I could gain control over my emotions.

Last night. I huge sense of desperation came over me. As much as I want to solve their problems, I can’t. A lot of the time I feel like little more than a witness to their hell. I can be fairly good at “turning off” and just trusting God, but then it happens… I fall in love.

Scotty handles it like a pro. He doesn’t offer any advice or verbal encouragement except an “I love you” whispered into my ear as he hugs me. He lets me cry, and knows that there is nothing to say. So many of life’s problems and pains cannot be reduced to words.

Sometimes it is hard to trust, but I am comforted by the fact that God will be there alongside them long after they move out, that His heart has broken for them before mine ever did, and he won’t give up on them. My love for these girls is but a glimpse of His and my role in their lives will be that too.

I don’t have the answers. I can’t see the bigger picture. I am just as confused and frusterated by the inequalities in life as anyone else, but the tears dried last night as they always have in the past… and I take comfort in living it one day at a time.