By Ester W.
It’s Christmas morning. You can hardly contain your excitement. A bubbling impulse to tear downstairs and rip open your presents overcomes you, and you dash into your parents’ bedroom down the hall, screaming, “Wake up! It’s Christmas!”
But not far from you is a foster care center. The children are just getting up, and perhaps they are smiling as well. And while you devour present after present after present, these children are handed a few unwrapped toys: a teddy bear, a train, a coloring book.
These children have no mother to hug for the new doll, no father to thank for the baseball bat; they have but each other: a swarming mass of hundreds of kids. Even in this condition, no child complains or whines because the doll isn’t exactly what she wanted. Still, they feel a twinge of sorrow. How couldn’t you, if you weren’t with your family on Christmas? They do not feel they are a part of anyone’s holiday, not on anyone’s Christmas list. And to put things in perspective, an average 800,000 children experience foster care every year—40,000 of them, infants. These children endure about three different foster care placements, and 20,000 never escape the system.
So what can we do? Sure, we could buy them gifts or donate money, but what would really make these children cheerful is a visit from a family like you. Imagine how warm his little heart will be when you shower him with the love and attention he is seldom given. Imagine her face light up when you promise she is cared for, she is special and beautiful and smart and important.
So this Christmas, find a little room in your heart to visit a foster care center—or any place with people in need—and make someone else’s Christmas jolly.
© 2016 Ester W. All rights reserved.
These children have no mother to hug for the new doll, no father to thank for the baseball bat; they have but each other: a swarming mass of hundreds of kids. Even in this condition, no child complains or whines because the doll isn’t exactly what she wanted. Still, they feel a twinge of sorrow. How couldn’t you, if you weren’t with your family on Christmas? They do not feel they are a part of anyone’s holiday, not on anyone’s Christmas list. And to put things in perspective, an average 800,000 children experience foster care every year—40,000 of them, infants. These children endure about three different foster care placements, and 20,000 never escape the system.
So what can we do? Sure, we could buy them gifts or donate money, but what would really make these children cheerful is a visit from a family like you. Imagine how warm his little heart will be when you shower him with the love and attention he is seldom given. Imagine her face light up when you promise she is cared for, she is special and beautiful and smart and important.
So this Christmas, find a little room in your heart to visit a foster care center—or any place with people in need—and make someone else’s Christmas jolly.
© 2016 Ester W. All rights reserved.