Day By Day

I toil in a children's home with 7 teen age girls and that's how I get through my challenge - day by day. Yesterday 2 of our girls brought up the subject of abused women and how they cope and why they stay in an abusive situation. One girl's mother had been hit by her boyfriend and when this girl's brother hit the man this 16 year old boy was taken to jail because the mother was afraid of what the big man would do if she said that he had hit her. Why do women stay with abusive men? Why does one of our girls have a mother and a grandmother who lived for many many years with an abuse man? I want to help our girls learn from these stories so they don't continue the cycle as they grow up. After disclosing to them that our daughter lived with an abusive man and had 3 children by him they said that they would not want a man to treat them mean. "Ms. Sylvia", they said, "What would you do? I told them that if Mr. Bill ever hit me I would tell him, "you better never go to sleep".
Later, the girls decided to cook steak for dinner. They grilled the steaks, made microwave baked potatoes, a very tasty salad (by a girl who has never created anything that others could eat) and fried onions as a condiment. After a flour fight they deep fried fry bread. The kitchen was really a disaster by then. One of the girls came and stood inside our apartment door and Bill told her, "Stop! Stop right there, you are making white footprints on our carpet". It is amazing what they will do when they are really bored. I love these girls but it is a long 3 weeks and the only way to get it done is day by day.