shades of gray.

I had a very difficult moment today.

And I mean beside the fact that I realized February is kind of only the middle of winter, not almost the end like I have convinced myself. This gal keeps trying to believe that March = Spring and April = Summer... apparently that is not the case. And ... I'm depressed.

Moving on.

We studied a case in class today about a woman who wanted to relinquish her rights as a mother to her four-year-old son. Crazy, right? Why wouldn't she have done that when he was born? Why did she decide when he was talking and almost starting school that she just didn't want him anymore?

The issue was that the mother was only 22-years-old and wanted to live the life she should have been living at her age. Understandable. The other thing was that she was raped by her high school boyfriend, who was the father of her child. And, now that the child was growing up, he was starting to look more and more like his father - and the mother couldn't handle it. Understandable again. But, just abandon your child? After four years? This I cannot understand.

The point isn't the case, per say. The point is what my professor said to us about it.

She said that in the end, it's not our job to convince the mother to keep the child, nor is it our job to convince her that she should walk away from him. It's our job to present all the options to the mother, and then ultimately let her make the decision. I mean, it seems natural. It's her life, her child, her decision.

But something about this concept made me super uneasy. I couldn't really handle the idea of sitting in a room with a woman who had so many unjust things happen to her - and then just let her commit the same injustice to her own child. I couldn't picture myself letting her do this, just watching her make the choice to disappear from her son's life completely.

I don't like brokenness (who really would?) and I see my role as an advocate and a helper as the opposite of brokenness. I want to reconcile and fix, I want to repair. So, how could someone who wants to see wholeness just let a person walk away from their child? But, at the same time, I know I cannot make decisions for others. I can only be a voice and a light and hope to make some small difference.

I can't quite figure out how to deal with these problems. I haven't found a balance between my morals or beliefs or desires and the ones of my profession. I hope that I will, in time, though. Maybe it's just a gray area (seriously, though, is it grey or gray?) and maybe I need to learn how to bite my tongue. But, then, what good am I doing? And what is the point of this profession, anyway? Sometimes it starts to get contradictory - and then I start to lose my mind. I'm searching for validity in all of it and trying to keep perspective, which proves to be difficult for a recovering zealous Pentecostal Christian.

Learning, learning, learning!