So many kids, limited in what I'm allowed to do.

My new frustration is that I am blessed to be in relationship with a lot of needy kids, and yet I am limited in what I can do for them.  Between being a "parent" volunteer for Boy Scouts, coordinator for our church's kids ministry, and coach for a new girl's soccer team, there are many children in my life.  And my heart breaks for several of them.  I just want to take them home and raise them.  I see all the ways their parents are failing them (yes, this is overstated) and it breaks my heart.  I am restricted in how I am allowed to discipline them, because I'm not their parent.  I don't get to give them each the one-on-one care that they need, because I usually see them in a group setting and I don't have the "right" to provide that one-on-one care, nor the time to provide it for all forty of them. And if I were given that blessing to care for them "one-on-one" which of them would I choose to the neglect of the others?

In infertility circles we talk about that desire to take someone else's child home.  There is a sense that we could do a better job.  Some would say that we couldn't, it is just the perspective of the outsider, the childless adult who doesn't know how difficult it truly is to parent.  Perhaps at times it is also a socio-economic prejudice or judgment, evaluating parenting priorities from a different context.  Or maybe it is that loud intuitive call to be a parent that is not being expressed due to the infertility.

And so I feel inadequate in the role that I am being called to.  A teacher with only an hour a week to make an impact. And that one hour my time is divided between ten to twenty kids. All of whom I love.  All of whom I desire for their best. Does that one hour really make any difference?  I sure hope it does!