I’m sure my readers have noticed that I’ve been getting more and more immersed in this tide of unaccompanied immigrant children coming across our border. I’m sure you’ve all seen the pictures by now. If you haven’t, go Google. I’ll wait right here until you get back.

Living in Texas, where so many of them are crossing, brings it extra close to home. It’s a hot button issue, with blame on both sides. There’s been a lot of blaming, and there are a thousand opinions, and yet it appears that our government is frozen in fear about what to do next. The sheer numbers are staggering and incomprehensible to those of us removed from the situation.

Regardless of politics, the fact remains that there are sweet faces that need to be washed, children who need to be tucked in a night, children sleeping on concrete under mylar blankets with uncertain futures. My mother’s heart is breaking. There are parents who feel like their child’s only chance at safety is to run into America, hopefully making it without being lost in the desert like this child, or sold into sex trafficking, or killed by their smuggler, or run over by the train, “The Beast” they’re attempting to ride into safety.

While I agree with factions on both sides about who is at fault, I also see that a perfect storm has been created by drug cartels, gangs, crushing poverty, and changes in our immigration laws. And when I see these children, and read their stories, I am simply grateful that I will most likely never have to be separated from my babies so that they can have a minuscule chance at a better life.I don’t care why. I care about what we as a society are going to do about it.

So this is my call to action. This is my call for people to wake up, and see the face of God in these shining brown eyes. I have a small readership and only two hands. But I have a willing heart and a mother’s arms, and I will use them to the best of my ability to create safety and stability for children everywhere.

I’m not a politician. I’m a mommy. As such, it isn’t my job to cast blame and to tell other people how to fix this problem, how to stem the tide. It isn’t my job to judge and rant. It’s my job to make sure that these children, alone in our great country, have at least one soft place to fall, someone ready with a bandage when they do.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m rolling up my sleeves and getting to work.

 

 

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

-Nelson Mandela