Would You Send Your Children Here?

Would you send your children to a home where they go 3 days straight with no bath or shower? Where they come home and burst into tears WANTING a bath? Where they are so tired they BEG to go to bed as soon as they can get bathed? (and this was at 3 in the afternoon!)

And yet, although the CHILD doesn't get a bath or shower, the adult taking her to the doctor for her 104.2 temperature had to get HER shower before taking this child TO the doctor.

Would you send your children to a place where they call you in tears, in fact, crying so hysterically that I thought someone had DIED, and when I finally get this particular child (the one that's almost 13) to speak coherently, I hear how the entire DAY was spent with nothing but yelling, arguing, and crying? And THIS is my child that I've only SEEN cry WHEN someone dies!

The OTHER child, my 8 year old, was crying, too, when she finally got her turn on the phone, but she was so exhausted, yawning, and almost falling asleep on the phone, that I reassured her the next day would be better, and to go get a good night's sleep.

Would you send your child to a place where, when you call them, they are hiding in the car, because their dad is in a drunken fight with 4 neighbors, and his wife is still new enough that she plays the role I, and the first wife, played for so many years, of trying to stop him, trying to appease him, calm him down, get him in the car to go home? The drunken fight is so loud, I can hear all the words out of all the parties involved, and when he finally gets in the car he begins cussing out his new wife, turns to the backseat and cusses out my little girls, yanks the phone out of their hands and hangs up, while I frantically text and leave voice mails on both he and new-wife's phones to make sure my girls even get home safely. A nice little touch their dad added, AFTER he yelled at C, "Give me that f--- phone you f---- little b----!" was when he called me back, and tried to sound sober as he said, "Would you like to talk to the girls?" 15 minutes later.

No...I would not WILLINGLY send my children to a place like this, and I doubt any other mother worth a grain of salt would, either. But the law says I have to. The law says there's nothing wrong with this. They have food (plenty of it, and GOOD food, too, not just Ramen noodles day after day.) They have shelter, (again, very GOOD shelter....a beautiful house on a lake in a gated community.) They have medical care. (C DID get to the doctor, right?) And they have clothing. (in fact, new-wife has been so kind as to buy my eldest daughter more clothes than she's had in 2 years this past week...and I thank her for it, too.)

So, according to the law, their needs are being met, and I have to keep sending the most precious things in my life to this place every so often for good, quality time with their other parent.

So....I would appreciate my readers prayers, for my girls, for their safety, and for their father to be sober, loving, and responsible. They still have a few more days to go on this particular visit.