stomachache

Last night I met a six-year-old little boy who had just spent his first day with a family in our church. It is his sixth family in the last year and a half that he has been bounced around to. I spoke with his new foster parents on Friday and was sick to my stomach for him. I really don't understand how as a society we can treat our children this way! I wonder how there is much hope for him to be a trusting adult with the hell he has been through at the hands of his own parents, and then by the system. Jason and I have talked long and hard about becoming foster parents, however I really don't agree with the ideology of attempting to place children back with parents at all costs. I have watched children come into my day care with cigarette burns on their feet and bruises on their backs all to have social work place them in the hands of their abusers again and again. Many people in this country say they will adopt, but that the red tape of our system is more than they can handle. Look at case after case of children after an adoption, being given back to parents who did not want them in the first place. Jason and I don't know if we could love a child all to have them placed into danger again.
As for Nathan please pray that this home will be his last. He got a stomachache after his first few minutes in class and we called his new parents. I would have a stomachache as well. The social worker was really great at explaining all the trauma he would encounter as a result of the change in family. A stomachache was evidently one of the side-effects.