This week I travel to Wilder, Idaho to work with teen gang members. I find myself awake trying to get down a couple of ideas I have just had. I have learned some of my best thoughts come in the between time of sleep and awake and if I don't get the ideas down they are lost when I fully wake.
I look up from my thoughts to see it is 2:00 am. I feel a sense of relief knowing I have hours yet to sleep but can't help wondering how sleepless my thoughts are going to make me.
I have been asked by a school district to come and help create a dinner event for parents to better understand the draw of gangs. They have also decided to throw in the topic of alcohol. I will be going to correctional facility and attempting to convince gang members to come to this dinner event and give advice, through teen eyes, to anxious parents. I have to teach others how to facilitate this dinner, I have not yet created, after I am no longer in the state. No wonder I am restless!
I can't help but sympathetically think of my sister Angela and her husband Davin. One of them is up right now rocking the twins. I wonder how many other parents are getting up from their coma like sleep in order to feed their children?
The most common excuses why teens join a gang are they needed "someone to have their back" or needed "somewhere to belong." How many parents right now are rocking children who will eventually choose to join a gang?
My experiences are different. I will never rock my own children, but it doesn't mean that I am not awake at 2:00 am thinking about what they need. I remember the teens I have met who are locked up because they made bad choices and too often I hear their ache of a disconnected or uncaring family. I wonder how I am going to help these Hispanic families beat the odds?
It is in these early hours when all the garbage of the day has disappeared and our true heart is revealed. If only I could capture these "mental snapshots" of late night feedings and exhausted rocking. I would like to reflect these pictures back into their faces when they feel the loss of connection. I have to believe it would make a small difference.
Keep Rocking.
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