Open doors

One of our daughter's friends moved in with us about a week ago. They have been close friends for a few years. We obviously like him too, or we wouldn't have opened our house to him.

As people find out about him living here, we get a lot of questions. Most want to know why he is here. The answer I give is that things weren't going well at home and he needed a place to stay for a while. I'm not going to give anyone his life story; it's not my story to tell.

We have also been asked if we trust him. It seems to me that if we didn't trust him, we wouldn't be letting him stay here. Why would anyone ask that?

Others have warned me that if things aren't good for him at home, we shouldn't butt in because that is just asking for trouble. *sigh* I have so many issues with this. We are not stupid. It's not as if we marched into his house and took him without his mothers permission. I've spoken with his mother. She knows where he is and agrees that they need to be apart from each other for a while. And really, how is helping out a kid in need "asking for trouble"? We tend to feel the opposite, that ignoring a kid who needs help is really asking for trouble.

If you've known us for any length of time, it shouldn't surprise you that he is living with us. We have always helped out friends of Ashley's when they needed help. We had the elementary school counselor ask us a few times if she could give our number out to parents who needed a little help. We have watched kids after school who otherwise would have been home alone, we have watched kids in the morning before school so they weren't home alone. We have had two other kids live with us for short periods of time while things were rough at home.

We do these things without many thank you's and without complaining or asking for recognition. We do these things because we can, because we have a little extra room at our house, in our wallets and in our hearts. We do these things because we need our daughter to see that helping people isn't always easy or fun, that you help even when it's inconvenient for you and that you do so without asking for anything in return.