I have to vent here for a second.

For some time, in working as an activist, I have been working with a family trying to get their children back. But, you see, I have to say in all honesty, they're not TRYING that hard. And I am stuck here trying to be patient, trying to be understanding, but trying to help this family realize that they should be working in a clear and concise manner to have their children returned as quickly as possible.

I know more about the case than most people, as I've sorted the gossip from the facts and I've seen the case files. In fact, I am using the case files as part of my research, with the family's permission. And my honest, objective conclusion was that this was a family that, when their children were removed, did, in fact, need some sort of intervention. The problem is, nobody tried to reach this family in a meaningful, consistent way. Nobody tried to be their friend in a manner consistent with the teachings of Christ, who most in this area claim to follow. They simply judged, picked, prodded, and picked up the phone and called CPS.

But the seizure of this family's children put them into a tailspin, and both went into a pretty deep depression, from which they haven't recovered. The problem is, I think they've become too accustomed to their children being gone, and are having trouble dealing with the possibility of having them returned. Basically, they've known failure for so long that the prospect of success is pretty scary.

If they were the only ones I have seen, I would shrug it off. But they're not. I read an article today where a father accused of abuse committed suicide rather than working to have his daughter returned. I can't understand that. He left his daughter without a father, and forever feeling guilty for her father's death. It's incomprehensible to me.

Being an activist is not only a lonely job, it's a hard one. I try to be objective in my analysis of everything, and, frankly, telling families that they would be better off making certain changes than simply utilizing the "fight city hall" approach is hard because; a) families don't want to hear that. They want to hear only that they are 100% right, and while that is certainly often the case, it is by no means ALWAYS the case, and; because I am fundamentally opposed to the existence of CPS, and, while there are a few "grey area" cases that I wouldn't know how to place otherwise, the fact that even those few cases exist does haunt me pretty endlessly. But the further I go into this, the more I realize that it is quite possibly what I was called to do, what I was meant to do. And that possibility is one I can't run from.