I feel as though I've been plumbing the depths of human depravity. Working with extra-high-risk foster kids exposes me to horrors I could not have imagined. To hear an 11-year-old girl say with no inflection that she hates her father because he raped her makes me so angry I have no idea how to express it here. To see the consequences of neglect, abuse, and abandonment actually breaks my heart.

Then on Monday, one of the lovely girls in my small group and neighbor warns me that a convicted rapist has moved within two blocks of both of our houses. She gets to walk past his apartment on her way to small group. I drive past it every day, twice or three times most days. So then, just for giggles, I check out this website for myself (http://www.familywatchdog.us/Search.asp), and discover that every morning on my walk to work, I pass by the homes of, not one, not even ten, but 22 individuals who have been convicted of sex crimes. Ugh. My feelings about this are mixed. I have become more aware of the people I pass on the street. I try to calm myself with the fact that I only walk through this neighborhood during the happily lit morning hours and that there are usually police driving by. I feel extra-protective of the foster kids I hang out with. And perhaps irrationally, I feel a great deal of pity for these men who have a depth of hurt and horror and violence and disease in their own minds that can never be escaped.

On a happier note, it has been snowing gloriously since yesterday, which always makes me smile. I get to play in it tomorrow afternoon with one of my girls, and she gets to feel normal and childlike and whole for a couple hours.