People see God every day; they just don't recognize him.------Pearl Bailey

I saw God last week as I was sitting in my HIV screening room interviewing a woman addicted to crack cocaine. I mentioned that I had a 17 year old son and that today happened to be the first day of school for him. The woman who I will call Ginny asked me what grade a child would be in who was 10 years old? It turns out that Ginny had two children ages 10 and 12 that she gave up for adoption 6 years earlier. She said giving up her kids made her feel like her heart had been ripped out of her chest. We cried together.

It was the first time in my life that I've ever really felt the pain a drug addicted mother feels when her parental rights are terminated and she realizes she will never see her children again. As a volunteer guardian ad litem who has taken part in the termination of parental rights, I've always hated these women, who made promises they never kept, who trashed their kids lives along with their own and although they insisted on retaining their parental rights couldn't be bothered to show up for court, parenting classes or visitation with their children. I've been disgusted, angry and outraged by these neglectful, abusive, self-absorbed and drug addicted parents but I've never actually felt their pain. In that moment with Ginny as I wept I realized that even though people do horrible things, make all the wrong choices they still feel pain and they live with regret. I tried to comfort Ginny by telling her that she had made the best decision of her life and by giving up her rights to the children she enabled them to have a future and a shot at stable, fulfilling lives. I told her she couldn't provide them with a good life while her own life was such a mess. And what an un-Godly mess it was.

Ginny lives on the street, buying crack cocaine with the money she gets by prostituting herself. She told me she had had about 100 sex partners in the previous month. One of her customers recently held a gun to her head then forced her to perform unspeakable acts of perversion. Ginny has been beaten, spat on and ripped off repeatedly. As we talked she coughed incessantly and said she had spent the previous 3 days lying on a gurney in the hallway of the hospital emergency room. She wound up in detox after begging for help from the hospital staff. Ginny is one of our regulars, all the technicians and nurses knew her by name. Ginny told me she desperately wants to change her life but I don't think she can. Ginny's own childhood was a nightmare of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of alcoholic parents.

I saw God when I looked into Ginny's eyes because she changed me. She softened my heart and made me feel compassion for a woman I had hated on sight before this moment. I can't hate her or those other messed up moms and dads ever again. I'm not excusing their deplorable behavior or the mess they make of their children's lives but now I understand how it happens.