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It is a typical day at the orphanage where my husband and I work as house parents. I make my way into the kitchen to help my husband get breakfast for the children. There are 12 of them, six boys and six girls. Soon the kitchen is alive with the activity of feeding and caring for these young lives.
“Can I have another bowl of cereal?” asks 13-year-old Fred. “That’s your third bowl, I think you have had enough,” I tell him. “I hate this shirt,” whines Amanda, “I wanted to wear my red one but Jamie took it. It’s not fair! She’s always taking my stuff.” I sigh and try to defuse the situation before it gets out of hand.
As everyone finishes his or her chores, we gather in the living room for a quick morning devotional and prayer. 12-year-old Asia asks that we pray he can go home soon to his parents. This breaks our heart. Asia’s parents are gone. They passed away months ago but Asia cannot seem to grasp the truth of the situation. We add his request to the list, but modify it, asking that God will provide a good home for Asia.
Prayer is over and the children head out to the road to meet the school bus. Amid the normal pushing, shoving and jockeying for position, I stop and look across the road at the sparkling water in the canal. I take in the morning smells and the beauty of the sun as it makes its way higher into the Florida morning sky, a small glimpse into peace in the midst of chaos.
The bus arrives and the children pile on. We wave as they head off for a busy day at school. My husband comes to stand beside me and we join hands. We smile, relishing a moment of silence before heading off to our daily routine. We walk back up the road to the house together.
I return to the kitchen to finish straightening up and do a walk-through of the children’s rooms. My husband heads off to the barn to get the tractor running. The kitchen is in good shape, so I head down to check the boys'rooms and collect the laundry. I notice a wrapper on the side of Asia’s bed and push aside the mattress to get a better look. There is a collection of food wrappers hidden there. It appears he has been raiding the refrigerator during the night. I gather the wrappers and find a garbage can to deposit them in, making a mental note to discuss this with him later.
I open the closet. The smell of dirty clothes overpowers me and I wrinkle my nose in disgust. One of the boys must have wet the bed during the night and hidden the sheets in embarrassment. I gather the sheets and miscellaneous clothes items into a pile to be taken to the laundry room. Something catches my eye as I move the dirty laundry. It is the flashlight we had been looking for. “Well, what do you know,” I mutter, examining the other contents shoved in the corner of the closet. There are the batteries to the remote that mysteriously disappeared the other day, a roll of tape from the office, a bag of marbles one of the other children had complained were missing, a remote controlled car that had been disassembled and put back together differently. I shake my head and sigh. “Joe’s at it again.” I decide to let him keep everything but the marbles and return those to the original owner. I grab the laundry and make my way to the laundry room.
I notice a strange smell. It seems to be emanating from a bucket on top of one of the cabinets. I climb onto one of the washers and pull the bucket down. There is a rag draped on top of it. I set the bucket on the ground so I can see inside. I gasp and start to gag as I remove the rag. One of the children has caught a frog and placed it in the bucket with some grass and insects and a tiny bit of water. In spite of their good intentions, it seems Mr. Frog passed on several days prior to my finding him. As I grab the bucket and head out to give Mr. Frog a proper burial, I glance at my watch; it is not even noon yet…
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