Hearing problems

Sometimes my meetings with kids at detention are really intense. I've heard a lot of stories that seem unreal. They're full of things that are only supposed to happen in movies-- drug trafficking, prostitution, abuse, gang violence, rape. Some kids are on the receiving end; some are the perpetrators.

I'll meet with a kid whose story nearly paralyzes me. All the words he speaks-- or perhaps whispers-- scream, "Broken!" Yet sometimes, I think "failure" and "deadbeat" are the only words some of us hear.

A young man recently told me about the judges he's faced for his court cases over the years as he has spent most of his adolescence in and out of the system. He explained that many of the judges don't treat him like a human being, but like an animal. One judge told him that dogs have more sense of the world than he does.

This kid's story screamed "broken" but that judge misheard it as "hopeless."

I don't say this to pigeonhole the judge as the "bad guy." That would be ignorant and hypocritical, because I think we're all like judge in this story at least part of the time. I'm also not defending the crimes that this child committed. I'm not concerned with pegging who's the good guy and who's the bad guy in the stories we hear. I'm concerned with how we hear the stories and how we receive the people involved in them.

I think it would behoove us all to train our ears to hear "broken." Hearing "failure" doesn't move us forward, but instead, it robs us of hope.

We try to hear "broken," because we realize that we're all broken-- you, me, the kids I meet, the judges they face... all broken.

We try to hear "broken," because we know the great Fixer and believe that He is One who is mighty and faithful to un-break.