Wow! It’s been a LONG time since I have written anything. I don’t even know where to start. This is going to be long. I am warning you in advance….but there is so much I need to talk about; so much I need to get off of my chest. So, if you get bored, I understand.
So…I graduated college. I received my Bachelor’s in Human Services. During my internship, I served at the Children’s Advocacy Center and ended up falling in love with child welfare. Very odd because I really always thought I would be a counselor (that’s what I started school to do). He had a different plan. So, from there I got hired at One Hope United. This was two years ago on May 1. My life has been forever changed. For two years I have barely had time to breathe….I guess this is part of the reason I have not posted any blogs. I have worked anywhere from 40-70 hours per week. Oh yeah, I have also started graduate school and will be getting my Masters Degree in Criminal Justice. So anyway….for two years I have worked with abused and neglected children and their families. I have moved children from home to home. I have held a four yr. old as she sobs for her mother. I have seen a case of child abuse so severe that a movie could be made from it. I have literally ripped children from their parent’s arms with them screaming because the parents cannot put their drugs down and walk away. No, not even for their children. I have witnessed pregnant women use meth. I have seen druggie babies. I have worked until midnight getting children settled into a foster home and promising that I would be back the next day so they can see a familiar face. I have had a child tell me he was locked in the closet and had to use the bathroom in an old coffee can and that he went days without food. I have had a girl tell me her grandfather raped her. I have went to the hospital and taken a newborn from her mother.
But, I have also gotten children their forever families through adoption. I have had their faces light up and yell “Mrs. Kim!” as they run toward me. I have seen the resilience that the human soul can muster up under the worst circumstances. I have had a parent text me after she got her children back and tell me “without you…there’s no way I could have done this”. I have been invited to adoptions and witnessed parents who can’t have children biologically get the children they so badly desire. I have had a teenager get “that look” and I know that something I said clicked. I have had one look at me and say “Mrs. Kim, please adopt me”. I have worked with so many people over this two years. So many memories. So many laughs. And yes, more than enough tears. There were nights I came home and stood in my shower crying and just attempting to let the water wash away the memories of the day; it didn’t work.
But as this part of my career comes to a close I remember a story that I heard. It speaks of a group of nuns that went on a cross country trip. Each stop, the old nun named Mary would run off of the bus and find the biggest stone she could find. She would try and try with all her might and she would flip that stone from one side to the other. That’s it. Just flipped a stone. In each state she did this. Stop after stop after stop. Finally, her friends asked her “Mary, why…why do you, at each stop, turn a stupid stone over”? Mary looked at them and simply stated “Though I have not done much, because I turned that stone over, this place was left differently than when I arrived”.
I was blown away by this story. The simplicity of it. The truth of it.
And so, at the end of this two years I pray that’s what has happened because of me. I pray that the families I came in contact with, the children I have held, the parents I have assisted, the co-workers that I work with; I pray they have been changed in some way. I pray that though in the big scheme of things I didn’t do much, One Hope United will never be the same because Kim Ridgeway was there.
On my daughters 15th birthday she was awoke by the doorbell ringing. It was summer break so her and my son were home alone, I was a few miles up the road at work. She looked our her window, didn’t know the guy, so she didn’t answer the door (smart girl). A few minutes later she got up and walked into our kitchen….right into the guy who had rang the doorbell! He had come in through our back door and was in my house…with my 2 children! She stayed calm, asked him what he was doing and demanded he leave. He did. We know who it did it, but he was never formally charged. He made away with my son’s PSP game which was sitting on our kitchen counter…but that was easily replaced.
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