A long time ago, in my life before kids, I worked with teenagers. Some of these teenagers were from really tough backgrounds, the kind of backgrounds that gives kids a label of "at risk".
At risk of being counted in all kinds of negative statistics like teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, crime, lack of education, unemployment and most of all, at risk of living the kind of life and having the kind of families that passed on this risk to the next generation.
All kinds of teenagers came across my path and I did my best to help them at the time, even though most of the time I felt like I was out of my depth, clueless, under-equipped and flying by the seat of my pants.
At the time there were certain kids who stood out, who broke my heart more than most. My love and concern for these kids kept me up at night, quite often; there were prayers and tears and sleepless nights. There were phone calls in the middle of the night ("can you come?"); there were conversations, pep talks and feeds. I didn't know if any of it was doing any good. I didn't know if they would manage to break all those negative cycles and live healthy, happy lives, with healthy, happy families. That was what I wanted and hoped for them but I had no clue if it would happen.
That was more than 20 years ago. We lost touch over the years, but recently a few of those special ones that kept me up at night have crossed my path again, and it has blown me away to see how amazingly well they are doing. They've beaten the statistics.
