Update on "Sam"

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the CSD decision regarding the little guy that our friends Dennis and Arlene have had as part of their family since he was two days old. The committee decided he should go to an uncle who is raising little "Sam"'s half-brother.

The uncle and his live-in lady came for a visit, and were very surprised to see how bonded Sam was with his foster family. It looked very hopeful that they might change their minds and leave him with Dennis and Arlene.

And then an ill wind blew in in the form of the uncle's adoption worker, who really put pressure on him that he needs to go through with this, that if he doesn't, Sam will always wonder why his brother was adopted by the uncle and he wasn't, and other such logic that Arlene knows is hogwash because she herself was adopted.

So they veered in that direction, and this week Sam was flown to his new home. To complicate things, Dennis and Arlene had been told they could accompany him, so they bought plane tickets, and then the caseworker changed her mind, and they couldn't go after all, and were left holding the bag with expensive non-refundable tickets.

We are all just sick inside about all of this.

Back in the day, we would pray for the persecuted Christians in Russia who had their children taken away by the state, and somehow we had this delusion that this could never happen here.

The final papers won't be signed for months, probably, so we can all still pray for a miracle and for the hot needles of conscience to induce the uncle to change his mind and stand up to the caseworker.

But little Sam has already been traumatized, and before this he was one of those few kids in the foster care system who hadn't endured any trauma.

"But maybe Sam is supposed to be like Joseph, who was taken from his home and God had a plan to work it all out," someone told me.

Well, maybe so, but I'm holding out for a miracle.

We live in a broken world, that's for sure.