... I love you...

I sat across from a girl today who recently found out she was pregnant. 18, raised herself and little her brother, wants to be a lawyer, has her tongue pierced, likes to drink frilly coffee drinks, and doesn't know what it's like to experience love in its purest form. Her heart has longed for something deeper than the mother who sees quality time spent with her child as buying a case of beer and allowing her 16 year old daughter to get drunk with her. Miss Mia, so scared and miserable yet still, STILL she fights. She'll raise this kid, go to school, manage a job, and fight with everything inside of her to keep from breaking and loosing the battle.

I've watched her admit to the truths about her abusive step - dad to a group of CPS workers. Told things about her mother; the incompetence, the beatings, the constant fear. Revealed the unbearable truths yet at the last minute she was willing to take them all back because she wanted to protect her mother, her biggest conern? How her mother would live without her help..... even after her mother was willing to say that if she had a choice she would take the abusive husband over Mia. Her own flesh and blood, a beautiful 16 year old girl, Her daughter...
I don't know that i've know more of a fighter than Mia. In the moments where a girl her age should be the weakest she is the strongest. No one but her to hold her up in the miserable moments. guy after guy she claimed it was true love, that this one was really going to be good to her, that he deserved to have mia in his arms at the end of night. Every one left her more unsatisfied than the next.
Now there's this man, kid, who is the father to this beautiful girl's baby. A child, when she needs a man, a man who's not going to hit her, who's going to love her, lead her, carry her.
Even after the ER, the talks with CPS, the calls to police to have her step dad arrested, hurtful word after hurtful word i've never felt Mia afraid, never felt her empty and scared yet today; today i felt this girl's fear so strong it could have taken over a nation. The words she said were strong, "i will raise this kid by myself if i have to so that this kid doesn't know the life i had." There was no working through an action plan, just fear today, letting her be 18 and scared. It's killing her inside, breaking her. Jesus, i know there's no pleading to happen, what's done is done and now the task at hand is standing by her and letting her cry. It seems as though she's standing out on a cliff holding up her world by herself.
my hands are tied. I love her. love her so much. tonight, may she rest in the blood of an everlasting Jesus.