HEALTHY FAMILY LOVE

HEALTHY FAMILY LOVE PREVENTS PROBLEMS

While our two children were small...ages five and three, we and a group of our Christian friends decided to sponsor a group of children from a children's home in Texas.  Most of the children in this home were not orphans in the true sense of the word.  Some of them had a mom or dad but who were just not responsible to care for them or they had health problems to the extent they could not care for themselves, much less their offspring.  On holidays and two weeks during the summer, the group kept up to as many as twenty-one children at times.

Some of the families had children of their own who became very jealous and resentful of the children from the home.  Our children didn't...and in fact really enjoyed the ones we kept and grew so close to them over the years that we are still close after they all grew up. It is a life time relationship and I think I have the key to this:
The families who had problems with the children quit keeping them during the summer and holidays because their kids resented them.  The parents had tried to make them such a part of the family for that weekend or two weeks that they neglected the attention and affection of their own to some extent.  It is folly to sense that in order to love someone enough you have to love another less or ignore them more.  By trying to make them a part of the family to the extent that they neglected and created resentment in their own children, defeated their intentions, because in return the visiting children felt more than ever like outsiders.  So no one won in this situation.