I’ve got two more hours of internship that I can mark off. I promise not to bring up every time I’m getting hours. This time we had a “wrap-around” meeting where the shelter directors, the social worker, and I (grammar??) were all present. The meeting was supposed to start at four so I got there at 3:45 and it didn’t start until 4:25. I counted all of it, and at 5:45 we were done to equal two hours. I like it because even though it’s a professional environment, I feel like I can relax and still be myself.

The girls take turns coming in and get to update everybody on how they are doing. If they have complaints about something this is their time to bring things up. Two of the girls had not been following the guidelines of turning in 75% of their food stamp money to put toward group food costs. One woman gets $900 a month and said she had given $500 to her mom. She has some kids living with her at the shelter and the rest are living with her mom. She also had spent some of the money on snacks for her kids at some expensive ice cream place. The director understood the having kids somewhere else situation and changed the number so that $450 could still go to her mom and she still would have some left over to buy snacks for her kids.

Next week she said I could start meeting with the moms. She wants me to get to know them first and then meet the kids. They still are wanting some kind of kids group and she said they can try and get me a curriculum. She introduces me to everybody there as “the counselor”. I just think it’s hilarious. While with work I really needed a little more hand-holding and extra attention, I get the sense here that they expect you to be capable and are going to put you to work as if you are.

Black women somehow have immaculate skin. I do not think I saw a single wrinkle on any of them. I don’t think it’s botox because it’s true for too many I’m supposed to go back tonight for one more night. Last night the woman called and said that I had the night off. She feels bad and doesn’t want to burden our families, so she called another woman to come and stay with her last night. Her daughter-in-law and I had both been having these serious come to Jesus moments yesterday at different times. Neither one of us could believe that at the first sign of pain and struggle in this situation we’d started to crack. God has something to teach us in everything.

She texted today and said she’d gotten five hours of sleep and that the day had been much better. I pray it is true and I pray it continues. I told her she wasn’t a burden and that I wanted her to get well and feel better again. I shouldn’t have signed up for four days in a row, and I could feel that at the time, but for whatever reason I still did it. I’m thankful to God for working that out for me and I pray that he would continue to do so. I’m still very tired, have been very preoccupied, and miss sleeping at home in my bed.