Thursday, February 28, 2008

Winter Bug

For the last couple of months, I've repeatedly stated how surprised I am that I haven't caught the winter bug that everyone else has, considering I spend so much time around teenage boys who don't practice the best hygiene, and that I handle so much of their pee on a daily basis. While my body continually fights disease valiantly, all it took was one night of only 4 hours of sleep to precipitate what I knew was coming eventually.

In all honesty, it hasn't been that bad. However, at random times of the day I find myself completely exhausted and unable to concentrate for very long. The ability to use my brain is pretty much shot as well. So here I am, two days behind on paperwork. I'm going to leave it that way yet again, as I am starving and getting kind of sleepy.

For this reason, guess where I'll most likely be spending my Friday night: right here in this office.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Adolescent Graveyard

For every client that comes into this program, our counselors perform an evaluation known as the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs (GAIN). On the GAINs, there are a ton of questions the client has to answer, and they are broken down into several categories and sub-categories. For example:

Sexual Activity and Orientation. ***** reported no history of having any kind of sex with another person. He identified that his current sexual preference is for females only.

Of course, I can guarantee you that the number of our adolescent clients that have actually been honest in this section has been extremely low. Either a) they don't want to say how bad they've been, or b) they're too prideful to admit they ain't gettin' any. But I digress.

This is probably what disturbs me the most:

Spirituality. ***** considers himself to be a Non-denominational Christian, considers these religious or spiritual beliefs to be very strong, considers these religious or spiritual beliefs to be very important and considers these religious or spiritual beliefs to be an influence on decisions.

Granted, this is not what one would find in most of our gains. However, it almost horrifies me that so many people are ignorant to the reality of what that means. Even worse, they pass these faulty ideas on from generation to generation. The client in particular whose GAIN I copied that from could not be living more contrary to that. From my experiences, I don't even see a hint of Christ in him. I'll spare you the details.

Only in WASP middle-class suburbia...except not at all. It's one thing to be adamantly rebellious and carnal, but if I really knew how many people around us were among the walking deceived, I'm sure I'd be in tears.

Oh God, wake these people up from their slumber. Vaccinate the epidemic that is their spiritual deception; let it crumble at your living Word. May even one small part of the mounds of worthless crap I'm doing be used by you to change one of these kids' lives and bring them to freedom in Christ.