It's 2 AM...

...and yes, i know where my children are. they're asleep at my feet, here in the living room. this night started off great--dinner with new friends, then home in time for fairly early bed times for the kiddos. the boy and i sat down on the couch to catch up on grey's anatomy, and it wasn't long before we heard sirens. then we saw the lights. before long, our street was full of police cars. i wish i was exaggerating, but i'm not. i don't know what happened, but i do know that it was a domestic violence situation. and i'm ashamed to say, we've long suspected something wasn't right but we've opted to keep our distance from the family. and there are kids. kids right across the street from us...from me...living with this. i pray the kids weren't in the house tonight, but i don't know. earlier this week i was called in to consult on a student who is most likely a victim of abuse...a student i've known and loved for years. again, it is a situation where i suspected mild neglect (and parental ignorance, quite frankly) but to see the situation and where it is now is just heartbreaking because the child is a completely different person. would anything be different in that child's life if i, or someone like me, had been there every day to watch for changes? maybe, maybe not. it tears me up to see the child like this, to even think about what i think has happened. and now this, right across the street...i keep thinking of the "child called it" book series--how he was abused and nobody helped him. at the time, i remember thinking, how could the adults NOT see it? these kids across the street--is there anything i could have done differently? should have done differently? their lives are forever changed because of what happened there tonight...i just pray that they weren't there to SEE it. the little we saw from here was bad enough. what if, instead of keeping our distance, we'd reached out to the kids and family? would anything have changed? would it, as we feared, have put our kids at risk? that's why we haven't opened our doors to those kids, which goes against our nature--we didn't want to invite their family into our lives or our home. it was a horrible feeling tonight when we realized that our kids were sleeping in a room right across the street from a person wielding a gun...that's why they're in the living room, on the floor. we'll just tell kayci in the morning that we wanted to have a family sleepover--she thinks the police cars were on our street because of a wreck, since she woke up as james carried her out of her room. i can't sleep. i guess i could get up and work, but then i think, if i start working i'll never get to sleep tonight. those poor kids...that poor broken family. it's not the first time we've seen police cars at their house, but tonight i'm wondering what's left of their family and what will happen to those children. God bless them, and heal them. and God forgive me, for seeing and suspecting but not being willing to help.