Here at Love What Matters we believe in the following philosophy: your life is short and precious; you owe it to yourself to live better, in every way.

I was told her name, her age, and that she had a history of neglect and trauma, which had a tendency to show up in a variety of harmful behaviors.

As a result of this conversation, we hid everything in our house that could be used as a weapon—even the butter knives.

I held the little girl in one arm and her car seat in the other. Her face was buried into my neck and I could feel wetness there.

Snot? Tears? I wasn’t really sure and I guess it really didn’t matter because now that she was in my arms, I wasn’t going to turn her away.

She spent the first day huddled in a ball in the middle of the bed we had meticulously made when we got the call that she was coming.

When we were told it was a little girl, my daughter had stripped her own bed of the most beautiful comforter we owned.

‘Do you think she will like the ruffles?’ she asked me as we tucked the freshly washed blanket onto the bed.

‘I am not sure what she will like or if she will even tell us, but it is so kind of you to let her use your pretty blanket,’ I replied.

For the first few hours in our home, the little girl laid in the midst of those ruffles curled up into a ball. She showed her face only when completely necessary to ask, in a whimper, for the things that she needed.

‘Can you please lay with me?’

‘Please shut the door!’

‘Please sing to me.’

And so I sang.

I sang every song I knew and then I sang them all again. And eventually, she was comfortable enough to say hello to our dogs. And then our cat. And then eventually my children.

They sat on her bedroom floor with smiles glued onto their faces wanting so badly to comfort her but not knowing how.

At dinnertime she hunched over her plate. I resisted every urge to correct her posture or the way she held her fork. Her blond hair dragged across her plate, turning red in the marinara sauce.

At bedtime, I pull the ruffled comforter up and tucked it around her chin. With her big blue eyes and blond hair, she looked like a little cherub floating on a cloud.

‘Can I stay here forever?’ she asked me.

And my heart breaks because I know that for so many reasons, her story does not end up that way.