“I was distracted by Kyra Sedgwick’s red lipstick. I wrote to the show to complain-and sure enough, she changed shades.”

I just read this statement in last week’s Parade Magazine and nearly fell off my chair in disbelief. People notice lipstick colors? They write to shows to complain? Have I veered so far off the path of normal? Or did they?

I thumbed the pages, wondering if I have truly crossed the line into a nether world where children’s issues and challenges so dominate my life. Is this what normal people care about? Should I just lose faith in the human race? Is this why there are so many children waiting for families? Am I becoming obsessed?

By page 18, my faith has been restored by Doc to Dock.

“Because of our government’s regulations, anything opened in an operating room must be thrown out, even if it is still individually wrapped and sterilized. If doctor’s open a surgical kit with 180 items and only use 80, they have to get rid of the rest.”

7,000 TONS of unused American medical supplies go to waste. So far 17 hospitals in the U.S. are sending these unused supplies to Africa.

This is the kind of stuff that I need to read in order to gather enough strength to continue in our battles. I need to know that others also are in the trenches worrying about something besides lipstick shades. All of y’all’s comments and emails have so bolstered me and set me to thinking lately.

My mind is churning as I try and contemplate, to decide if I can figure out a way to avoid what has been happening to my children, to protect them from fears that did not need to be presented to them lately by people who are trained to do better than this.

Would it take a lawyer to change this policy? What can be done? Don’t tell me that nothing can be done. There is always an answer. If I did not deeply believe that, then I wouldn’t bother getting out of bed tomorrow.

I’m embroiled in several issues here, not the least of which includes finding help for two mentally ill children and three law-breaking teenagers who are all out of the home at the moment. I’ve creatively scraped up tuition for my college kids this semester, books have been bought, and my public school kids are all also doing well. I’m trying to keep my focus on the positives at the moment as the negatives lately have been astonishingly detrimental to our family.

Thank God for love, support, extended family and therapy. We will get through this also, stronger where we now feel so broken, and my hat is off to this Doc to Dock Program for giving me a relieved, feel-good moment.