My all time favorite book is “The Secret Life of Bees.” It’s the story of a young girl who finds shelter in the company of three sisters, beekeepers, who love her through a very difficult time, helping her make sense of her past and some peace with her reality. My copy of the book is tattered, littered with highlighted and underlined passages. Upon re-reading it for the umpteenth time, these words landed on me in a fresh way: “Most people don’t have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don’t know anything about.”
Isn’t the same true with families? Each day my coworkers and I are reminded that the lives of the Daystar families are complex. From the first interaction with our front office to assessments to individual sessions, we bear witness to the difficulties and inner workings families navigate. As our clients and their parents spend time in our house, we offer shelter and do our best to enter into the complex.
The book's heroine is a young girl. In her plainspoken way, she explains what the beekeepers have done for her: “The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.”
Couldn’t we all use a brief timeout now and then? Couldn't’ we all stand to have someone come to us in our brokenness and woundedness and dab mercy on the tender places in our hearts? Daystar is a place for timeouts—timeouts from life. With your support, we throw the door open wide for those who feel as though their “beat-up” lives are in need of repair. I think of Daystar as a house full of “mercy dabbers.”
Thank you for partnering with us as we enter into the complex. We consider you to be those who grant the brief timeout, who ring the boxing bell and encourage our clients to go to their corner, where we are, God-willing, ready to dab all the mercy we can muster on their precious lives. We are the brief timeout, the place where children are given a chance to pause from the fight and experience mercy and grace and a healthy dose of the truth—they are valuable and loved.
Your support means everything to us,
Amy Jacobs, M.MFT
