Sometimes God has a kid’s face by Sister Mary Rose McGeady [Book Review]

“He got up again, walked around the couch, and plopped himself back down. ‘Well, I…I had this uncle, who…well; he used to do stuff to me. You know, sexual stuff, ‘he said.  ‘He used to come over when my parents weren’t around, and he would do all this stuff to me.’ He said. ‘Did you tell your parents?’ ‘Yuh, I told them, but they didn’t believe me, you know,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t like they cared anyway,’ he said. My parents used to argue all the time. And they always seemed mad at me,” he said.”

Joey shared his story with the director of Convent House, Mary Rose McGeady the author of the book ‘Sometimes God Has a Kid’s Face’. The book contains stories of young boys and girls who were living on the street, some of them faced rejection and abuse from the society that was meant to protect them.

Covenant House is America’s largest shelter for homeless and runaway kids, the organization is the nation’s leading front- line experts on street kids. The author of the book who died at the age of 84 on September 13, 2012 talked about another young boy who was sent out by his own parents because he snored.

Michael said “… that’s why I got kicked out of my own house. My mother and brothers all said I snored too much. They said they couldn’t take it. So they kicked me out.” “My brothers and I all slept in one room, and they said they couldn’t sleep with me snoring all the time.”

I keep wondering why you would send your kid out because he was snoring, that sound crazy and heartbroken. Why will you do that to your son? The story of the 16 years old girl who had to run away from their parents’ house because their step-father was doing stuff (sexual abuse) to her elder brother brought tears to my face reading the book.

“I know it was probably kind of dumb to run away like we did. I never thought we’d end up with nothing to eat, and no place to go,” “but I had to get him out of there, you know being in that house was killing him, sister. I mean, it was killing him.” said Kimberly

I came across a report from the National Center on Family Homelessness that shows that about one in 30 American children are homeless that is about 2.5 million kids and Nigeria, as of 2007 had 24.4 million people who were homeless and the number keeps growing daily.

What can I do might be the question on your mind as you are reading this review? One of the things the author said we should do is to pray for those kids at Covenant House and I will ask you to look at kids who are homeless around you and help them by taken them to a place where they can get help, whatever you have use it to also support those organizations.