Where the heart is...

On Saturday morning I went with our church street teams to deliver Christmas gifts to a needy community, inviting them to come along to the local park after where we had a BBQ and games for the children.

I talked with single mum's, a few who looked not that much older than my own daughter pushing their babies in prams. They opened up to me, stories of abuse, hardship and men who have treated them badly.
In talking I discovered where my heart is.

'Where the heart is' I'd only just watched a movie by that title the night before, similar young mum's played by Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd. When looking for a picture (below) I read a review of the movie that questioned the use of 2 such beautiful actresses to portray these woman and an 'As if' remark at the number of misfortunes that took place in their lives.

It's only a movie, and a kind of quirky...but many of the young mum's I met today were just as stunning, and their reality much worse.

Here Novalee (Natalie Portman) is encouraging her friend who asks what she's supposed to tell to her children who have been hurt by her boyfriend;

Novalee: "You tell them our lives can change with every breath we take,

and tell them to let go of what's gone, men like him will never win
Tell them to hold on to what they've got: each other, and a mother who would die for them and nearly did
You tell them we're all got meanness in us, but we've got good in us too

and the only thing worth living for is the good, and that's why we've got to make sure to pass it on"