by Carol Priour

One afternoon about a year ago, I responded to a knock at my office door and there stood a handsome young marine. Although it had been about 10 years since I had last seen Clint, I recognized him right away. Of course, he was taller than the nine year old boy I remembered, but time had not changed the kind look in his soft brown eyes.

After telling me of his recent experience in Iraq as a combat engineer, he filled me in on the years since he had left his home here at Sams Cabin. After Clint had been moved from Hill Country Youth Ranch to another region by his caseworker, he had unfortunately been placed in a number of abusive homes.

"I had it pretty rough," he said, the memories apparently still much too clear. His high school years had been hard, but it was theater that "kept him going," he said. I silently wished we had finished the fine arts building while he was still here as a boy, but it was completed the year after he left.

Clint spoke fondly of his time living at the Ranch. His eyes sparkled as he told stories about his childhood here. He remembered "running up and down the hills", and a friend named Jonathon who was always pretending to be a horse, "He was different, but everybody just accepted him."

Then he said something we who work at the Ranch live to hear . . . "The Ranch was the only place that ever felt like home to me."

Home. I felt it, too . . . twenty- one years ago when I entered the front gate of Hill Country Youth Ranch for the very first time. This was home . . . a place where I belonged. A place where the gifts God had given me would be used to benefit others. In the decades I would spend here, I would come to see what makes the Youth Ranch such a special place, and my heart would fill with gratitude countless times for the privilege of being here.

We have all heard of the notorious "orphans’ homes" from the stories like Oliver Twist and Little Orphan Annie . . . places where unwanted children were put to work, cruelly punished, and never appreciated or loved.

I laugh about my thoughts now, but, twenty-one years ago, answering an ad in the Austin newspaper for a childcare worker in the Hill Country, I had wondered just how much like the old orphans’ home cliché Hill Country Youth Ranch would be. My answer came quickly. Hill Country Youth Ranch was just the opposite of the nightmare I secretly feared.

I quickly learned that this was a place where each new child was met by loving adults who would listen and learn what would be necessary to start the child down a path of healing. This was a place where children’s needs were put at the center of all activities, a place where they would grow and learn in an atmosphere of acceptance and love. This was a place like no other.

As I help to train new employees, I tell them all of a time in Florence, Italy, when I stood speechless and in absolute awe before the magnificent 14-foot marble statue of David, chiseled from a single block of marble by Michelangelo 500 years ago. The tour guide told of a time when the sculptor was asked "How did you do it – make such a magnificent piece?"

That huge piece of marble before him must have been daunting, but Michelangelo was quoted as replying, "I just removed everything that wasn’t David." I think maybe the words of the great Michelangelo come close to describing what we do here at the Ranch.

The children come to us deeply hurt by the world and abandoned by those they have loved . . . we have been home to a boy who was found in a cage, another boy with scars from his little chest down to his feet because his father put him in boiling water as a toddler, girls who have been repeatedly raped by their own fathers, children left alone without food to eat for long periods of time, children with so many scars, both visible and invisible. These children come to us full of anger, self loathing, fear, and distorted views of the world. It is our job to "remove everything that is not David" . . . to chip away what was put in their hearts by the cruelty of others . . . things that keep a child from becoming who God meant him to be. We must work carefully . . . with mallet and chisel of patience and love.

Although immensely rewarding, this is exhausting work. Ask any houseparent who has been here for more than a week. Or ask one of our volunteers who is trying to teach a fidgety twelve-year-old to read after years of educational neglect. The children have so many needs.

Sometimes the damage is so deep, and the task of helping them heal seems so huge . . . like Michelangelo’s block of marble. Just telling them that they are safe now isn’t enough. They will need to be shown. Over and over. And again. And again.

There have been days when I have been so exhausted that I wondered where the strength would come from to do the work I needed to do. Then my energy is replenished when a fine young person like Clint knocks at my door. Or Catherine, who was here as a teenager ten years ago, sends me an email with pictures of the children she adores. Or I get a phone call from alumna Jennifer, who is a nurse, and the mother of two normal, healthy teenagers.

I think that’s the key for me about this place – that the children of our children are safe. The children of our children are loved, largely because we were able to teach their parents a better way to live. And also because the greatest sculptor of all, the sculptor of souls, has, once again, used human hands to do His work. Our hands. And it is this surrender to His service that has made Hill Country Youth Ranch a very special place for a very long time.