MARQUETTE – This week, I got my first homework assignment since I graduated college last May.

I wasn’t grumbling about it, though. It’s something I should do a lot more of: get in touch with my “inner kid.” You may soon see me swinging at the park or building a sand castle on the beach. Hardly homework. But it is part of a crazy new journey that has me very excited and more than a little nervous.

I’m training to become the mentor of a local youth through the YMCA of Marquette’s Reach & Rise program.

After about a month, I will be matched with a youth aged 6-17 who is considered “at-risk.” Some have social and emotional challenges or come from a single-parent household. Many are just lonely or bullied at school or dealing with some hardship in their lives.

The program is unique because it offers volunteers training in how to deal with potentially difficult emotions while building the child’s confidence and helping them thrive.

Nothing in my life was more formative than my first mentoring experience in high school.

I wasn’t a formal mentor, but I was a sister.

With 10 siblings, I still am. But when I was a freshman in high school, my family consisted of my mom and dad and six of us kids.

Then we decided to open our home to children in the foster care system. This seemed like a positive thing to do, and it was. But we had no idea what we were getting into. We ended up fostering upwards of 10 or 15 children in all.

We knew it wouldn’t be easy.

But to witness a baby or young child suffering needlessly; to learn the story of his struggling parents and the conditions that brought her to our home; to learn for the first time the true meaning of my own privilege and what that disparity really looks like – it changed everything.

I remember when I first read Dostoyevsky’s classic “The Brothers Karamazov.” There is one chapter where two of the brothers discuss the incompatibility of children’s suffering and a loving God. Ivan lists examples of children tortured obscenely – which Dostoyevsky himself culled from newspapers and police reports – before concluding he cannot accept such a price for eternal harmony.

“And if it is really true that (little children) must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond comprehension,” Ivan says. “And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, … . It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”

I think I wept for days when I read that chapter, because I was living it.

Some of the kids we fostered had stories to make your hair stand up, and their behaviors brought me farther past the end of my rope than I knew was possible. But I couldn’t help falling in love with them, knowing deep down, none of this was their fault. None of it was fair.

We adopted five. Years later, we are blessed to be able to say they are beautiful, whole and deeply loved little people growing up way too fast.

I adore each of them – because they’re creative and weird and cute and energetic and sometimes way too honest and so, so sweet. They are awesome. And while I think of myself as a mentor to them, they taught me more than anyone else ever has.

People need love. Kids really need love. And by love, I mean kind attention and compassion.

In a world where many struggle to survive, where existential questions won’t ever be fully satisfied, where cruelty and injustice know no bounds, there is only one solution, and I don’t care who’s sick of hearing it. Love – vulnerably, imperfectly and courageously – everyone you can.

You’ll get burned because that’s life, because all things pass away, because people are crazy, but it is the only rational imperative.

That’s why I’m becoming a mentor, and I fully expect to be challenged and maybe even wonder what I got myself into.

But in talking to other mentors, I’m realizing more than anything it’s going to be a really good excuse to make new friends, play outside, go on adventures and find my own inner kid.

And I get to share all that with somebody who deserves a better chance at growing up healthy and true to themselves. I think it’s a pretty good deal.

The program has a long waiting list of area kids waiting for a mentor. So if you’re 23 or older and you want more information, call Program Director Melissa DeMarse at 227-9622.

Editor’s note: Mary Wardell can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 248. Her email address is mwardell@miningjournal.net.