Beth Laitkep—she’s a thirty-something, single mother with six kids. If you want to know what her life feels like, imagine you have no money, you’re late cooking supper, your house smells like baby poop…

And you have cancer.

Stephanie Culley, Beth’s high-school friend, took her to chemotherapy. The cancer spread to Beth’s brain. Doctors gave her a death-sentence.

Beth spiraled into an already deep depression. She worried about her kids, since they had nowhere to go. Without their mother, they would end up in the foster system, where they’d get split, relocated, traumatized. They’d be lucky if they even recognized their siblings after a few years.

When Beth died, her last words were, “Tell my babies I love them, and I love Stephanie, too.” But as it happens, Stephanie Culley was busy in the other room, signing ten pounds of paper.

Because adopting six kids comes along with a mountain of paperwork.

Tennessee nine-year-old, Tyler Fugget, has too much allowance money laying around—at least in his opinion. After all, he has the basics: food, shelter, parents, health-insurance, SpaghettiOs. What else is there?

So, Tyler got rid of his surplus money. He walked into the sheriff’s office, unannounced, with one hundred books to start a library for Montgomery County inmates.

“Maybe,” says Tyler. “They’ll read something that’ll make them wanna be better people.”

Let’s hope so, Tyler.

Allison Schablein has a kind of cancer so rare, doctors give her funny looks whenever she comes in to their offices. They’re supposed to know how to help her, but they don’t. So, they put her off.

For months.

Recently, Allison’s parents found a new doctor who likes a challenge. The doctor sifted through miles of red tape and bureaucracy, designing a drug specifically made for Allison—and only Allison. Two pills a day; for sixty days. The brain-scan came back clear.

Allison’s father said, “I stood up and screamed.”

I’ll bet he did more than that.

I’m not going to mince words, people are getting meaner, candidates greedier, and the average price of football tickets is absolutely ridiculous. I wish I could change the headlines, but I can’t even change my username and password without help.

I’m tired of blood, God help me, I am. I’m even more tired of reporters who make their livings from such things. But, by God, I’m not going down with this shipwreck.

I’m going to keep hoping. Nobody can stop me from doing that. I can believe in things worth believing in. Good things. Even though, to be quite honest, I don’t know what those things are.

But, one thing I do know,

Adopting six kids is one of them.