I have one of those friends that you can show up on her front porch with your four children on a hot summer evening with almost no notice, and after two years of no face-to-face interaction and she will throw wide her door and welcome you with a hug and then stay up half the night taking about meaningful things even when she needs to get up early. A couple days ago, she posted this on her blog and it was so good I asked her if I could steal it. She said yes. She's one of those friends. Sometimes I wonder if we have the same heart beating in different chests. Yes, she is foster-adopting, but you could substitute dossier for 27 hours of parent training, and four children for three etc, etc, and you would have my thoughts put BETTER. So without further ado: Sarah.
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families… Psalm 68:5,6a
I’ve always felt like the main character in the story of life. I’m not saying that I’ve always thought I was the most important person in the world, but just that I’ve unconsciously run all events and thoughts through the filter of my own experience and evaluated them according to my own feelings. Sometimes I like to people watch and think about the fact that each person that walks by, whether they intend to or not, think that they are the main character in the story. It blows my mind. We are all so in our own brains.
It is very possible that some of you are going to read this and say, “Nope, that’s just you, Sarah,” and I’ll end up feeling like the most self-centered shmuck on the planet, but I’m going to go out on a limb and hypothesize that we are all seeing the world this way. Even when we have compassion on others and step out of our comfort zone to help, those experiences are still written up in our minds as a story about us.
Lately, God has been telling me that He is writing a story in which I am not the main character. I’m a supporting character, I’m privileged to be a part of it, and I’ll forever be changed by it, but I’m not the main character. You see, He has some kids out there that He has big plans for, whom He wants to use to change this world for good, grow up in His Word, and show His love to. He wants to heal their pain, give them hope and prepare them for the world.
They are not a charity case.
They are precious little people.
They are not foster kids.
They are His kids.
Jesus loves them not as an afterthought, but as a primary thought.
He has called Brooke and I to make them a part of our family. Full-fledged sonship. Give them our name, a share in our (small) inheritance, and a place at our table. Pay for their college, their weddings and their tennis shoes. Pray for their hearts, their concerns, and their futures. We don’t know who they are yet, but as we move closer and closer to possibly finding them I am growing more sure that while my role is a supporting one, it is an essential, God-given one. This will not be a story about how much I gave up to rearrange my life for them or the effort that I will now have to put into parenting, as I was so focused on in the beginning. This will be a story about God and His kids and how He protected them and cared for them. It will be a story about all of our children, biological and adopted, and the way God worked to bring them together. It will be joyously about His provision and the way He puts the lonely in families.
Our home study is complete. We are one class away from finishing our 27 hours of training. We are awaiting approval from the Department of Human Services and will shortly, if God wills it, be on a list of families to be considered for adopting children in the foster system whose parents have permanently lost their parental rights. It might be one child or it could be two or three siblings.
As my three biological daughters are preparing to start school this fall and I am trying to figure out all of the uncertainties that accompany that, my heart is burdened for our other children as well. Who is helping them pick out their school supplies and make sure they have friends to sit by at lunch? Who is making sure they go to bed early this week so they can get up early for school on Friday? I hope that they have fantastic foster parents who are caring for them in this way, but I am beginning to long to be the one to do so. I know I won’t always get it right, but with God’s help I will love them as my own. I don’t know how long it will take for Him to bring them home, or how He will provide all we need to care for them in this small, small home, but I am excited to see how this story plays out. I am so excited to meet the little people who will change our family forever.
I would be so blessed if you would join me in praying for them.
1 comment:
She took the words right out of my...head. :)
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