Day: January 12, 2013

Changing Lives, Growing Hearts

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I just found this post from A Musing Maralee tonight and here’s an excerpt:

So because it is painful to love and to lose, does that mean we choose not to love?  God forbid.

We choose to do what is right because it is RIGHT.  For no other reason.  Not because it feels good or because it will be so rewarding.  Sometimes we may not see that reward until we see The Father’s face and He explains to us why we had to walk that road.  But I would rather suffer the heartbreak to be obedient than to run away from pain and miss the joy of loving who God has called me to love.  If Christians are too afraid of pain to risk loving children they can’t keep and whose futures they can’t control, who will?  If we aren’t willing to do what’s right just because it’s right, what do we expect other people to do?

So much good in this. And really, I wanted to copy her entire post and paste it right here. I’ll link to it twice instead.

This picture above is one of the very best shots of Chloe I have. And I have a lot of shots of Chloe. So happy, so content, so much loving her unasked for role of temporary big sister to E3. He loves her too. He calls her, “My Chloe!” He has recently started doing that with all of the girls’ names and they all really like having him here, some a little more than others, but Chloe has taken to this gig in a way I simply didn’t see coming.

And is it going to rip her heart out when he gets a new placement in the future? Yes. I believe it is. And it’s going to rip my heart out twice – once when he leaves and a second time to see it happen to my kids. But as Maralee said above, we do what is right because it is right. And doing the right thing downright sucks sometimes. Yet we do it anyway. Because we should.

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No Rock Stars Here

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Dazed and confused. This is life right now and we’re still trying to wrap our brains around it as well as figure out how to better manage it. But I’ve been trying to get a handle on that one for 16 years and…

Here’s the deal: after posting my laundry list of what happened to Friday, I started getting a lot of “You’re amazings!” and “You’re a rock star!” and “Mom of the Year!” types of comments and such. Here is the God’s Honest Truth: I’m not amazing. I’m not a rock star. I’m CERTAINLY not Mom of the Year. And I’m not being self-deprecating when I say this, it’s simply the truth. And I suspect most of you know that already anyway.

Here’s the other deal: After finishing the December Photo Project, I just decided I’d keep it going as it was helping me think more intentionally about providing everyday life content to my blog without me having to really struggle to think of it. So that’s what I’ve been doing, only on January 3, E3 joined our family  for this season and that’s been a pretty major thing ever since. I didn’t necessarily set out to chronicle life as a foster parent, I was just tired of neglecting my blog and/or giving it over to reviews and giveaways completely, hence the “2013 in Photos” category and accompanying content.

I process life by writing, so that’s what’s happening here. And I do struggle with the whole “let your good works be done in secret” thing because I’m not trying to show off with this. What we’re doing is hardly show-off-able (see above photo). But I do think it’s important to chronicle what we’re doing and let others peek into it just a little not only to raise awareness of such great need all across our country, but maybe…just maybe…God will use our experiences to encourage someone else to think a bit more about what they can do to also help those who are helpless.

  • Maybe adopt?
  • Maybe long-term foster?
  • Maybe emergency foster? (That’s what we’re doing)
  • Maybe provide respite care for other foster parents? (weekend care)
  • Maybe come alongside a foster family and surprise them with meals, diapers, support?
  • Something.

Getting involved doesn’t have to completely change your life. But I think it should change your heart. And how that looks will be different for all of us.

But it should look like something.

We’re not heroes here. We just have hearts.