Foster Care Reflections: Finding Grace in the Broken Things

Broken chairs, broken toys, a cracked windshield, holes in the wall, damaged ceilings, a broken window, broken tile, a broken handle on the fridge, broken eyeglasses, and the list goes on. Honestly, these are easier for me to deal with than the brokenness that is inside each one of us because of what has brought us together-foster care. These things cost only money and can be repaired like new. The emotional wounds will leave scars forever.
I keep looking around my house at all the cosmetic damage and I just have to take a deep breath and remind myself that it will get repaired....eventually. Every time something else gets broken-either out of a child's emotional tantrum or just because we have so many little rugrats-I just have to take a deep breath and remind myself God will provide a way...in His time. But still, it does begin to wear you down.
The piles of laundry not getting done. The unfinished tasks that I said "I'll get to that as soon as I have time" that are now giving me the stink eye. The piles of clutter that are sitting unorganized screaming for me to find them a home. It's all beginning to wear on me.
The battle of wills from each kid who needs me for something different, but each just as desperately, takes everything I've got before the day is even over. The emotional battles fought by each child who is struggling to understand the situation that they are each in-all 8 of them- which none of them asked to be in is hard to even watch. Just because my biological children were prepped for this doesn't mean that this is any easier for them. Just because my bonus babies are in a safe and loving home doesn't mean that all their problems magically disappear. Just because my husband and I are adults doesn't mean we don't constantly doubt ourselves as to whether we are doing ANY of this right. Every day in my house is a battle fought on 10 different fields. We are fierce fighters in my house and sometimes those battles erupt onto each other. Those are the bad hours. In foster care, you count hours rather than days because the rollercoaster isn't a good keeper of time.
We have many broken things in my house thanks to many children and foster care. Sometimes I cry about those things. Okay, I cry OFTEN about those things. Except it's not the "things" I'm crying about, it's the process that makes me cry. Through the process, God breaks open the ugly parts I didn't know were there and shines a light on what still needs fixing in myself and those I love deeply. Through all of this refinement, God has a way of showing us all the yuck we thought we were too good to have deep down inside. Kind of stinks to find out how petty and stingy and impatient and insecure you really STILL are at my age. UGH! I also see my bio kids in ways I never did before, sin that I never would have noticed in their hearts before they were pushed to bring it all out in the open. I cry about that too.
We so often just think the brokenness of foster care only refers to the "system" or the families who have lost their children. It absolutely does! Yet, it means us too. God uses foster care to expose us and remove our blinders to reveal that we are on the same sin level, no favoritism. We are no better, no more entitled to grace than anyone else. I may be saved, but I am still in debt to the one who saved me just like everyone else. Every day that I am broken to pieces and that I have to look at something else in my house that is broken, I am reminded that I am not better- I am saved and there's a difference. Today I will be thankful for the broken things because it reminds me that grace is abundant and that it is sufficient.