Foster Care Reflections: Sabbatical

We haven't loved on any new bonus babies in a couple of weeks and my heart is beginning to ache.

In the beginning, it was good to allow the dust to settle. We had time to talk, to really slow down and have the heart to hearts. We had time to just be with each other. We had time to rediscover the closeness that we have long done without in the chaos and craziness that inevitably moves in when you mesh two sets of lives together.

But I miss it.

I've realized we are better for it.

I've realized how God breaks us against each other so that He can remake us into a closer version of Him. 

All the struggling and straining, all the crying and lost sleep, all the missed engagements and broken plans are a way of bringing us down to our knees and closer to Him. We leave the comfort of our luxurious safety zones and we enter the messiness of a broken world in need of what only He can give. I realize how desperately I cling to Him every moment of every day for the strength just to get out of bed. I realize that I am fully aware of how I have nothing to offer at the altar but my own broken hallelujah.
Foster care is as much about rescuing me from the temptation of whitewashed living as it is about rescuing them from trauma. We're in this together for the sake of our very souls.
I await our next arrivals knowing they will come in tattered pieces, my heart already broken for them. I pray that this sabbatical has been enough for us all to meet them on their battlefield and to go with them to the end.
Though the world around us delves into a chaos of its own, I fear not because I have SEEN the miraculous power of God. I have seen Him change hearts and lives. I have lived to see the sun rise over the horizon. (In foster care, you live the darkness for sometimes months on end!) When you witness the power of such love and such saving grace in action, you find that fear fades away.