November 2018

I've been really mad at my husband lately. Like all the time mad at him if I'm being honest. This anger ranged from rolling out of bed with a huff at night to passive aggressive text messages throughout the day. After one of these long days, him trying to figure it out and me listing all the lies in my head while crying myself to sleep, I realized, I was less mad at my husband and more mad at...God.

Recently, I've ugly cried, grit my teeth, and wanted to scream at lots of people in my life, just like my husband. Then I realized, God is bigger than any of this. That's what we are usually comforted by, right? God can handle anything; especially those things that seem to large for us to deal with. He is still in the business of miracles. His will is going to prevail. All those truths are why I'm ultimately mad at him. Not my husband, wayward-friends, DCFS, my kids, strangers. Nope, I'm mad at the One who is in charge of Everything because life in this world is hard and it's all in His hands.

I've told others, mainly students through our years of youth ministry, that it's totally okay to question or get mad at God. He's big enough. He can handle our measly anger and questioning. For whatever reason in our culture, we have been trained to respond to someone's confession of this by spewing scripture, how-tos, hold-in-there's, etc. We don't know how to let people be honest. How to not answer questioning not directed at us. We haven't been trained how to just be alongside someone during difficult times when we can't offer a quick-fix.

In return, we don't know how to question without looking for others to answer for God. We don't know how to be mad, even for a minute. We haven’t been allowed to say it out loud. Even if it's unjustified and we know it; there are benefits to having permission to be shockingly honest and transparent!

With that being said, please don't answer my inevitably transparent questioning to follow. Please just let me say it and be here with me while I do.

I am mad at God because I lost one of my best friends and lots of others over the past few years.

I am mad at God because our church is not in a financial state to pay my husband but we are still expected to and want to do the same jobs.

I am mad at God because my husband had to find another job to support our family and the one God provided is hard.

I am mad at God because homeschooling is hard and my husband doesn't have time to help.

I am mad at God because we started fostering to find children who needed a forever family and we still haven't found them.

I want to know why God hasn't sustained friendships that we've made over the past few years.

I want to know why we aren't seeing progress, miracles, or measurable success in the church we helped plant in an effort to follow Him.

I want to know why, of all the jobs out there, my husband has to have the one that owns him, meaning he can be called in and held longer at any given time.

I want to know why I still feel like I'm supposed to homeschool even though I don't feel good at it and it's beyond hard.

I want to know why we haven't been matched with a child who needs a forever home when there are so many out there that need one.

January 2019

With two months of perspective since writing this, in one of the hardest seasons of life yet, I have come to "forgive" God of my self-righteous anger toward Him. It doesn't change how I felt in the moment. It doesn't take away the hard I had to walk through. Even though I still have few answers, most frustrations and questions still aren't clearly answered, having written this down and said it out loud to a few trusted friends helped me work through my hurt and come back into fellowship with my gracious God again. I am continually going back to the truths in my head and try not to rely on inconsistent emotions feeding me lies to stay in this place during this season of unknowns.

He is good (all the time) and His ways are higher than mine. -Isaiah 55:9
He has plans to prosper not to harm me. -Jeremiah 29:11
Every good and perfect gift comes from Him. -James 1:17
He will never give me more than He can handle. -2 Corinthians 1:8-11
Genuine love will ooze from His followers. -Romans 12:9-19

May 2019

God has provided and deepened friendships I didn't foresee.

God is working through The Church we were a part of to strengthen them in a season without us as their lead and healing our family in areas of hurt we'd been gimping around with unknowingly.

God has allowed my husband favor, fast possibilities for promotion, consistent work keeping us in the home and community we are comfortable in, and most of, to develop all relationships otherwise missed out on due to his currently place of employment.

God is allowing an extended time of rest because we completed our homeschooling early for the school year.

God is continuing to show me He is in charge while asking me to hold things [people] with an open hand to watch what He has in store.

What messy six month confession. Thanks for sitting with me in it while it boiled out of me. Do you need to be transparent something messy in order to work through the hurt? Find a trusted person to start the process of healing alongside today. You won't regret it.

Anxiety is a broad spectrum diagnosis. Everyone deals with anxiety differently. My anxiety presents as obsessive organizational tendencies. I don't know if that's a thing but it's going to be for this post.

When I start feeling overwhelmed I become hyper-orderly and as a byproduct, I begin ordering around my little mentions to become more orderly. Don't get me wrong, organization, simplicity, and minimalism have been Proven to lower levels of depression and anxiety. My problem is, when our life is already orderly, mostly simple, and minimal I still seek for ways to make it more so.

Friends, family, well-meaning-strangers-who-want-throat-punched would simply tell me, "just let it go". Sure sure. This seems like a reasonable response to the crazy woman yelling about the water bottles left on the floor and the craft supplies that should be clearly put away by this time of night so that the robo-vac doesn't eat everything but it's just not that easy.

My heart races, I play out all the possibilities, and I've even tried to "just let it go" but then my "irrational fears" became very rational when those possibilities actually played out.

Let the kids leave their mess, just for tonight. --> toys broken, pieces lost, money wasted, tears cried, robot jammed.

Leave those dishes, they'll be there tomorrow tired mamma. --> Glued on food taking twice as long to clean, ants and roaches are now BFFs and enjoying our leftovers in a sink full of filth.

Stop yelling at them, they'll get in the bed/go to sleep eventually. --> Overtired baby screaming For E Ver, children making a habit of going to bed later and later because no one is going to Make them go on time, children won't get out of bed in the morning because they're so tired, everyone's grouchy, we are all late for all the things.

Can I get an Amen!?

Being the OOT mom aint pretty but I am not sure how to not loose my cool, get to be the fun parents occasionally, and still get the things done. Any other OOT people out there?

I feel most days that my greatest responsibility is to not screw up my kids.

Decisions for them determine my entire day:
when do I make them wake up,
what should I feed them,
how much school work should I complete with them each day,
when should I allow screen time,
how do I teach them to be responsible with their things but not OCD,
have we talked about Jesus enough,
am I making them hate Bible study my requiring them to complete it before they start other things,
should I be dedicating more of my day to face-to-face correction,
are their hearts being changed or will they become sneaky little punks,
am I showing them grace enough,
am I too undisciplined with them,
am I teaching them to love others well!?!

My greatest responsibility is to show them Jesus "as we are going" but I don't know which decisions are the important ones. Everyone has their opinions on how to raise the perfect children but each of those seem to lead down roads of every extreme. I don't feel like I'm doing any realm of life well for them. There will always be someone out there doing each of them better. Each person that is more determined in a specific area always has an opinion on how I am not doing it right. OR I feel guilty for being that determined person when someone else comments about it; positively or negatively.

Prov 22:6 scares the snot out of me. Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. Ehh!?! Well, what if I start my children off in the way I thought they should go but now I'm not so sure BUT now, even when they're old, they're not gonna turn from it. You can laugh or cry with me at that thought but I'm for real.

For now, I'm just gonna lay off the Dr Pepper in hopes of sleeping more soundly without all these worries floating around in my head. My prayer for me (and that one other mom feeling the same way) will be that I always remember my quiver full of arrows are a blessing from the Lord, I will try not to worry about tomorrow and all the troubles it has in itself, while God fills me with his incomprehensible peace.

*Psalm 127:3-5
*Matthew 6:33-34
*Philippians 4:6-7

Our family went into this foster care journey with the intent to adopt. We heard the statistics of waiting kids in care and our desire obey Christ's mandate to care for the orphans seemed to match up with the needs of these kids, not to mention...it was "FREE" as opposed to international or even domestic private adoption. We took the plunge.

Along the way, we chose to be open to fostering children while we waited to be matched with a child(ren) that needed our us as a forever family. Boy have we experienced a crazy amount of emotions, highs and lows we'd never foresaw, as well as growth, to be quite frank, we never thought we wanted for ourselves or our biological children.

One of the many things this journey has taught me so far is that, like one of my favorite movies, we are not the hero in every story.

:PAUSE:

If you have yet to see the movie Megamind, stop reading this. Find. This. Movie. Watch it. Watch it with your spouse. Watch it with your kids. Watch it again. Laugh. Tear up or at least awe at the heart warming moments. Laugh some more. Clear space in your brain for a plethora of quotable lines that will inevitably be applicable in a ridiculously high volume of moments In Real Life. You can thank me later.

Now that you've watched this fun kids film, you'll better understand my application and I won't spoil it for you.

Wikipedia:
The film tells the story of a super-intelligent alien supervillain, Megamind, who after a long-lasting battle one day actually destroys his foe, the much-loved superhero Metro Man. Having Metro City for himself, Megamind finds out that his villainy has no purpose and thus creates a new superhero to serve as his nemesis. His plan backfires, as he ends up creating instead a new super-villain. With Metro City spiraling out of control, Megamind attempts to set things right and discovers his newfound purpose—as a superhero.

For my illustration, I am taking the vague overview of the story were we, as foster parents are Roxanne Ritchie in this film, biological parents are Megamind, and our foster children are Metro City, the city in need of protection. Just like in the film, Roxanne and Megamind end up working together to help Megamind find his true potential and ultimately he gets to be the superhero of the story. The story doesn't play out unexpectedly, people make mistakes, expected heroes fail us, there are super-villain batters, but it is a great ending.

Although, my family is not where I thought we would be three years and twenty six foster friends later, I think we have been allowed to be the Roxanne to many an unrecognized Megamind. Their stories may not look like the fairy tail I had hoped for at the point when children returned but everyone needs to be given the benefit of the doubt. To be fought for or with rather than against. They need support to help start a new path in life. They need to be seen as the unsuspecting hero in their children's lives. I would want that roll if I'd made some poor decisions that cost me time with my children.

Alongside their assigned DCFS workers, the biological parents need US. Yep, they, as well as their children need the foster parents to fight for them. They need us to see the good in them and to bring it out. We need to comfort them, encourage, and let them know we aren't working against them or trying to steal their children.

While I soooooooooo want to be done with this system and the messiness of people in general, that doesn't seem to be God's plan yet. We haven't been matched with a child who needs us in that way. Right now, we have been matched with over 26  children who need us in their gap. They need us as their family's advocates.

I will NEVER be able to adopt a child, call them my own, raise them for the entirety of their lives without knowing I did EVERYthing in my power to help their parents be a safe, loving, healthy option for them first. I could not look a child in the eyes daily knowing there was something I could have done to allow them to stay together as the original unit God placed together. Don't get me wrong, my flesh has wanted to snatch up some of my babies, even if just for a few months longer to assure their home life looked closer to what I thought they needed but in the long run, I have to trust the sovereignty of God in their lives and mine.

Are you considering becoming a foster parent? Adopting through your local DCFS? Go into with the right mindset. Fight for God's original plan. I think it's alright to be willing to be part of His redemptive plan after sin jacks it all up but we need more families to proceed with the heart of Roxanne. Foster parents have been given a bad rap because of some of us not fighting for the biological unit. By offering false testimony. By seeing Only the negative. By never aiding the parents in hopes their shortfallings will cost them their kids and the foster family will reap the gains.  Don't be that person.

There are so many reasons we need to believe in someone today. Step back and let someone else be the hero in their child's story. Find their downfall and try to assist in helping them over come it. Share your downfalls. Show them pictures of their child. Bring them gifts, pictures, crafts, whatever for holidays. Become their sidekick to save their family and change the narrative of their lives. God is big enough! God is big enough to redeem the worst start to any story. Let him weave Himself into their story through you.

Please don't hesitate to ask me how to become a part of aiding children and families in care OR to share your own stories.