It is certainly not finished, but I look back at the past two and a half years, and I am thankful for how I have grown spiritually since starting to foster. I just told someone tonight that there is no clearer time in my life when I was called by God to obey and knew what it really was to answer His call.
Songs of worship that were nice from my privileged life are now desperate cries over the future of my foster children, the future of their family members. Tearful prayers over my own circumstances have gradually shifted to tearful prayers over devastating circumstances of others.
God has refocused my eyes on what is important, especially what is important in parenting. I really think I drifted from God as a young parent with all the answers, or at least seeing that other parents had all the answers, and clearly I just needed to do it the right way and I'd be a good parent, too. I needed to be re-educated. I needed to learn the basics of living out God's love and compassion with my children. I needed my pride chopped down and to be open. And I need to keep learning that.
Foster care is not a spiritual science project of mixing in foster children to our lives and we become more holy. But when God called us to do this, He knew what He was doing, and not just so children were safe and loved, as crucial as that is. He also knew we would serve everyone better in love the rest of our lives if we obeyed Him in this way. We are forever changed, and not because we are special people, but because we are ordinary people used by God by His grace.
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