becoming a foster parent?

Life is full of decisions, but they are never made in a vacuum. Our histories, our experiences affect the present and the future. So when Tom and I say that, God willing, we’re becoming respite care foster parents, it’s part of a journey we’ve been on for some time. We debated adoption after we had one biological child. We considered foster care at one point but I worried that our kids were too young to understand the comings and goings of other kids and that they would wonder if they were going to leave too. But recently it resurfaced and I feel God giving me mixtures of excitement and terror at the idea of upsetting our equilibrium and inviting kids into our home. Our hearts might break, after all. But the excitement of attempting to love kids like God does, to be part of His helping right what is broken is super, crazy thrilling to me. I’ve struggled with finding our place and living out justice in this season of life with young kids. Fostering feels like being the hands and feet I’ve longed for.

But my reason for writing this post is less about me and how I’m feeling about it than my kids’ response. The conversation went something like this:

Me: So, Daddy and I are thinking about helping take care of kids who can’t be with their parents right now and I just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page. What do you think about that?

Kid 1: Yes! I want another kid in this family and Mommy doesn’t want to born [sic] another baby. Can it be a girl?

Kid 2: I have an even better idea! If there’s a kid who doesn’t have a mommy or daddy we could ADOPT them to be part of our family!

Me: humbled and speechless

The compassion that oozes from them stops me in my tracks. Don’t get me wrong, we have our fair share of antagonizing and yelling from the mouth of babes here. But I see God working in them, teaching them (and through them, me) his heart for justice, his unflinching and forever love. They don’t immediately jump to the logistics, what sacrifices might be made, whether or not they’ll have to share their toys, their parents’ time, etc. Instead, they are eager to love and innocently trust it will all work out well in the end. No wonder we’re called to have the faith of a little child. Isn’t that so, Abba?

7

I mentioned before that I was reading 7  by Jen Hatmaker. Well, I’ve finished it now and would highly recommend it to everyone. It’s a quick, engaging read and I laughed out loud at various points, but that’s not why I liked it. (OK, maybe it is one reason I like it; I’m part way through Tina Fey’s Bossypants and laughed more with Jen.) What I appreciate about Jen (or at least 7) is that she is talking about real issues, the stuff of faith, as it were, but she can laugh at herself and not come across as sanctimonious when she shares the lessons she learned in the process of fasting. How do we spend our time? Our money? Have we truly thought/cared about our (abundance of ) food? Our clothing? Our possessions? Do we see ourselves as stewards of all the above, or do we consciously or subconsciously view it as ours to do with as we will? Have we taken to heart and action God’s call to love the poor, the oppressed, the outcast, the stranger? Anyone who is willing to tackle these themes head-on and still make me laugh gets a hat tip (pun intended) in my book.

I confess when I started reading it I was a bit stand-offish. She declares that she is an all or nothing type of gal, so when she decided to eat seven foods or wear seven pieces of clothing for a month I internally declared that a random bit of legalism. I might have missed the entire point if I hadn’t kept reading. What happened was that I was reminded, again and again, of her desire to fast so that God might be able to shape her more readily, that she might hear His voice more clearly. Spoiler alert: she did. And it changed her in great ways.

But it’s one thing to declare this a great book. (So great, in fact, that despite checking it out from the library, I’m probably going to buy it and add it to our collection.) It’s quite another to ask what this means to me, and what God is prompting me to do as a result.  Here are things that come to mind:

• to fast. It may extend farther, but I want to physically fast from food. I’ve had years of excuses (I’m not pleasant with low blood sugar, I’m pregnant, I’m nursing) but it’s now time.
• to eat down my kitchen cupboards/refrigerator/freezer. I know some people do this just to start afresh; I want to do it to see how long it will last, to stop and realize how.much.food I regularly store. Over the last two weeks I’ve made very conscious decisions to eat what’s in my cupboards (plus fresh produce). Give me this day my daily bread? If these last two weeks are any indication, I think I store months of “bread”.
• making sabbath more intentional. I’ve pondered this over the years after having such incredible sabbaths in grad school. But the detail that struck me was the need to plan for sabbath. (Duh, I know.) But I think I thought I would just stop working and rest, without realizing that, especially in this season of life, there is preparation and discipline that occurs beforehand to make sabbath possible. Could meal planning, cleaning, and laundry become part of my wild Friday night routine so I wouldn’t feel pressured by them being undone on Sunday?
• Tom and I decided to train to become respite care providers in the foster care system. More details to come.

I’m sure there are more things that God will show me as we take these baby steps. But it feels exciting to act again. It’s adventure time.

p.s. I’m ending with a quote that talked about her readers, which I found so accurate that it was almost a bit disturbing. If you’re anything like me, I hope you’ll be encouraged as well.

I’m guessing you’ve cried over orphans or refugees or starvation or child prostitutes, heartbroken by the depravity of this world. It’s not okay that your kids get school and birthday parties while Third World children get abandoned and trafficked, but you don’t know how to fix that. You’re wondering if your lifestyle is connected to these discrepancies, and you have a nagging suspicion that less is more but it’s a muddy concept. Everyone has ideas. It’s confusing and overwhelming. This creates a sort of war within, and it leaves you raw. Sometimes you’re a full-blown mess over it.

Hear this: I don’t think God wants you at war with yourself. He sent the prince of peace to soothe those tumultuous waters already. Self-deprecation is a cruel response to Jesus, who died and made us righteous….He is battling for global redemption right now….We’re so conditioned to being a problem that we’ve forgotten we’re actually the answer….The body of Christ is mobilizing in unprecedented numbers. Jesus is staging a massive movement to bind up the brokenhearted and proclaim freedom to the captives….Jesus is waging war on injustice and calling us to join Him. This is way more fun than self-condemnation, no?

second-guessing

by langalex at Flickr

I had my annual physical the other week. Everything was normal. In fact, the nurse who called me praised my “extremely low” cholesterol ratio. (In typical Coleen fashion, I insisted she mail me a copy of my lab reports and then proceeded to obsess over each value. Where was it in the range? Did I need to adjust anything?) But really, everything was fine. Good, in fact. Healthy by every normally used definition. And, as a general statement, I feel healthy. (Yes, yes, I could use a more-enforced bedtime and more discipline for those early mornings, but I’m talking big-picture here, folks.) Yet, I just spent a half an hour looking at various diets (I mean ways of eating, not attempts to lose weight). Last week I printed out the It Starts with Food shopping list and read (again) about the Whole30 plan. I’ve added a paleo blog to my rss feed. Please ask me why.

Why? (Thanks for asking.) The quick is that I’m crazy. The longer is that I sometimes think I have a bizarre personality trait that is unwilling to not stay open-minded, even if I have an opinion about things, even if I truly believe something to be true. I believe that junk food is bad for you, but show me enough studies showing its benefit and I might, maybe consider it. (Maybe. But I would add Cheez-Its back to my life.)

I think being open-minded is a good thing. I believe truth is discoverable, so I want to be someone who considers what to believe and is willing to face hard questions head-on. It isn’t to say that there isn’t faith in life, for there will always be places where we don’t have the answers and need to take a step forward anyway. What I find frustrating about myself, however, is my willingness to question myself nearly any time someone I trust comes up with an alternate perspective. Really, I should dramatically adjust my family’s diet because someone else finds an alternative diet interesting? Surely, I should stop eating any grains and compulsively examine how I feel after meals because someone else feels better without them? I fear I am robbing myself of joy in life by trying to make sure I haven’t made a mistake, when there was no indication I’d done so.

Bigger questions arise. If, heaven forbid, I make a mistake (dietary, parenting, schooling, or life choice), what does that mean to me? Does it mean that I’m shameful? Does it mean that I’m unworthy? Or does it just mean that I made a mistake? I tell my kids that mistakes are how we learn (and that my kids’ value remains totally unchanged by said mistakes). Can I extend equal grace to myself? Is there a way to remain open-minded but untossed by every wind that blows my way? I think I’ve got to look at the root issue: value. So today I claim this: I am fully and completely loved by God apart from my performance. There is nothing I can do to make God love me more or less than He does right now. Amen and amen.

i (sorta) wanna be a pharisee

When I was in junior high, my lifeline was my church youth group. You see, I was nothing if not a quintessential nerd. (Not much has changed, but my skin feels a lot more comfortable now.) Anyhow, we used to sing a song, the chorus of which I sadly can’t remember. Any junior high staff able to help me? Anyhow, one of the verses went like this:

I don’t wanna be a pharisee

I don’t wanna be a pharisee

‘Cuz a pharisee ain’t fair, ya see

I don’t wanna be a pharisee.

There was also a verse about not wanting to be sadducee (a sadducee is sad-you-see), etc. Ah, the memories I maintain as my gray matter shrinks.

Anyhow, I’ve come to the conclusion recently that there’s a part of me that totally wants to be a pharisee. I’ve often never rarely somewhat regularly desired a very specific list of rules to follow with exact percentages of giving required, specifically the best way to do x, y, or z, what the “right” way to do something is. Yes, astute friends, I’ve wanted the Law. Because somehow in my limited brain I think it’s going to make being faithful easier, that I will always know if I’m doing everything I should to obey, etc. Oh, you say, it’s about my heart? About my character? Even if there are rules? Well, phooey.

A good friend of mine went on a one-month spending fast (which she has now extended to two). I heard about it and was intrigued. Wouldn’t that be a great way to go? Sure, it would be hard, but I sometimes like black and white, so I just wouldn’t have to think about my purchases. I could go hard core, and I’d learn a lot, right? And there’s no doubt I would learn a ton. I’m sure I’d realize where I needlessly spend money, and about the places that I crave control and am selfish. But as I was about to sign myself up I paused. I know myself. I know that the lessons I mentioned above would at least be somewhat negated by the pride I would feel that I was doing it “right”. My bigger struggle, and the one I need to wrestle with, is the willingness to humbly submit myself, and everything I own, to God. To talk with God about my priorities, both spending and otherwise. To ask what He has for me today. To trust that He is faithful to guide, even in finances and other choices.

There are big thoughts afoot in my heart these days. Don’t you have them sometimes, too? They smack of craziness, of surrender…of freedom. When I compare those thoughts to my longings for ritual and rules I am thrilled to say that freedom wins. So I won’t be doing a spending fast in the near future (although I’ve learned to never say never–and I’ll cheer on those doing them!) but I am going to lay the pharisee at the altar and see what’s ahead.

bigger than myself

Right after I had R., I was home for seven months. Aside from walking R. to sleep and seeing the interior of all the shops on 4th Street over and over again, I was really at home. It was a sharp contrast to my pre-kid life working full-time and hanging out with Tom and friends when I wasn’t at work. My world shrunk exponentially. Shrinking world + sleep deprivation = isolated, struggling mama.

Things changed over time. I made some new friends, R. started sleeping through the night (and so did I–at least until another kid came around), and I gradually returned to being more social. But things had changed dramatically and it always seemed so easy to focus on my family at the expense of looking at the whole world.

People like Holly encouraged me to look outside myself. She asked if I would come work alongside her in Congo, interacting with adults with disabilities and orphans. I did, and the door creaked open again. Moving to Washington gave me the chance to start over, to figure out how I would spend my time. So I’m trying to live in line with my values–and I’m finding that being involved in others’ lives makes mine richer.

• I think I’m going to start volunteering with the middle schoolers at church
• R, N, and I are going to make bags for the homeless we see around town
• I’m on the board for Reeds of Hope, a non-profit helping kids in Congo
• I want to volunteer with Jubilee Reach, helping the underserved around here
• I went to an economic justice summit, which kicked my tail about how I’m spending my money.

It’s challenging to keep this outward focus, and while the above list looks great, often times it’s still all about how I stubbed my toe or how much vitamin D I have. Truth be told, I was just last night whining about being grouchy and not feeling happy with life. But that’s why I’m writing this: to put on (virtual) paper that I feel that God uses me more when I’m involved in others’ lives, that life seems far more worthwhile when I’m not focused on the mundane. A speaker I heard recently talked about the “weary consistency” of life as a young mom. That felt like an apt description. Sometimes days with little ones feels long, and the household tasks feel never-ending. But if I’m caring for others beyond my immediate family, either in a formal way or just by making the call to chat, to set up a brunch, or whatever brings us into contact, it enlivens life to such an extent that the day-to-day activities don’t feel like the be all, end all of my life. (Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids. Being home with them is a joy. But I’m learning to admit that’s ok if I still want adult interaction.) And for that I shout a huge amen.

 

mourning

Tom took the kids out this morning. I almost didn’t let him go. I wanted him here. My kids here. In my arms. But in the end I needed alone time, and R. had choir rehearsal.

Like a moth to flame

I was drawn to read the interwebs

Over and over and over again.

Because surely, surely by reading

Some sense would come out of tragedy.

But it didn’t, and it won’t.

So hot tears flowed while reading

while showering

while washing dishes

while praying.

What do I pray? How?

Pray with heart cries

Pray with aching insides

Pray that somehow God would be in the darkness

Of despair, of pain, of lives and innocence lost.

Pray that although some answers will never be

That somehow, some way, Hope will.

Not today, not tomorrow. Not for some hellish period of time.

But some day.

Today we will mourn.

Praying for all those affected by the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. Reminded by a friend to “look for the helpers”, and thankful for the principal, the custodian, the psychologist, the teachers, the police, and everyone else who desperately tried to help reign in horror.

 

 

it’s all about you–or not

I’m guest posting at These Stones today. Come join us! https://thesestones.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/its-all-about-you-or-not/