Foster Care Wrecked ME

Foster care took something from me.  Wrecked me. Truly did.  Took many things actually. Many things I didn't want to give up and fought hard to keep. I thought they were safe and built on solid ground. 

I      was     wrong

     When we started this journey I was ready to save the world.  I knew our home life was good.  I had a great husband and family.  I had great friends.  I had faith and a strong biblical foundation. I was a part of a great church.  I was a good parent. Of course I was doing this alongside God.  Of course.  

     What I failed to realize is that "I" would be doing nothing more than just being the broken, misshapen vessel that I had formed in my own hands.  I would not be alongside God.  He simply doesn't need me.  I would be used by Him as he molded me.  What I learned next is that His potter's wheel never stops.  The clay is not complete and won't be here on earth. I have too many cracks, messed up parts, imbalances and they need reshaping on a regular basis.  

He hands never leave.  They are always there.

Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message. So I went down to the potter's house and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands, so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
Jeremiah 18:2

We are the clay and you are the potter.  We are a work of your hands. Isaiah 64:8

     God led me here to show me through His eyes, His joy, his creation and His heartbreak, and it would in turn break me.  What is broken God will restore.  

I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart. Ezekiel 36:26

     How could I meet the biological parents who neglected or abused their children? I could not stand in their space. But Jesus could and Jesus did and he led me there to see HIS creation, HIS joy, HIS heartbreak. That lens was not my lens. I didn't know that lens existed even though I professed that I loved others equally. What I meant was, "I love those I walk with, even slightly to the left or to the right of me, but NOT those."  I can love those in the distance, but not those I can touch in my own town. I simply would never ordinarily be able to touch them because I would not come to them. Oh the shame of my heart when I could feel Jesus walk me there. When I could see the tears in HIS eyes for HIS creation. ALL OF HIS CREATION. How could I turn away? How could I stay? Shame and guilt and fear, pride and righteous indignation, yet grace and mercy and love walked hand in hand and yet how could they? Jesus never left. He simply walked through the mess of the world with love and grace and I would never be the same. Not the one who professed it before, but the one who walked through and held it in my arms in the form of a baby, a creation of the CREATOR a toddler  whom Jesus called to Him, pre-teen he planned before the beginning of time, a parent as they wept and Jesus wept with them and caught their tears, a grandmother as she fought for dignity and control over the spiraling events that led everyone to this place, the grandmother whom he formed in the womb.  The father who fought to find a way back for his family, a man God formed in his own image.  A mother who didn't know another way, a woman God formed from man. How could I be the same?

He heals the broken-hearted and bandages their wounds. Psalm 147:3

     I want my old lens back. This one isn't comfortable. This one doesn't fit the predetermined life and faith I thought I had built on a solid foundation. One I took pride in. And therein the slope begins.  The fade starts to occur. The pottery tilts and the cracks begin to form. MY solid foundation, NOT HIS. I had missed the point. 

     How could I fight against class systems and yet so carefully build my own? How could so many opposites be true and yet the the opposites were my own? How could I be such a hypocrite when I cried against hypocrisy?

     Why did Jesus bring me to this place?  This place is rough and hard and treacherous.  It doesn't play well with others.  It just doesn't fit what I have made my world to be.  Oh the shame of my prideful, self-righteous heart.

     In trying to be so right and with good intentions, I lost my way on the potter's wheel, but Jesus never lost his.  His hands remain firm around me molding me, reshaping me.  He never walks away.  Not from me.  Not from anything or anyone he has created.  Not the self righteous, not from the abuser. He holds us all.

Foster care destroyed a part of me that God saw fit to prune. To mold.  To reshape.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me and I in you. As the Branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, no neither can you unless you abide in me.  I am the vine and you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit for apart from me you can do nothing.  If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and case them into the fire and they are burned. John 15:2-6Foster care destroyed me and it was the best thing that could have happened. May I always be a willing vessel in HIS hands.