My big hack for “doing all the things” is to release the illusion and idol of control and perfection and get very comfortable with your own weakness and shortcomings. The key to spinning a lot of plates is being ok with dropping one every once in a while, asking for help or forgiveness as you pick up the pieces, & keeping on with the spinning, identity in tact.
Yes, giving them up is impossible.
But giving up control is even harder.
There is a way to talk to our kids about their parents and their stories that is both honest and covered in compassion. We interpret their parents’ struggles through a lens of trauma and share it with our kids with the belief that their parents are doing their best.
It's an impossible tension on its own, until I remember whose you truly are. I can both love you as "mine" and release you as "not mine,” because you are His, and I surrender you to Him.
My kids have received many good things because of foster care and they’ve endured many hard things because of foster care. But with a good God ordaining their days, I trust that He’s using it all to make them who He has them to be.
When trauma triggers, it trumps all else. Every plan and priority put aside.
People enjoy platitudes like "babies are resilient" and "they can't remember anything anyway.” Don't tell me for a second that he won't experience the loss of me. And don't tell me for a second that he hasn't experienced the loss of his biological mother.
I’ve found that facing my fear is far less frightening than feeling the fear.
Foster care will affect your kids. Some of the effects will be immediately, obviously good. And some you will see for the good that they are only once you see them through eyes of faith—looking forward to the character & hope & good they will bring along with them
My mama’s heart for my kids becomes idolatrous when I forget the God above it all. When I try to rip them from His hands, into my own. When I doubt and decide He doesn’t actually plan good. When I believe that I could be a better God than He.
So super excited to share that I’ve signed a contract to publish THREE more books for foster parents (and families!) with Baker Books!
Our children's parents are not beyond hope. God can save them. God can change them. He loves them deeply—not for who they could be, but as they are, right now in their lostness. He created them and adores them, despite themselves. Just like He does you and me.
I don’t know how long this little one will be with me, and I don’t know if he’ll have memories of me. But I know that his brain and body will remember my nurturing care, and it will change his life forever.
I prayed “break my heart for the things that break yours,” but I pretty much had my mind made up about what those things were: kids.
Triggers aren’t meant to be avoided (forever). They reveal places that are broken, so that healing can take place. When our kids are ready, triggers can be opportunities—to process, to grow, to heal.
Getting attached to a child who will most likely leave means living in tension. It means freely releasing your heart–where you love and feel and connect–but holding the reigns on your mind–where you plan and hope and daydream.
Being ok with “the best I can do” is actually a way that I live by faith. My sight tells me that I need to do everything and do it perfectly, or my people will suffer. But my faith leads me to surrender to Him and focus on faithfulness rather than “the best.”
His mercies are new every morning. Adoption is forever, and there's always tomorrow. God's grace is bigger than my sin. God fills in the gaps of my failed parenting. Jesus died to forgive me and he is transforming me.
This command to not grow weary isn’t a call to just be better and stronger. It’s not even really a command at all. It’s a promise, a reminder, a hold-on-tight-to-it truth.
I struggle with the mundane of motherhood. Long days at home with kids, the same good and bad and sweet and hard over and over again, each day on seeming repeat. Sometimes I wonder what exactly it is I’ve chosen to do with my life.
