I’m trying to keep it real. I had *no idea* that she had a vision problem until she failed her screening at the pediatrician recently. I was absolutely shocked. The doctor: “She can’t see.” Bella: “I told you!” Me: “You did?!”
Mom fail. 🫣🫠

“Drowning” is a word I’ve been using a lot recently. I’m drowning—drowning in children, drowning in tasks, drowning in my emotions and everyone else’s, drowning in needs and struggles, drowning in the heaviness of it all.

Foster care affects every member of our family—in the hard and in the healing.

We love our children, and we are doing our very best. If you have questions, ask. If you’re confused, spend some time & learn. If you’re concerned, pray & love & show up. Our children need you, we need you.

If I was too busy mourning the moments that never happen, I would miss the beautiful moments of connection—moments like this—that do.

Sometimes we’re so busy doing for our kids that we neglect being with them, seeing them, enjoying them.

The command to show hospitality is all throughout Scripture.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality…” (Heb 13:2)
“Show hospitality…” (1 Peter 4:9)
“Seek to show hospitality…” (Romans 12:13)
And countless other passages.

We sit together and eat and talk. We each share our “high-low” of the day. When we read the Bible together, we realize the kids are remembering and starting to understand!

And when you come to the end of yourself—when you find yourself wrecked—you are then perfectly primed to receive grace, to receive forgiveness, to receive strength. To receive Him.

We can become people who ask for forgiveness and who offer forgiveness, because of how we have been forgiven.

I now understand that “more than we ask or imagine” doesn’t mean “bigger and better” in the traditional sense. It can also mean “completely different and totally surprising and borderline crazy.”

So here’s to belonging.
Here’s to knowing you’re loved fully & included wherever you are.
Here’s to both families.
Here’s to truly honoring first family & fully welcoming into foster family.

Remember that you can do all things through Him who gives you strength. Rely on his all-sufficient grace to carry and sustain you. Boast in your weakness, and find yourself miraculously strengthened by Him.

He takes ordinary, subpar kind of people and calls and equips them for an extraordinary, eternally inclined kind of life.

The extent of the loss, the sorrow, the uncertainty, the unfamiliarity—it’s unthinkable for such a little life and delicate heart to have to carry. But we can enter it all with them, and there is a God who already has.

Mama, don't accept the lie of Monday. This morning, God's mercies are waiting for you, fresh and brand new.

What will it mean to close our home?
I think of the 10 years.
I think of the 30 kids.
It’s confusing and disorienting and just plain hard.

We’re getting off the roller coaster.

This is not about reunification. This is about the amazing grace we’ve received making us amazingly gracious. This is about the extraordinary love we’ve received making us extraordinary lovers. This is about being so in awe of the gospel that we live out the gospel in the way we think and act and pray and foster. 

As we fight for the protection of the children in our care, may we never stop praying for their parents to experience healing and growth and change, for their families to experience restoration.

You’re looking at a mom who lost it on her kids this morning. Like ugly yelling, screaming, you’d hit that unfollow button if you’d seen. I was running late and stressed because—get this—I read my Bible too long. 🫠 *cue the shame*