Homespun Truth

Okay, so this life I lead is not for the faint of heart.

It's not for someone like me.

My first instinct in life is to be hot headed, sharp tongued, quick with judgement, short tempered, impatient. I am gifted in hostile and bitter.

Today is not my day.

My day.

That's the issue.

I'm having a hard time seeing beyond what I think and what I feel. I am stuck on the wound I want to believe I've unjustly received. I want to rage along pretending that I didn't know the rules or boundaries or expectations of this game of a life I'm living.

I want to simply be in the land of my creation. The place where I get to make the rules and things happen the way that I want them to. The place where things are simple, clear, easy and make sense.

That's not how it is though.

It's going to be a quiet few days while I wait and listen, confident that I am not alone. The Lord is with me. He will speak, if I agree to listen and if I shut my own mouth long enough to hear.

If I remember that the key verse of my Christian life has always been:Pro3:5-6
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;

6 in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight

"my own understanding"--always an issue for me. I want to complain and raise a fuss. I want to demand truth and answers, but I already know what part of the answer is.

In this life, where I agree to open my home, my heart to those little people with no voices of their own, I know the real answer is wait. I knew in those 8 or 9 days when I was falling head over heart for those little ones, when I was basking in the joy of siblings being siblings that the potential was there for everything to come unglued.

I've known since day one with the first little foster that none of them may ever stay forever. I know, even now, that although we've been through years of court dates and testimony and record keeping and interviews and back ground checks and fingerprinting and everything else, that in the end it all comes down to what ever decision one single judge makes. None of these kids will ever fully be "mine" until an adoption decision is final and approved by yet another judge.

I knew it then. I know it now. I've known it all the days in between, but denial is a powerful thing. Some of you know that well, I don't have to tell you or bother to try to explain it at all.

And so in the end our story remains exactly the same and unchanged, for all the drama of the past few months, well, I've been played. Just as there is such a thing as a savvy foster parent, there is such a thing as a savvy case worker. Now, probably, my bitterness is showing and it is unjustified. She is probably not playing me, but just trying to be nice.

For me personally, the truth, however rotten or painful, would have been nicer.

So our little group remains, 2 birth kids, 2 foster kids. The potential to adopt these 2, one stronger than the other. The girlies? Well, I just don't know, can't know what the future holds...it's not for me to know.

For me, it's trust. Trust in the Lord. Give Him the credit. Know at the end of each day, I said yes to the call, whether I understood it at all or not, and somehow, it will all straighten out to be exactly, perfectly the thing that brings glory to Him.