Luke 18:27

As the month of May comes to a close — which happens to be National Foster Care Month — I want to share a small part of our family’s adoption story.

Like any testimony, may King Jesus be magnified!

LONG before I even had an inkling of becoming a foster mom, God made me aware of seeds He had planted in my heart.

1) Providing a refuge for orphans (I was 7 years old), and

2) Homeschooling my children (I was 18 years old).

I didn’t see them as overlapping, BUT GOD DID!!

Fast forward more than 30 years later and I still shake my head in awestruck wonder of how miraculously He orchestrated every step between those years long ago and today. (Often, my head is banging against the pillow in frustration too, just to be totally transparent!)

One of my kiddos has an alphabet soup bowl of struggles: SPD, APD, PTSD (I think it’s called something else now, but whatever), Dyslexia, two AI diseases, cognitive delay, and to keep us all on our toes, a sprinkling of ODD.

Seems like the junk of her first 2 years of life should have been enough to deal with and this left me wondering, did the years ahead of her need to also be full of struggles?

The simple answer is YES!

My daughter’s Creator God knew how others would sin against her **and** HE providentially leads us on the exact path she needs to walk in order to be set free from what our enemy intended for evil against her.

Because of all that she has going on, she and I are together A LOT! That togetherness is so important for her!

Again, to be candid, it can be suffocating for me when I take my eyes off Jesus and look across the fence to more typical families, but then I repent and get my eyes where they need to be.

Hospital waiting rooms, blood labs with all the associated drama of those draws, doctor appointments, homeschooling, special reading and writing exercises, and plenty of heart-to-heart conversations — these all are a part of God’s love for her on display. One must have eyes to see, though.

That means we can’t look through a filter with our personal expectations.

LOOK and SEE!

With eyes that can see, the Intentional Observer can recognize how hard she has to work to memorize Bible verses.

First, we write the verse in small-phrase segments.

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Then, we cut them into smaller segments.

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Lastly, she cuts them into single words.

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All along the way, she mixes them up and struggles (truly labors) to put them in order, struggling to sound out even familiar words.

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Today, without any review, without looking at the bits of cardstock, she quoted the entire verse without any prompts.

Her smile — beautiful teeth and dimples on full display — had me fighting the tears of joy.

SHE DID IT!!

In a day (or even in an hour) she will be frustrated again. She’ll forget the accomplishment of this morning. That’s where I come in, reminding her that she CAN do it, even while inside my head, I feel the urge to scream, “Are you kidding me? Have you so quickly forgotten??

Her grumbling will communicate that she doesn’t care, but God is teaching me to disregard her protests and keep showing her that she can.

But even the victory is a little hollow for her. She wants immediate healing!

What she doesn’t yet grasp is that hard-fought victories are beyond compare!

GOD is giving her a tenacious spirit and a tenderness of heart that didn’t exist even 2 years ago.

Eight years ago, I would have said this day was NEVER, NOT-EVER going to come. Impossible!!

God’s Word says, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Luke 18:27

LOOK and SEE!

My daughter and I are servants of the Lord.

Such a place of rest as the mama to my children.

We get to TRUST, WAIT, and FOLLOW Him as He lights the path He places in front of us — even when we accidentally look away from Jesus and see more traditional families exceling, we get to re-focus and keep our eyes on Jesus!!

God tells us that, the actions that were meant as evil against my children, God means to reveal the good He is transforming it to be.

Genesis 50:20

His Word also tells us that it is no longer my kids and me who live separate from God, but Christ who lives in us. And the life we now live in the flesh (disorders, diseases, and emotional struggles) we now live by faith in the Son of God, who loves us and gave Himself for us.

Galatians 2:20

THIS is glimpse of the path after adoption.

YOU don’t have to have walked the foster and/or adoption path to know that sometimes (often?) small victories are hard and the day-to-day victories fade as new struggles crop up.

It can be a maddening cycle, but the outcome is securely in God’s hands. Draw from the well of His grace and mercy. Make no mistake, the story is still unfolding!! Redemption is possible with God!!

TWO crucial spiritual disciplines YOU can practice every day!

Hey brothers and sisters,  I have been thinking and praying through this and I believe God has given me this word for myself and quite possibly a word for someone reading this blog.

As always, when someone says they have a word from the Lord, test it to see how it stacks up with Truth.

As saints, we are being called to practice the SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES OF HUMBLE TRANSPARENCY AND SURRENDER (described in the passage below) now and in the days to come.

I’m humbled and in awe of how DEEP and WIDE and UNCONDITIONAL God’s love is for us that He would put these words into the Bible, HIS WORD (the Sword of the Spirit, the Bread of Life) to call us to holiness through Jesus.

This passage pierced me this morning and I am praying it will pierce all of us as it applies.

Psalm 139:23-24 (NLT)
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Point out anything in me that offends You,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

What a humble request for King David to make of God! 

Search me! TRANSPARENCY

Know me! TRANSPARENCY

Point out my wrongdoing!  HUMILITY

Test my thoughts! HUMILITY

After all, how are we able to recognize sin unless God points it out?

Then, when God shows us our sin, we can repent and be forgiven.

Make the above passage your personal prayer every day and let us know how He transforms you in the process.

If you ask the Lord to search your heart, your thoughts, and reveal your sin, you will be continuing in God’s “way everlasting.”

Are fatherless boys the enemy?

In light of recent school shootings, certain categories of children are getting negative attention — namely boys, fatherless boys, adopted boys, and homeschooled boys.

Perhaps it is time to share how proud I am of my oldest child, now a young man of 18 years, who is still homeschooled and has been fatherless his whole life.

This week, my homeschooled, high-school junior put in over 40 hours at work. His managers know he is reliable and willing to take extra shifts when someone calls in sick or quits without notice.

Additionally, in spite of painful flat feet and severely pronated ankles (including the unique pain associated with the 3 braces he wears to mitigate those issues), my son literally stood in the gap at work.

Even with all that comes in such a busy week, he protected his Tuesday night youth group time. Plus, with one more year of high school left, my oldest son has kept up with his Bible study, his junior-year school work, his chores at home, and he still engages with his younger sibs when he gets home from work (even though he’s exhausted).

My fatherless, homeschooled son isn’t perfect, but this treasured gift from God is becoming a man of God with a servant’s heart because Jesus is shepherding him through the wise counsel more experienced mamas share with me and through men from church who also stand in the gap. Just this week, our beloved youth pastor agreed to pick him up from work to do their discipleship time on a different day to accommodate my son’s work schedule.

My fatherless son isn’t the only servant-hearted one in our home. He has a younger brother and four younger sisters — all of whom are in various stages of growing and learning. All of them homeschooled and all of them with their faces pointed toward Jesus.

Yesterday, my almost-15-year-old son cleaned up a huge coffee spill his Grampa made in the kitchen without being asked and he did it with a cheerful heart. He also clipped Grampa’s too-long nails and didn’t cringe. He takes on extra chores when asked without whining that it isn’t his job. And each week, in addition to school work, he prepares for his discipleship time with a young man from our church who is in the Air Force. Nick picks him up, takes him for coffee, they open their Bibles at Dutch Bros, and then Nick leads by example.

My fatherless daughters are still young, but my 9-year-old daughter shaves Grampa’s neck and head once a week and serves him 50 other ways every week.

My 10-year-old daughter single-handedly potty-trained her twin sisters 2 years ago and takes care of their wild ethnic hair like a pro every day — if their hair is done, it is because she did it.

Time will tell if my children continue to point their faces toward Jesus and follow Him with their whole hearts, but hope abounds for my fatherless, homeschooled children because they have a relentless Savior who loves them, forgives them, knows what they need, and makes a way for them in the wilderness. (Isaiah 43:16-19)

And my friends, that same Savior — Jesus the promised Messiah who is coming again soon — stands ready to do the same for every other boy and girl in America, homeschooled or not, fatherless or not, as well as every other person on this earth.

Nah, the school shooting problem isn’t about guns (we know there are plenty of other weapons being used to kill others).

It isn’t about “unsocialized” homeschoolers (such a joke).

It isn’t about being a boy (though our society is doing its level best to sissify our young men and confuse them about their gender’s role in the family).

It isn’t about boys being fatherless because there are plenty of sound role models who can influence our young men today — in the schools, in the Bible-teaching churches, and in homeschool groups across America.

It isn’t about boys seeing the society they are inheriting as completely divesting itself of responsibilities, honor, duty, loyalty, and sacrifice. (Although, this divestiture is happening at an alarming rate as we push the older generations into adult-orphanages and nod at them as we drive by, or support abortions of tiny humans while trying to save endangered species with more gusto than we are willing to exert for the unborn).

And it isn’t even about violent video games (though I hate them and wish people would stop tossing their hard-earned money at those companies that could care less if all that video gaming scrambles the user’s brain).

Nope.

Those are not the reasons for school shootings.

Our enemy is God’s enemy, Satan and the reason for an increase in school shootings and other lawlessness is that we have turned our faces away from Jesus as a society. We don’t expect Jesus to come again. We don’t want Him to be our Savior. We think we can save ourselves through good works and brute force.

My son, his siblings, and many, many other amazing young men and women (whom I know personally) know they need Jesus and turn their faces and hearts toward Him daily. That, my friends, is where it starts.

Seeds of Faith

“A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, Is God in His holy habitation.” Psalm 68:5

Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 14:6

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