Foster Scars: Love. Let Go. Love. Let Go.

 

You know what foster care feels like sometimes?
One giant trek up Mount Moriah to sacrifice your son.

You know, like that infamous hike Abraham took.  

God told him, and God tells me:
“Here is a precious gift.  Be ready to give that gift back.”

For one day, I love them close to as I should: they are not mine, and not even their biological parents’: they belong to God.  The head knowledge matches up with the heart feelings.  And the thesis which I can present to anyone wondering “how we can do foster care” feels true and right and good.

But days and weeks go by, healing is hard.  Feelings grow stronger, resentment grows deeper as I listen in on the court proceedings.  This child has been hurt and neglected by their earthly caregivers.  And yet, preserved and protected by their Heavenly One.
What a precious gift.  And yet…
“Be ready to give that gift back.”

So I wrestle. I weep.  I surrender.  *I let him go.*

But days and weeks go by, and they mention the word “adoption”.  My heart soars.  Dreams of bunk beds and birthdays fill my mind and Pinterest boards.  And yet…
“Be ready to give that gift back.”  

So I wreathe.  And I stir, at 2 a.m., sleepless and angry.  I cry out: “God, I need your help.  I want your way.  Help me.”  *I let him go.*

But days and weeks go by.  Plans change, possibilities open up.  Hope threatens to burst out of its hiding place.  What if it ends up the way I want it to go?  I dare to think.  And yet…
“Be ready to give that gift back.”

Love. Let go. Love. Let go. Love Let go.  
Cut my chest open, and you will see this is the pattern of scars foster care has left on my heart.  



I can imagine the wrestling as Abraham journeyed upward.  I bet it was tortuous.  Didn’t he think God cruel?  Did he question his thoughts, wonder if he had been hearing voices?

Why have I given this child life, only to take his life?  
A kind God wouldn’t mess with our hearts this much, would he?
He must delight in my pain.  

At least those are the wonderings and accusations against God which I have been wrestling through.  

What was the point of this foster care journey?  It seems we have hurt more than we have helped… God, you seem cruel.   Why gift me this son only to ask me to let him go?  

I see Abraham slowly walking up that mount.  I see Jochebed setting her son in that papyrus basket.  I see Hannah leaving her son at the temple.   These were human beings.  They had feelings and dreams and connections and desires.  There must have been tears streaming down their faces.  Stomachs twisted into knots.  Minds spinning with “what-ifs”.  

But there’s a New Testament clarification to this historical account, that gives me great hope.  In Hebrews, it references Abraham in the very act of offering up his son.  And it gives us a little peak in to his thoughts as he carried out this agonizing task:  
“He considered that even God was able to raise his son from the dead, which figuratively speaking, he did.”

Abraham was tested, which means, this was obviously not easy.  And yet— he knew God’s character.  He personally knew the Promise-Keeper and Life-Giver.  So he trusted God was going to do something to redeem this.  

I don’t know if he held that faith from the bottom of that mountain all the way to the raising of his knife.  I doubt it.  Maybe with each and every step he wrestled.  Even so, the true and living Word tells me that Abraham believed— he believed!— that God was good even in the face of the impossible.  

You know what it impossible on my own?  Faith up this mountain.  

But I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  That includes trusting Him.  
How?!  Because I know He’s good.  This mountain seems bad.  But it’s not the first awful mountain Christ has climbed and redeemed.

After all, I am trusting a Dad who took this same walk up the Hill.  He knows what it is to give up his Son.  Jesus knows what it is to surrender, and re-surrender, even in that Garden: “If there be any other way…”

I, too, pray, “Is there any other way?”  but then... I too, experience his strengthening.  His comfort. His grace.

I don’t walk this Hill alone.  And with him, the Mount of Agony has become a Mount of Hope.