It's worth the risk

We're in that transition phase where I'm getting used to four little people needing me at all hours of the day. Three little people is a lot. Four is even more. So I'm trying to remember what life is like with four kids who always need something. 

It's doable and joy filled, there is just a transition that needs to take place. I have to remember to love my babies the best that I can. I have to give them the best of me, all while loving on this baby who needs love and a good fattening up, all at the same time. 

Foster care brings it challenges, but there is also peace that comes in obedience. Our desire to foster came directly from scripture. There are numerous references to caring for orphans and the fatherless, but my favorite comes from James 1:27:

27Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

When the Lord placed foster care on our hearts more than 2 years ago, I took the calling as a challenge. That may or may not have been the best way to go about it, but that's really how I thought of it in my head....Are you challenging me? Sure. I'm game. Let's do this.

I don't necessarily think of foster care as a challenge now. I consider it more of a necessity. The way I was blessed through our first foster care experience is nearly indescribable. I was broken and changed and made new in the best kind of way.

And I selfishly want that again. I want Him to wreck me. I want Him to break my heart. I want to remember what it's like to hurt and to feel.

In a world where we are so easily jaded because everyone is walking a rough battle and everything is hard sometimes, I want to know first hand what it is to yearn for Christ....to yearn for Heaven.

When I let myself think about Baby A and his young momma and his brother, my heart wants to break into a million pieces. The reality of foster care is crappy. I hate that it has to exist. But it does exist because we are broken people in a broken world who desperately need Christ.

I can't fix anyone or any situation, but what I can do is love. And maybe that's all I can do. But since loving is what we've been called to do, I will love bravely. I won't hold back my heart. I will love my babies and this baby, and I will love his momma and his brother, and my heart might break, yes. But it's worth the risk. It's always worth the risk. He's worth the risk.