Foster parenting has not been a very graceful experience for me. It has been full of fits and starts.
It showed my very most broken parts like they were mounted as a precious gem on a jeweler’s pedestal under the brightest lights- reflecting with brilliance all my fractures to catch the attention of passers by- my failings magnified.
I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,
My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.
Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.
2 Corinthians 12, The Message
There were safe places, safe people that would receive my loud and proud frustrations, my disappointment with the system, my confusion observing trauma brain, my fear of my own inadequacies. I could process, be understood, prayed for, encouraged, and on the our better days we all returned refreshed to the hard work we were surprised to have undertaken. Every passing day of struggle lead me to discover how faithful God was and how by comparison, how faithless I am. So quick to forget his love for me.
My dear friend, Kelly, gifted me a book of prayers. A liturgical practice of discovering holiness in the mundane, the painful, the seemingly godless. It leads me to quit focusing on my handicap. I discover appreciation of the gift. Despite the abuse. Despite the bad break. Despite the opposition. It is there I become stronger.
Practicing Yes 