Read on Twitter
A late night thread from my heart:
1/ For years I’ve anticipated using the Twitter platform for foster care advocacy. I’ve longed to be a voice inside the church in order to encourage Christ followers to provide a bed for a child during that child’s darkest time of need
1/ For years I’ve anticipated using the Twitter platform for foster care advocacy. I’ve longed to be a voice inside the church in order to encourage Christ followers to provide a bed for a child during that child’s darkest time of need
2/ Yet the reality is my wife and I have gone from fierce passionate advocates teaching in churches and training new foster parents to admittedly jaded and now sometimes scared to invite others in. For the past 2 years our foster journey became dark and painful.
3/ It started with our best friends whom we recruited losing their first foster baby and potential adoptee to murder by his own bio mom. Then a month later our pastor and co-church planters, again who we recruited to foster,
4/ lost their first foster baby to a freak and tragic death caused by a family dog. Our relationship with them, due to the trauma, was greatly impacted and our church plant folded. Than not even a year later our foster child’s bio dad found out where we lived, advanced threats,
5/ and vandalized our vehicles one night. We lost both cars for 2 weeks. He was angry and jealous due to our support of bio mom escaping his domestic violence and sexual abuse while she was starting to find hope in church and a women’s shelter.
6/ For weeks we sheltered in place with my cop neighbor’s shotgun and newly installed ring cameras because the threats wouldn’t stop. Once that sweet amazing little girl of theirs left our care and was finally adopted into a Christian home we did what we thought was unthinkable
7/ and closed our foster home. It was time for healing. The healing is still coming but the painful fostering stories are still coming too. As my wife works professionally in the foster care field licensing Florida state foster homes
8/ she often ends her day in tears as another child is victim to the sins of their parents or a broken foster system. Today it was multiple stories of children who have been thriving in foster homes who were ready to adopt them in light of the bio parents rights being terminated.
9/ However distant relatives after months and years show up and offer to take the child. While on the surface it seems to make sense to move the child into “blood” relatives care it’s not always what’s best for the child. However the judges make these calls. Not us.
10/ So our hearts break at what could have been for that child and even foster parents while another day of facing what seems insurmountable starts again. Tonight my wife and I looked at Christ’s
Triumphal entry in Luke. Luke notes that Jesus wept as he approached the city.
Triumphal entry in Luke. Luke notes that Jesus wept as he approached the city.
11/ He wept at what could have been for the people and the city saying “if you knew this day what would bring you peace but now it is hidden from your eyes.” What was encouraging to us is that in tears knowing full well what he was walking into
12/ these people now laying palm branches down at his arrival and declaring Hosanna! Hosanna! Would later declare “Give us Barabbas!” and “Crucify Him!” Yet Jesus completes the will of the Father anyway and in his last breath exclaims “it is finished!”
13/ Not to mitigate or lessen the purpose and profound work accomplished for our salvation by Jesus on the cross, it’s just that we found immense joy in Christ’s example of persevering for the sake of the call regardless of the immediate pain.
14/ There is a child that needs a Christian home to foster them. Foster parents that will lay down their comfort, endure the pain on their behalf so that that child will hear the gospel and hear of the immense love Jesus has for them regardless of the darkness all around them.
