When I was growing up, I heard over and over that when I had kids of my own, I would more fully understand what God did for us when He sent Jesus to die for us. And to some extent, that’s true. Now, with two kids of my own (and other temporary kids coming through the doors) I can’t imagine sending one of my kids- one of those pieces of my beating heart- to die for murderers, robbers, prostitutes, and liars.
But.
If you want to understand the flip side of this story of grace, the other side of the coin that shows how much the Father loves us, step into foster care or adoption.
When Jesus died for our sins, the veil that separated humans from God in the temple was torn, from top to bottom. At that moment, when he purchased our redemption, we became co-heirs with Christ, children of God. Adopted into sonship and given full standing as sons and daughters of the most high King.
It’s easy to understand that He’s given us this gift, but now that I’m in similar shoes as parent to the broken, I can see more fully how much He loves us.
When you get a call for a foster child, you get a 5 minute (depending on the kid and how much they know, sometimes more, sometimes less) blurb about their background, what their triggers are, and why they are in foster care in the first place.
Then you have a choice to make.
Say yes?
Yes to brokenness, and heartache, and sexual dysfunction or reactiveness, yes to runaways or teen moms, yes to kids who wet the bed or smear their poop on the walls or who masturbate in a circle with other kids. The list of what you hear can be almost unbelievable sometimes.
Or you can say no. No – that can be someone else’s problem, no – we are tired, no – we don’t have any more room, etc etc. The reasons are endless and the no can be a valid answer as well. There are many kids we’ve said no to also, because it wasn’t a good fit for our family, because we couldn’t parent some of the behaviors that were going on, or because the logistics of keeping a kid in their own school that far away wasn’t going to work.
But, imagine for a moment – that your whole life was on display like that. Imagine that someone mentally and physically recorded every single interaction with you, kept a record of all of your wrongs. Then imagine they call 20 other people, tell them all the bad things you have ever done, and then ask them to let you move in. How embarrassing.
So many people would say no to me. So many would have said no to my teenage self.
But God doesn’t.
He has the full list.
He keeps a record of all my coming and going, all of my sin and all of my best moments. He knows every single word I’ve ever spoken (good and bad) yet he STILL chose to send His perfect Son to die for me. In the most dramatic rescue attempts ever imagined, God looked down on a world of people who chose willingly to sin and to reject Him. He looked all the way back to the first man and woman who chose sin over closeness with Him, then through time to all of the generations born sinful from day one because of what was passed down. Then, unthinkably, He took a part of His own heart, Jesus, and sent him here to be born as one of us, fully God and fully man. He preached and healed and loved people in a way that changed their entire lives. Then, He died. He died the most shameful death anyone has ever died. He took on the sin of every single person, of you, and of me, so that we could be adopted by the Father. What sin separated, Jesus redeemed.
Adoption is the most beautiful picture of what He’s done for us through Jesus. You say yes to a child. Yes, maybe a child with trauma and behavior challenges, maybe special needs or developmental delays. You say yes to risk and grief and the loss that comes with their history that you don’t even know about yet. Then, they come to your home, not as an orphan, but as a son or daughter with full standing in your family.
If you do foster care, that may look different. They may have parents and you are split between loving them like they are yours and they are never leaving, and dropping them off once a week for visits with their parents. You may be asked to chase down runaways, sit with a child having hours long grief related meltdowns, take in more siblings you didn’t know existed. But in each moment, you can see how much He loves us here too. He draws near to the brokenhearted, He chases us down with grace over and over, and He loves us even in our brokenness.
If you are reading this and you don’t know where to go from here, but you want more info about what this means, what Jesus did and what you should do next, I would love for you to reach out to me. You can email me – lanhamae [at] gmail [.] com.
