I will admit to appreneshion at our foster daughter returning in two days.

I will admit to feeling the anxiety of known and unknown things.

I will admit to recognizing the hardest part is not in fact loving her or any other children in care- the hardest part is playing well with the other adults involved. It is not in loving and losing- though that is heart wrenching. It is in the juggling of government run programs and broken families.

I will admit the break we've had for 30 days has been so nice it's tempting to say "let's just keep it this way"

I will admit the temptation to return to selfishness and self seeking lives is ever present and only when I return again and again to scripture and I see it laid out before me, clearer than anything...

 “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭16:24-25‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Only then do I push in harder.

I push against the ease my worldly heart desires and I say no.

No. Our family will do life differently. Our family will sacrifice ease, comfort, luxury of ignorance and we will press into this life. My children will learn now their world does not revolve around them and this world is broken and they can be a part of mending it. 

So I will role up my sleeves, wash the clothes, locate needed items, and we will create "welcome back" signs and again eagerly await her arrival.

She needs us yes, but we need her. 

We need her to remind us of the why- to show us His grace- to remember we are here to serve, to be used and anything less than a life of sacrifice is a lie. It's an afront to the way of Jesus. We will not participate in westernized Christianity that says you can have your cake and eat it too. We will be broken for the things that break His heart because that is what has been asked of us. 

//

"Stepping out wholly dependent on God to come through, stepping away from what is secure and comfortable exposes the holes in our faith. And then if God comes through, it expands our faith. Something about stepping off cliffs where God leads allows God the opportunity to move in greater ways. When we step off and he shows up, we see him differently than we would if we were standing safely looking over the edge"


With our minutes and days and decades, we build houses and savings accounts and busy calendars full of activity. And in some deeper way, we build our reputations and friendships and invest in our kids and careers. We are looking for this life to matter. No, we are actually looking for ourselves to matter. So we keep so busy, so distracted, so in love with everything but our invisible, patient, jealous God. Christ said, “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33)

{Excerpts from the book Anything, by Jennie Allen}



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