“Are you willing for your kids to suffer for my sake?” That is what God asked of me before adopting
our first set of kids. That was 15 years
ago. I had 5yo and 2yo birth kids and a few foster kids
who came and went. Was I willing? To allow my kids to suffer? This was a hard question to answer. Why would my kids need to suffer? We were just adopting two sweet girls ages
7years and 6 months. With many more
foster kids to follow. What possible
suffering could they go through? As I
wrestled with this question, I knew there was only one answer. I knew and loved God with all my heart and
trusted Him deeply. My answer had to be
Yes. Yes. I will allow suffering into my home. If that is what God was asking of me, I would
surrender.
Oh, dear reader, my eyes are filled with tears, as I write
this, over the suffering my kids have had to endure. Without getting into specifics, we have had
personal violations, attempted suicide, depression, psych hospitals, police at
our door, false allegations, a stolen car, yelling beyond measure, running
away, lying, stealing, hitting, social workers on power trips and more. And my birth kids (and some adopted kids)
have had to suffer.
Recently, one of my birth kids confided a terrible violation
at the age of 6 years old. What was I
thinking? Why did I somehow think God
would protect us all from these terrible atrocities? Many of which I had no idea were happening
under my own roof. Broken children hurting broken children. I should have known! Oh, how foolish I feel. Oh, how I have messed up. Failed. Isn’t the number one job of a mom to
protect? My heart aches over the pain
that has been allowed in my home. MY
HOME! My place of love and protection
has been defiled into a heap of rubble before my eyes.
But these words of God came flooding back to me like a
bitter pill to swallow. “Are you willing
for your kids to suffer for my sake?” I
so much want to blame God for this, but I had answered Yes to His question. I told Him I was willing.
Why do we want to spare our kids from suffering? The obvious answer is that we feel pain when
they feel pain. We want them to live a
life of love, peace, college, marriage and of course, grandkids. But God never (and I mean NEVER) has promised
that. In fact, as I read the Bible, it
was considered an honor to suffer for Jesus.
Something noble. Heroic. Jesus says it himself that in order to share
in His Glory, we must also share in the fellowship of His sufferings. Fellowship. Of. Sufferings. Why would I want to do that? I want the fellowship of a high paying job,
comfort and happiness. Now I would
totally get into that kind of fellowship.
But sufferings?
God is teaching me that basically life sucks here. I’m sure
you all figured that out by now, but I am extremely slow and hopelessly
optimistic. I realized that all the
things I expected from God were lies. Lie #1…
I expected a little suffering, but not the gut wrenching, deep grieving
kind of suffering. Lie #2…I believed that everything would work out
fine. And although some of my kids are
doing well, there are others who are still terribly broken. Things often don’t work out fine. In fact, almost ALL my fears for my kids came
true. Lie #3…I believed that I could be
enough for my kids. I can’t. I have tried to protect, to make some of my
kids love me, to be the mom they need me to be, to fill the void that birth mom
and dad left within their souls. I have
come to this conclusion. Never. Gonna.
Happen.
So, now that you are completely depressed and will never
adopt a child in your entire life, let me make it worse for you. I would love to give you a tidy, scriptural,
nice and comfortable answer to all this.
But there is none. Well, that is
not entirely true. Through all this
grief and pain I have found one thing that has changed it all.
HOPE.
The truth is that God knew all of this. God knew what was happening in the
darkness. He knew what was going on in
each broken heart. He knows how to bring
something beautiful out of ashes. He
longs to take our pain and make it a gift.
In His mercy, He uses pain to draw us closer to Him. He doesn’t cause the pain. He uses it to make us the beautiful people He
has created us to be. Pain equals
fellowship. When we fellowship with him
in our sufferings, we are sharing His Glory.
The one thing I am finally getting is that if we stop controlling and
fixing and protecting (even from God), then we can fellowship in His
Glory. When we stop striving and fearing
and guilting, God gets a chance to get a word in edgewise. And you might just love what He says to you! Hope is all we have here on earth. Hope is the promise of God making all things new. The promise of Him being with us and giving us joy even when all is falling apart. It's the hope of just touching the hem of His Glory for one second and realizing how dimly we have really been seeing our lives.
GLORY.
That’s what I
want. I don’t like the “not
understanding what the heck you are doing God” part. But I will spend eternity with the Lover of
my soul. And I want to see His
Glory. That’s all that matters. That is all that makes us whole. Anything else is a loss. Fellowship with the God of the universe. That is what I want to strive for. How about you? I would love to hear about your story with suffering and how God "fellowshipped" with you. It would greatly encourage me and others.
Thanks for listening to my rantings. I really needed to get that out.
“ I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing
greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all
things.” Phil 3:8
‘”I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection
and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his
death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead.” Phil 3:10-11
