What if who I hoped to be was always me? And the love I fought to feel was always free? What if all the things I’ve done with ere just attempts at earning love? Because the hole inside my heart is stupid deep. What if where I’ve tried to go was always here? And the path I’ve tried to cut was always clear? Why has life become a plan to out some money in my hand? When the love I really need is stupid cheap? —Jon Bellion
It rained today. It wasn't supposed to, as the chance of rain was only 10%. But magically, after I emailed a student who has been struggling with the absence of a father, it started raining. I shared with my student how God comforts me in many ways and how His love holds me, how it literally rains down on me. Some days it's like a gentle mist. On others, it's more like a furious tempest. Today, It swallowed me, and I was drowning and unable to breathe for the fierceness of His love.
You see, I can't save all of these people I love and care for. I'm truly helpless as my foster son suffers at night, haunted by memories. I can't assuage the pain and anger of many of my teenage students who are in one-parent homes, missing out on half of themselves. I can't protect my husband from uncertainty in a career that was steady and paid well when we started out on this journey six years ago. I can't heal my own youngest sons who miss their foster brothers, and though I tell people all the time as to why they may be acting out, the words might as well go unspoken--people don't listen. They only see the difficulty of my sons' behaviors, not the broken and hard road we have traveled as a foster family. And worst of all, I can't keep a little boy safe and I promised it. I swore it, but I am not God. I just have to trust God will keep my promises for me.
In all of these uncertainties and pains, some of them dull and exhausting, and still others painfully sharp, I feel a Hand steady on my back. His whispers are certainly His. There is no other Voice that could calm the frightened and broken lamb that I am. His love isn't small or trivial. It overwhelms me and I'm wracked with sobs. I'm broken into pieces over it. I'm completely at a loss for words. Today I was broken and comforted by this Love. I thought of all of the lost people searching for this love that's free, the hole is gaping wide. If only we had a better family when we started out, things would be better. Or if only we had a significant other who truly knew us. Or if only we had a better spouse. Or if only we could have children of our own. If only our boss was kinder. If only our world was less chaotic. If only our house bigger and better. If only our kids fought less, or the nation less hateful and deranged.
Do you see? These are things we think about and long for every day. They are real pains for many of us. But Jesus and the love of Jesus trumps all of these pains and voids. He fills them. He covers all the inadequacies. All of them. How easily we forget. How easily I forget...that my foster son doesn't need better birth parents. He needs to know JESUS. His parents don't need education and more classes to teach them how to be better parents, they need JESUS. And I don't need to have all of the children I love under the same roof, I need JESUS. In my crying and sobbing in the closet, I just need JESUS. I don't need the certainty. Or this house. Even my husband, in the sense of him having to be a better person to meet some need he can't meet. He can't get this close to my heart like God does. He can't soothe me like Christ does, and my husband is a loving man. All the same, nothing touches this Grace that seeps into my core and pushes me to do painful things, hard things, important things. Without this love, I can't reach anyone. But with it, I push forward. I move onward, by the grace of God, until it's my time to go Home.
All this time, I have hated myself for being who God created me to be. I have hated the pain that marred me. But that's just it, I was meant for all of this. He created me to be this passionate, emotional, strong, weak, broken person. He has seen all my faults, and loved me through them all. Oh, how I wish I had more to give than this broken thing of a heart. But it's all I have. It's all I have, and it's His.
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