foster parenting

So, I was offered a foster baby today.

"Do you still want to be a foster parent?"

I received this text from my friend this morning and returned it with a phone call. I'm thinking she's asking theoretically, but she was talking about someone today, now, who was giving her baby up.

I told my friend, "Don’t tempt me."

It’s ridiculous that as God started putting something on my heart about this time last year, at the same time, I kept meeting family after family that fosters children or has adopted children they first foster parented.

I am blessed to have several families on my support team who have given me real life examples to what this actually looks like, as they have invited me into their lives as I've invited them into mine and I am so blessed beyond measure. The first family I met with on an appointment and met three children they were fostering at the time as well opened up a whole new world to me... fostering/adopting was a dream on my heart I was unaware of until recently.

Called.

There is a similar in each of these very different families. All families have expressed this is a calling.

They feel CALLED to foster these children.

One family I met, and one that still floors me today, as they showed me a photo album of over 20 kids they have fostered over the years.

“We just really want to provide a safe place for them.”

They are like a shelter, I thought to myself. They feel called to serve as an emergency shelter for children. I was floored. This couple actually used to be house parents at our local shelter for abused and neglected children, Rainbow House. Now, they provide the same services in the context of a Christian home, by foster parenting.

Today as I spent an extended period of time with the kids of one of the families while their parents were moving stuff between houses, I realized more of the depths of this calling.

Alright, I've been a part of several pockets of women that I call "the mom club" and I spend time with these moms on a regular basis to see now more of the daily ins and outs of parenting and marriage in ways that are invaluable. So from that perspective...

Parenting is hard enough. But foster parenting adds a set of challenges on to an already emotionally taxing, yes rewarding, but intensely sacrificial job: mothering.

People do not realize how much mothers give up, how much they give of their time, their emotional energy, their EVERYTHING for the sake of their children. And for their husbands. You are a living sacrifice I have come to believe that beyond a shadow of a doubt and know that reality from witnessing it. Whereas I've always loved kids and have a special connection with one family I've known for 7 years now, even that family could contribute to my romanticized view of parenting. Now there are no illusions.

I'm finding I have a connection with "troubled" youth more so than "normal" kids that cannot really be explained, but it is something that can only be given, not anything I would have conjured up on my own. Not that "normal" even really exists, but "normal" in the sense of being free from a traumatic home life in which there was abuse or neglect.

These are the kids no one wants. This struck me as I drove away today. I learned so much in four short hours with these kids. I lived it in a way I’ll never forget. Shoot, I can normally spend a long time with kids, but after four hours, after even the first couple, I was mentally, physically, emotionally exhausted, but trying not to show it, it was unreal. The majority of kids who are foster kids are abused and neglected and have a whole host of behavioral issues that complicate their lives.

It is also ironic that my friend texted me this morning, BEFORE I saw the kids today, and my friend is someone completely separate who doesn't know these families, and that I didn't get a chance to call her back until after my experiences this afternoon.

Funny you should ask, I told her.

But, the desire and convictions remain. I find a heart for these kids that I cannot take credit for. With one of the boys, the little one who is usually not the trouble maker, I was having a particular problem with. Yet I realized how much he was trying to earn my attention and affection while he was pushing me away.

He had always warmed up to me, when I’d see them in brief interactions after bible study, but now that I was at his house, he was pushing me away and would not back down.

This was strange, because as I was pulling into the long acres of driveway (they live in the country, it was SO beautiful), I could see him running from hundreds of feet back, shouting my name. I could hardly keep him from opening my car door as soon as I parked.

Yet he was acting out the whole time I was there. But as I was leaving, it was almost as if I have proved to him that I really loved him. I didn’t change how I treated him the entire time. As much as he acted out, yes I didn’t let him get away with it, but my love towards him didn’t change. He hugged me when I left and it struck me what had just happened between us.

I'm reminded of something Beth Moore always points out, "We all long for unconditional love...

We all crave a love that is

unfailing."

It’s something that happens daily in their houses, though. As they’re daily being restored and growing in the safety of love for the first time.

These Christian families don’t feel these kids are just additions to their families, they feel they are gifts, that they were always supposed to be a part of their family.

It breaks my heart when I’m around foster kids who endured severe abuse either in these families or children at the shelter who flinch any time someone reaches out to hug them.

It’s like a wounded puppy that won’t receive love.
It is heart-breaking.

The complexity of their issues is taxing on anyone who takes on the challenge of fostering. I’ve seen some of these parents at the end of their rope, I see the frustration, yet I also see the deep love they have for these kids.

They feel deeply that these kids deserve love too. That’s incredible.

I’ve gone back and forth on whether I would foster as single or married, (given if and only if marriage is something God wills for my life.) I’ve seen it done well both ways, yet know right now it wouldn’t be realistic for my lifestyle and job as I know I'm called to full-time vocational ministry right now, but it’s days like this when I’m filled with a dose of reality yet also the deep need and desire that is there. This is something I've explored and won't go into the details of here, but I'm not sure when the time will be right or if my marital status will matter but those are things I don't have to worry about right now. God will take care of it and reveal to me when it's time what to do.

They deserve to be loved too.
Yes, they’re messy and they’re broken, but there is hope for them.
They can have a new life. A different life from the environments they grew up in. There's so much potential for their lives to be turned around. So much

hope.

Every child needs to know they are not an accident; that they have a place in this world. But more important that they have a place in the very heart of God.

We all know what it's like to feel unwanted. Mother Teresa says the rich are poor in other ways, we "Westerners" are rich beyond belief.

Yet we share a poverty that is universal to any culture.
The poverty of feeling unloved.
Unwanted.

Lord, come for your children. And raise up your Church and your followers to do your will in the midst of these young lives.

*pictured is not a foster child, but another precious child i know, his name is caden. i met this little man during my last support raising trip to st. louis. can't wait to see them again!

that I may know Christ...

... and be found in Him …

"But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him…

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead…"

[paul in his letter to the philippians]

:::

“The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One.

Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must seem them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and he has it purely, legitimately and forever.”

[tozer]

you have to die.

Really?
No one wants to hear that.

It has been said the Christian life could be summed up in one word: trust.

Brennan Manning devoted an entire book to trust and makes that observation in his prolific work, Ruthless Trust. I feel another word falls right underneath that: death. It requires tremendous trust, complete surrender to die, willingly. I think of the tremendous amount of trust, ruthless trust, it required for the son to set his heart on the father's will, to die. We don't even begin to comprehend what that was like. We see the ultimate picture of trust here, of being so consumed with the father's will you were willing to lay down your own; se see trust involving a death, a sacrifice, laying down one's life, placing His will above our own...

These words have been running in my head the last couple days… "you have to die."

Those words along with "lead me to the cross." I feel the Lord's trying to get me to see something. Just maybe, I'm not too sure. :) When these words are spoken intimately and deeply from the voice of One you know loves you, they are words you cannot deny. I've been processing and learning a lot about sin. and our will. and obedience, mostly the Lord revealing a lot of these lessons in my experiences with children lately as they have shed light on my own sin, more on that to come, but this daily trek to the cross requires a death.

Sounds dramatic? But in the spiritual life, which is we are followers of Christian, the spiritual life should intersect with the ordinariness of life, we are confronted with this fact all the time, that we have to die to ourselves. It comes to us in subtle ways or sometimes more profound. Yet I’m finding the reason many followers of Christ are not living the lives He calls us to hinges upon this theme: are you willing to die?

We will be called to die to ourselves in many ways.

Where your security can only be in the Lord. it can’t be in money and God. Or friends and God. You have to make a choice.

This choice often requires a death.

It can’t be in your reputation or other’s opinions of you. I’m finding this a daily death. Sometimes several times a day… dying to myself.

It’s not about you.

It’s not about you, Mazvita. It’s not about your fears or insecurities. Your hesitations or what people will think. It’s not about that. I’ve been reminded over and over again in the last six months that it’s not about me. I was reminded by one of my mentors recently that I’m in a small boat. She said, you support-based missionaries are in a very small boat. The half of what you are describing to me I cannot even begin to understand. She shared with me how she desired to be on staff with a church but the money wasn’t there and she would have never even considered fundraising. She knew it was an option but couldn’t imagine living like that… I couldn’t either. Until it became my life and something I was invited into.

But I cannot describe what it has done with my relationship with the Lord in the last year. My dependency on Him. It has stripped me away from all things. My only security is in Him. This is not something I can take credit for, but was a product of the crucible specifically designed for this season of my life. where I would come to know Him, to know His love, to know His ways in a way like never before. These words, you have to die and lead me to the cross are not communicated in haste. They are surrounded in love. "His kindness leads to repentance," a true experience with that kind of discipline fosters deeper understanding of what it means to hear these words.

Where I would learn to lay it all down. And learn as Henri Nouwen says to the Christian fundraisers, “that money is a more taboo subject than even sex or religion.”

It will cost you a lot. In the terms of even dying to what other people think of you. I’ve had to renounce my will again and again and as it plays out specifically in support raising. I’m reminded it’s not about me. If I allow myself to get in the way, the purposes of the kingdom are forsaken.

You will face rejection. You will not be liked. You will be questioned. Spit upon. Mocked. Misunderstood. Outcast. Forgotten. Left behind. Ridiculed.

But doesn’t that sound familiar?

As Henri Nouwen says, “When we want to become like Jesus, we cannot expect always to be liked and admired. We have to be prepared to be rejected.”

This is what it means to be a disciple. It will cost you everything. But as Paul says that loss is considered nothing to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus, my Lord. It’s not about me. It’s about the vision. It’s about the Kingdom. It’s about the lives at stake if I don’t. it’s about remember the reasons why He has called me and remembering those moments where it was so crystal clear and remembering the vision He began revealing to me there. It’s about remember the One who calls me, what He’s done in my life, how different, how pitiful my life would be without Him, I shudder even at the thought of what it would be like had He not dramatically rescued me from myself.

It’s ultimately about the Lord’s will and not my own. A daily dethroning of myself, yet at the same time a daily being swept into an embrace more amazing, too real to be true. Of entering into true belonging, of a friend, of a lover, whispering this sweet exchange, “I am Yours; and you are Mine.”

Life starts and ends here.

You have to die, daily, Mazvita. It is the only way you can truly live.

There always has to be a death. Before there can be a resurrection.
There always has to be a death before there can be new life.
True life. everlasting. a life free of the cheap substitutes are hearts are so easily drawn to.

Prone to wander, prone to leave the one I love…

We find in this death, our beginning. Of what it really means to experience true life.

The Pursuit of God

Or really I should call it God’s pursuit of man.

For as Tozer tells us plainly, “We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit…”

“Hymnody is sweet with the longing after God, the God whom, while the singer seeks, he knows he has already found.”

- from The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer

His pursuit is amazing. it is relentless. it is life-giving. it is freeing. it is nourishing. it is exciting. it is indescribable. I wish I had words but am at a loss.

It is only by His grace we pursue Him.

I’m finding that our deepest need is an experience with God.
Daily.

It seems so simple, too simple almost but it really all comes down to this. A God we find not in the noise or the busyness of our lives, but in the silence. Solitude changes us in a ways only God knows. It is there we come to know ourselves and come to know the God who knows and love us more than we can comprehend.

Father in heaven, may we have the grace to seek You today and worship you as you are in yourself, not the God we’ve created. Lord, may your name be glorified. May your wonders never cease.

let her suppose all creatures too rude to inform her…

I’m finding these words below to be true, as I am being pursued and wooed in ways indescribable, as Brennan Manning says,“Every authentic spiritual experience is an experience of unrestricted, unconditional being in love.”A beckoning forth from my Love, One more incredible than ever imagined, one I thought I knew, but whose goodness and beauty none can inform me but are known in the depths within in ways that betray reason, words can’t even do it justice…

"Speaking of the Christian soul he says:

‘Let her suppose that all the world and the most refined conceptions of the wisest intellects can tell her nothing, and that the goodness and beauty of her Beloved infinitely surpass all their knowledge, being persuaded that all creatures are too rude to inform her and to conduct her to the true knowledge of God. . . . She ought then to go forward with her love, leaving all her understanding behind. Let her love God as He is in Himself, and not as her imagination says He is, and pictures him.”

- knowledge of the holy, tozer

tozer was an incredible man who knew the lord.
Jesus is amazing.

ruthless trust

“Every authentic spiritual experience is an experience of unrestricted, unconditional being in love.”

Each new faith journey is borne out of the victory of the last. This time it’s different. An overwhelming sense of being in love and feeling delighted in from the One who created me is everything I need to move forward.

There are few words that have stuck with me more than these from a book I read about Mother Teresa’s life, this time last year…

The more I’ve been studying the life of Mother Teresa, as I just finished her book, No Greater Love, the more I begin to understand her secret.

There may have been a lot of things Mother Teresa didn’t know. Like myself. There may have been a lot of things Mother Teresa didn’t understand. Like myself. But Mother Teresa KNEW God’s love for her. Not Mother Teresa knew God’s love, as God loves the whole world, no, it was intensely personal, intensely real to her. She knew God loved her. Period. And from this place came her strength, came the grace to trust Him no matter what…

For whatever reason, these words always enter my mind as if I’m reading them for the first time, they struck me then and have come to me in the midst of many times I’m tempted to believe what my circumstances are screaming for me to believe OVER what I know to be true. What I know of God’s character, what I know of God’s promises to me in His word, what I know to be true of His love for me… Yet our circumstances will always fight for our heart’s attention… I find this secret profound yet again and this always stops me dead in my tracks…

“Mother Teresa was not afraid to make such a serious commitment, though this implied renouncing her own will at each moment. She knew that God loved her and she trusted that His will for her would always be an expression of that unfailing love, however difficult or even impossible it might be at times to fathom His designs.” - Come Be My Light

This kills me every time. For whatever reason this quote always pops in my head at the most critical times…

In every situation, in every circumstance, she could rest… Why? Because no matter what was going on, she knew that His will for her in ANY given situation was always an expression of His unfailing love for her.

Wow.

I prayed last year that I would know the reality of her words, and each time this quote enters my mind in a situation, I find I know just a fraction more but cannot even fully comprehend the amount of ruthless trust she possessed. But I am a work in progress. Exactly where He wants me. Learning how to trust. Learning how to live loved.

“Our story is paradigm for every trusting disciple. The way of trust is a movement into obscurity into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of a pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and promise.”

- Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust

Arise O Sleeper…

“Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted... unbidden... it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us... passion rules us all, and we obey.

What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion maybe we'd know some kind of peace... but we would be hollow... Empty rooms shuttered and dank. Without passion we'd be truly dead.”

The dancer within me is the part of me I always try to ignore. I always try to forget she exists.

But perhaps this is because she is the part of me that is the most real.

"To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak." :: Hopi Indian Saying

I feel alive again. I just spent the last couple of hours taking a break and went back to the studio. A break from all the things around me I couldn’t comprehend, a much needed break, where my soul could live and breathe again. When I dance… a part of me, that’s always there, always lying dormant beneath the surface but can go for days, months, years undetected…

Comes to life.

I’m always surprised at what happens.

I recently heard someone say, “there is so much more our souls want to say.”

It’s as if, there has been so much more the soul wanted to say… it just never got the chance…

“Beauty is a quality of the soul that expresses itself in the visible world.”

There are certain qualities of the soul that can only be expressed in ways no word or thought can capture.

"The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing... there are times when the simple dignity of movement can fulfill the function of a volume of words. There are movements which impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself. This is the dancer's justification for being, and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art." :: Doris Humphrey

I recently started teaching dance again this year and getting back in touch with the dance part of me.

It is the most real "me."

A good friend of mine was going to take pictures for my prayer letter one Saturday, when she ended up asking if I could just bring my dance clothes. She runs a workshop for a group of budding photographers in town on Saturdays and they try out different locations and backgrounds to grow in their art. This week, they’d landed a theatre with a stage and they wanted to shoot photos of a dancer…

I was more nervous than I thought I would be. It’s one thing to have your picture taken. And its one thing to dance in front of people. But entirely different with a group of photographers, all male but Mallory, watching you. I finally settled into my own skin and forgot they were there.

When I saw the photos I was struck.

Struck because I recognized myself in them. I saw the emotion, I saw the "real" me.

I felt those were the most accurate photos of myself I’d seen to date, which is the only reason why I did something I would otherwise consider narcissistic and used a photo of myself for this post. It is the most "real" me, not portraying an image. Do you ever look at a photo and wonder who that person is?

I realized in that moment that when I dance, the part of me that is the most “me” comes alive. My soul lives and breathes on that stage. My heart comes to life in the studio. So what struck me was those pictures captured my soul in the most accurate way a photograph could. The part of me that is the real me.

Our hearts have a story to tell.

Some of us do this with writing. Or some of us by playing and writing music. Some of us by selling makeup. Some of us as engineers spending countless hours constructing a model.

What makes your soul come alive?

This is one of the most important questions we can ask.

Yet it is one we also deeply fear.

I’ve spent the last couple years without dancing in the public arena (aka outside of my living room or bedroom) but not only did I realize how it was affecting me, teaching it again reminds me of the gift it is to share it with others.

I love teaching girls who have never danced before and Sunday Night Dance has been a great experience for me and the girls I teach with, to see people just getting a taste of the dance world and seeing how much they love seeing the whole thing come together.

I also find it is something that unites us all. At the leadership retreat I went on recently with another church in town, I was nervous first arriving as it was a private retreat, only 30 of us ladies, most of all in the same stage of life, and being tapped as those who will be leading in our churches in the years to come. You always struggle with wanting to put on your serious face forward at these.

I met someone who is like a kindred spirit.
No surprise she leads their creative arts and dance ministry and is on staff with their church for that.

She threw out the idea on Friday night that she would be choreographing a routine to Xanadu if anyone was interested (as she shared her role model was Olivia Newton John) when we had to bring a picture of our mentors…

Well, a bunch of girls caught wind of this and knowing this girl, took her seriously. So it was 4 of us girls coaxing her to do a routine, all of a sudden you have 17 of us (mind you there were 30 total attending minus the staff who put on the retreat) team-choreographing a five minute dance routine to Xanadu. Look it up, I’d never heard this song either, apparently also a movie. Oh the 80s…

Anyway, it was AWESOME. And you have a group of girls in their pajamas working on a dance routine for 2 hours before we put on a show for the rest of the retreat participants.

What? Who does this lol.

It was amazing.

Something happens when I dance again.

It’s like an unsung melody written on my heart that was just waiting to be played.

Sometimes I’m shocked when I just let myself go and improv, how does your body know to do that?

All of this soul searching and dance being a part of me that is the most “me” came when I realized that it is because it has been a part of my life the majority of my short-lived time on this earth. A couple years ago I discovered pictures of me when I was three years old all dressed up to go to my first dance class. It has been a constant in my life and a gift God’s given me to give back to Him. A way my soul communicates to Him and worships Him in a way I can’t do any other way. An outlet and a way to express my emotions in way words cannot suffice. An experience transcending understanding, a coming alive, awakening the sleeper within.

- photo by Mallory Thomas Taulbee, Avia Photography