Sometimes we’re so busy doing for our kids that we neglect being with them, seeing them, enjoying them.

The command to show hospitality is all throughout Scripture.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality…” (Heb 13:2)
“Show hospitality…” (1 Peter 4:9)
“Seek to show hospitality…” (Romans 12:13)
And countless other passages.

We sit together and eat and talk. We each share our “high-low” of the day. When we read the Bible together, we realize the kids are remembering and starting to understand!

And when you come to the end of yourself—when you find yourself wrecked—you are then perfectly primed to receive grace, to receive forgiveness, to receive strength. To receive Him.

We can become people who ask for forgiveness and who offer forgiveness, because of how we have been forgiven.

I now understand that “more than we ask or imagine” doesn’t mean “bigger and better” in the traditional sense. It can also mean “completely different and totally surprising and borderline crazy.”

So here’s to belonging.
Here’s to knowing you’re loved fully & included wherever you are.
Here’s to both families.
Here’s to truly honoring first family & fully welcoming into foster family.

Remember that you can do all things through Him who gives you strength. Rely on his all-sufficient grace to carry and sustain you. Boast in your weakness, and find yourself miraculously strengthened by Him.

He takes ordinary, subpar kind of people and calls and equips them for an extraordinary, eternally inclined kind of life.

The extent of the loss, the sorrow, the uncertainty, the unfamiliarity—it’s unthinkable for such a little life and delicate heart to have to carry. But we can enter it all with them, and there is a God who already has.

Mama, don't accept the lie of Monday. This morning, God's mercies are waiting for you, fresh and brand new.

What will it mean to close our home?
I think of the 10 years.
I think of the 30 kids.
It’s confusing and disorienting and just plain hard.

We’re getting off the roller coaster.

This is not about reunification. This is about the amazing grace we’ve received making us amazingly gracious. This is about the extraordinary love we’ve received making us extraordinary lovers. This is about being so in awe of the gospel that we live out the gospel in the way we think and act and pray and foster. 

As we fight for the protection of the children in our care, may we never stop praying for their parents to experience healing and growth and change, for their families to experience restoration.

You’re looking at a mom who lost it on her kids this morning. Like ugly yelling, screaming, you’d hit that unfollow button if you’d seen. I was running late and stressed because—get this—I read my Bible too long. 🫠 *cue the shame*

+ I believe that God uses every hard & “bad” to accomplish His very good plans.
+ That the things I’m praying for my kids—things like character and hope—are often accomplished through the things I pray away—like suffering.
+ That everything that happens to them is something He’s using for them.
+ That the things they face today are making them who He has them to be tomorrow.

Adoption offers kids a forever family.
But we must never forget that our (adopted) kids also, already have a forever family—their biological family.

You, friend, aren't strong because you have it all together. You are strong, because He is strong.

It will serve them well to understand that together you are a family on a mission, ready to do the good works God has prepared for you, deployed by Mom and/or Dad, in service to the Lord. We decide for ourselves and for our children: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15).

So name their feelings, share tools, offer your own regulated presence to them. And do it all over and over and then over again.