When You Just Need to Be Refreshed

For years I thought about going, word of mouth flowing like rivers from ice melting on the mountain-top, down into the oceans.

I toy with the idea…but children, social worker appointments, doctors, and play rehearsals make me doubt the very hope of getting slivers a time over a three day period.

I sit to lead my table at Women’s, Jennie Allen’s “restless” study.  A friend approaches me who is also a foster and soon to be adoptive parent.

“Are you going to Refresh?” she asks me.

“I dunno, but I have always wanted to”, I try wrapping excuses around my inner hope of a conference made just for us…those of us who have taken in kids internationally or from the local foster system.

“I might be able to get you a ticket”, she then offers non-nonchalantly.

I smile, think nothing of it until a few days later my friend shows up on my Facebook….offering me not only one ticket, but two tickets.

And I have learned these past ten years fostering that we must be flexible when God opens a door…regardless of how unfamiliar they are..and not lean too heavily on logic, but blindly and simply walk through God given opportunities.  By faith.

So we go.  My husband and I.  Him who just so “happens” to be off Saturday due to surgery scheduled the day before.

And isn’t it incredible that God truly knows our tomorrows, plans our route, directs our steps before we can even see where we are going?  Though we fall…He never makes a mistake.

The first night we sit with two couples who instantly become friends.  No awkward silence, no tip-toeing around each other in hopes to connect.

Instant friends, fellow foster and adoptive parents already having the same hearts. Connecting with them seemed effortless.  Easy.

The next three hours were spent bent over laughing at the Smalley’s transparency about marriage, life, and what it means to keep hearts, like doors, open wide…in a world full of hurt.

And you know…sometimes we don’t even know we have needed something, until we find it.  We may never even realize we are naked, barren, desert dry, or un-rested…until Living Waters start filling us, quenching our thirsty souls.

Sometimes, we just get so good at presenting, protecting, wrapping ourselves in colored robes, like Joseph….that we forget…it’s o.k. to be weak, human, helpless, letting go, embracing our all-suffient Savior, who restores us back to whole. 

And I could feel it, fully…the mountain of losses, offenses, tucked away defenses I never even knew I had…melt like a glacier, dripping slowly into the flood-lands where desserts had tricked me into thinking I was “doing fine”…places I had unknowingly convinced myself, I had been fertile land.

The next night, Jennie Allen…that’s right, the powerhouse from the exact Bible study we had been doing….stood upon a stage. I heard not dictation of what to do right and wrong, but how to be bold and live strong in a day where we all seem to be shrinking small…

Jennie rallies us to “hold on”, like Jesus, embracing our weakness, not forsaking our own journey’s to Calvary but to keep on pressing down the narrow road.  She shares how we can embrace our suffering…because that is where His glory dwells.

Then, we broke plates. 

That’s right.  I took a dark one from the thousand white plates representing something we were holding on to.  We were asked to put a word on it, and smash it. I knew my word instantly, “PAST”.  In fact, not even two weeks earlier, God has said in the quiet to look forward, don’t look back, to not share my history unless it was while giving my testimony to help another soul.

I held in my hand the circular plate, representing my past of seeing foster kids go after two difficult years, rocking inconsolable drug babies, nurturing those older ones with deep scars and without families.  The late nights, long chats, the hidden heart-break, the anger I felt at birth-moms who left their babies, broken, and didn’t look back….

I took it all. My “Past”.  And threw it into a pit.

It shattered. Smile surfaced.  I could almost see the glimpse of the enemies schemes….every lie, every hurt, every tear, ever hidden dream that I had considered a loss….”crash” in the face of the one who got thrown from heaven, shrinking, as redemption starting rising in my very heart of hearts.  God growing in places I hadn’t even realized I had shrunk Him in.

There. Shattered into thousands of pieces.  Everything separating me from living even more fully for God. And I could almost feel it, tangibly….Glory rising, peace filling me as I walked out of that sanctuary.  I had to hold the hand-rail…just to keep my balance.

My drive home later was lighter, freer, like a bird now soaring over her circumstances….not tied or hindered by the invisible lies that once tried to hinder me and tether me down.  Love flowing like a broken damn, waters pouring upon those seeds of truth, washing away the debris that I had never even knew was there, silently hindering me. 

Then the last day, I asked for divine appointments.  My husband’s crutches hobbling, we walk in somehow early to our afternoon session…to the one where the Garcia’s, also foster parents, also Spanish like my husband, would come and prepare to speak.

I go to the bathroom, return, and see my husband wobbling toward people I don’t recognize at first.  The Garcias, “happened” to be there, laughing in the hallway with my husband.

And what are the chances?  Them entering at the exact time we came.  Us greeting them in the middle of an empty hallway, in the middle of a conference of thousands of people.

They impart, share, speak Spanish to my husband.  And I can almost feel it….faith pouring down like rain, from the thirty-two children they have raised.

Tears flow like glaciers melting as they spoke. They were us.  Fifteen-years from now.  If we hold on in faith, and keep on fostering, like they have.

And oh how we both agreed…foster care and saving orphans doesn’t come easy.  The enemy hates family-lines forever changing. He hates relinquishing the keys, the changing of legacies of chains and addiction, bondage and affliction, loosing hold when a child really sees and knows Jesus for the very first time through a temporary or forever home.

And aren’t we all called to redemption…not only in our own life, but in those He puts us in contact with?

Hasn’t He demanded of us to care for the widows and the orphans, to lay down our lives, taking it back up again with His mantle of redemption, setting the captives free by His blood, pulling people out of the pit by His relentless love that never lets go of us?

And we are not alone, friends.  Not foreigners in this calling of sweat and tears.  A great cloud of witnesses cheers us on as we throw prayers like hand-grenades at the the enemy of our souls. Changing generation by fasting, and warring, through surrendered faith that inevitably does and will change souls.

We walk away from Refresh, new people. In awe of our God who makes family out of strangers, opening doors of grace we never even knew that we needed; feeling stronger, more equipped, ready to war through hard work and diligence, ready to press in to see captives free…because Jesus himself says, “Blessed are the children”.

And oh that thousands of children might come to the hope of a forever home, standing on the truth that none of us are perfect, but together multitudes can be snatched from darkness, and placed where love is seen.

And I wonder….Have you felt like you have been living in a waist-land lately?  Do you feel dry, barren, weak, helpless?  Have you been asking God, “What are my needs?”, “How might I, right now, get refreshment”?  Well, He is only a breathe away.

If you are a foster, adoptive, or relative caregiver….if you are social worker, or do any kind of broken child or orphan ministry…I beg you, will you consider attending REFRESH next year?  The date will be the last weekend of February. (click here for more info on the 2016 Conference)

Or if you just need to be filled…

Will you stop, ask God to redeem those places hurt, offended?  Will you give Him your all, allowing His Spirit to shatter your past, redeeming what’s been lost, making whole what you might have just taken for granted might never be healed again?

For there are living waters flowing down from Zion, friend.  Will you step deeper into them?  Will you let His Spirit rise, true faith taking flight and setting you free for more?

UNITE LINK PARTY

This is my favorite part of the week, friends!  A time where we gather from all over the internet, post our blog or pictures, share our truth, or our recipes, with the purpose to UNITE.

Wanna know the plan?  Add a post below (And yes, YOU are welcome), then link back, and if you can, comment on at least one other post.

UNITE isn’t a club, about writer better.  It isn’t about being on top, or showing off anything that we might have a part from Him…

UNITE is all about His grace, His grace, flowing through us as we UNITE and create!  Thanks for being a part of us!

Let’s get started….