A week ago these shoes arrived at our door. The people wearing them said our neighborhood has the greenest grass they’ve ever seen in their life. The case worker said we’ll have them until the end of the weekend.
My (just for now) daughter kept complaining that her feet hurt. I’m no podiatrist. I didn’t know what to do. My advice was to walk it off. (we’ll chalk this one up to a new mom mistake) Turns out the shoes she came in were a 6.5. Her new shoes are 9.5.
I’ll be honest. We were really reluctant about becoming foster parents.
We had so many excuses why we couldn’t do it. And that’s the way it goes when you need to take a leap of faith. So many excuses why you can’t take it.
We thought it was going to change our lives and our schedules too much. We don’t have family in town. Also, we were scared. Scared to step in, scared to make it worse, scared of what we might see and hear and know.
And mostly: it would bring too many changes we weren’t prepared for. But Bob Goff said, “live a life free of excuses and you’ll find your purpose.” And living your purpose and fulfilling your calling is so much more beautiful than living a life of excuses. These are lives worth remembering.
But God made His presence known during each and every excuse we grumbled up to Him, and we were humbled. Oh how we were humbled. More on that later though. I have to tell you, and you’re going to want to hear, because everyone loves a good story where the characters have a “come to Jesus” moment and they’re smacked right off their proverbial asses.
I forgot how golden silence is until the silence was gone. As I write this, my (just for now) son is yelling at our years-old xbox and our (just for now) daughter is singing while listening to her headphones. “whydon’tyoucallmeonmyceeeeelllllphooooooone”
This parenting shtick is a shock to our system. Marriage sans children is precious. I love every stinking moment I get with my husband. Every stinking one. Seriously, even the ones that really stink. I don’t want to share his attention with a nine year old boy who also happens to think the sun rises and sets around my husband. But maybe the way I can honor the gift of my husband is to hold him loosely. To share him with a tiny heart who needs him. May I hold my gifts loosely, knowing they are only entrusted to me for a while. I will leave this world with everything I came with.
And now that we are almost and only a week in, the biggest change for us isn’t what we thought it would be. But then again, the problems and changes we anticipate are seldom the ones that come.
The biggest change we have experienced is not in our schedule, making sure they’re clean and fed, getting them to bed at a normal time or out of their pajamas by lunch time. These are new responsibilities for us, and we’ve mostly risen to the occasion. But sometimes we are still in our pajamas in the mid-afternoon, and that’s OK too.
The biggest change is not in taking a child who has been abused or neglected or orphaned into our home and allowing the invisible baggage, the hurt, the anger, in with them before the door closes behind the case worker.
It wasn’t even a shock to my system when I asked my (just for now) son to clean his room and he said, “Bye Felicia.” And I said, “Felicia, clean your room.” and Felicia DID clean his room. #parentingwin.
The biggest change has been within us.
All this time I was worrying about disrupting the curated and comfortable life around me. I never considered how it would change the person inside me.
I never thought of myself as having a critical spirit. But that’s the thing. The curse of being critical is that no one actually thinks they are critical. Negativity is blinding. Negative people call it being a realist. But they’re not. We’re not. I’m not. Who am I to think I can see the entire picture? In order to be a realist, you have to be able to see the entire picture. And there is only One who can see the entire picture, from the Alpha to the Omega.
I am not God. I was just being critical.
And our negativity blinds us to the joy and potential surrounding us.
Here is an incomplete list of the things we would complain about but have since given up: We haven’t complained about work or the weather or each other. The Pastor Husband hasn’t complained about the house not being clean and I haven’t complained about how the PH complains about the house not being clean. We haven’t complained about Trump or Hillary. Jesus is King anyway, so WHATEVS. We haven’t complained about people who complain. Or people who we think complain, or people who we think complain about us. We stopped complaining about what we are eating and how little we are exercising. All of it. Out the window. Gone. Done. I have unlocked my own jail cell. Freedom is so sweet, my friend.
The more self-focused we are, the more critical we are.
When we are focused on the negative, we can’t possibly see God glorified. We can’t possibly see His awe. Negativity and having a critical spirit are as separate from God as light is from the dark. As goodness is from evil.
Besides, the person who looks around and finds so much to complain about and looks within and finds nothing to complain about can’t be trusted. Friend, we are not these people.
The world’s grumblings started when we believed God was withholding His goodness and that we’ve been cheated. “I’ll eat from this tree because I don’t want anything withheld from me. I deserve to have whatever I want.” Our grumblings magnified when we perfected the crime of blaming others. “The woman you gave me made me eat the apple, God.” Even in paradise we complained. But now that we see that the harvest truly is massive and we are looking around for the workers, we know: there’s just not enough time in the day to usher up one more groan to God.
Complaint is Verbalized Awelessness
We were made for so much more than living a complaint-filled, aweless life. We were created to do the Kingdom work, to be His hands and feet until He comes again. Friend, you are so gifted, so called, so commanded.
We are beginning to taste the sweet freedom from our own words and are new people because of it. Our words incarcerated us to the very things we need to get away from. We unlocked our own jail cell that our attitudes put around us.
In 200 years, no one will care about anything I complained about. My groanings won’t matter, but what I did to make the world better will. It’s easy to complain about how other people live their lives and the decisions they make. But complaints don’t change the world. Let’s leave a legacy of love instead.
Complaints are verbalized awelessness of God. God isn’t that great if this is what I’m getting.
Complaints are verbalized ingratitude. God hasn’t given me anything that’s all that great.
Complaints are verbalized entitlement. I deserve so much more than what God’s given me.
We are so called.
This week we were forced to look deeply into the eyes of children who would give their prized Rainbow Loom and brand new Nikes to have the problems we complain about.
But when we focus on how to solve other people’s problems, and not other people as problems, this changes the world.
You and I, we are people who look out and look up. We may not be brave, but we are Kingdom warriors, and that means that we can still do the hard thing even when we are scared. Your capacity for Kingdom impact is seriously out of this world.
And this is the Kingdom work we are created for.
Amen, my friend.