A friend picked up a brand new AA foster baby from the hospital today, and oh does it make me want to beg God for my turn. I want a newborn brown baby too! They already were told it was a most likely be a TPR (adoptable child) situation. I am so excited for this family, and it stirs my heart. Lord, I cry out, I could do it! I could be a foster mother now and raise babies. But he still says, "not yet."
I am so good at bargain shopping, I scare myself. Today I was thrift shopping with a friends girls. I kept telling them as they looked around, "ask yourself, 'what could this become?'" I was going to teach them how to repurpose some old things. We found some wooden jewelry boxes for less than a dollar, just begging for girls to paint and decoupage them. And I picked up a coffee table for $15. It needs some work, but I see what it will become. And for now, I guess that is what my sights should be set on. Seeing the beauty that is there through the dirt and grime of life.
And my teenagers... I love them. One had me up, texting last night about how high school is such a waste when you want to follow your dreams. After two hours, I think I got my point across on why it was necessary to finish what is in front of you. By the time my student's frustration had passed, I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open, and felt like I could finally say how tired I was and goodnight. I think teenagers are way more exhausting than babies! They have mostly taken that need to nurture a little one from me. And I do have my 3 year old hyperactive sister, and my 7 month old high needs nephew, whom I watch a few times a week for my baby fix. But there is just something about the beauty of bringing a baby home from the hospital. I helped my mom do it once with a newborn foster baby. It was amazing.
And even when I get that place with an extra bedroom, as much as I would like to turn it into a nursery, I would be wasting my time because I know that as soon as I have it, I'll get a text about a friend of one of my kids who doesn't have a place to stay. And she might be pregnant like the one last week that needed a place to stay. That room will probably need a crib and bunk beds or something like that!
I have told so many youth in the last year and a half, not to have sex and not to get pregnant, but if they do, come to me and I would do everything I can to help, including adopting the baby if that was what they want. I pretty much throw it out there with my kids these days. With my girls, it's become what we say to each other when we say goodbye. They will say it to me too, "Don't have sex. Don't get pregnant." We even joke, "Kisses lead to pregnancy. No kissing!" I know most of them listen to me, and respect what I tell them, but I'm not naive enough to think that all of my kids will abstain. Nor am I willing to let them get into more trouble after a mistake, because they don't think I will offer unconditional grace and love. These kids have already lived a life of that. I refuse to be one more person who failed to come through for them.
Just when I think I am figuring out what God wants me to do, it changes. It makes me smile though, because I love the change of life. Too much of the same makes me apathetic. God knows me well. I am so excited to realize my God really gets me. He may be the only soul on this earth who actually does!
So I will continue to scrub off the dirt and grime in the lives of my precious students, as they face the biggest battles of their lives, and tend the wounds that become exposed and infected in the process. Only God would place me in ministry at the high school that's biggest rival is the high school I graduated. And it is all for His glory. I am falling so much more in love with my Savior as I help my dear students cleanse themselves of the filth life continues to slather on them. Only by God's grace. Only because of the lamb that was slain.
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