Is this really my life?

I fought hard against this calling.

This is not what I really wanted.

I wanted a simple life.

Holding a child in my arms who is thrashing against all my efforts to love is not what I dreamed for motherhood.

Continual disruptions of birth family visits, social workers, and court dates.

I signed up for this?

A child slipping into an infantile state and wailing for anyone else to come hold her besides me.

Anyone but me.

Muffled sobs against my shoulder that she wants her brothers who live with another foster family on the other side of town.

And I rock and struggle to draw her flailing form into my arms. She shrieks foreign gutteral sounds.

After returning from a visit with birth family. This is what happens. Last time it was projectile vomiting.

And I rock and whisper…

I know you are confused. I know you are angry. Mommy loves you. Will you be my baby and let me rock you?

Over and over we do this. My chest heaving with hers, our tears mixing a salty stream between us.

I hear it all the time: I could never be a foster parent. I just couldn’t let them go.

Really? Maybe God is calling you to foster care.

Seriously.

You want to know a secret?

I said the exact.same.thing.

Do you think we do this because our hearts are stone hard and we have a special gift in letting go? Or that we’re not fearful?

We’ve wrestled with every fear and reason why we shouldn’t do this. For years.

Even when we signed up for ten weeks of intensive training, we still questioned: Is this what we’re supposed to be doing?

We walked the tough road of watching my daughter’s best friend and her foster family. After three years, she went home to her mama.

Difficult circumstances. Gut-wrenching pain.

He pricked our hearts a long time ago. And in His perfect timing and plan, we jumped in. He used a friendship in my Kindergarten daughter’s life, along with our broken past to draw us in.

We decided we would start slowly by trying respite care- ministering to foster families when they needed a break.

We got a call before we were licensed. To take a seven-year-old boy for a week. That week rocked my world.

He was the same age as our middle son.

He endlessly spoke of his losses, his words permeating every quiet space. My ears burned with stories of his past– his mama’s choices, his grief.

My kids were carefree, laughing and talking about superheroes. An empty gap in the conversation erupted as this dear boy attempted to connect by sharing his stories of drugs, police, and guns.

Talk about a real-life superheroes. These kids that endure the worst of life and still keep going. Continuing to hope. They are the superheroes.

My boys fought like tigers all that week. The extra testosterone in the mix pressing against their comforts– their stuff (specifically Legos).

My chest was a cavity of shards every night I knelt down with him. He was a bundle of blankets and tears asking why. Every.single.night. Anguish and prayers for his mama.

I thought I would die. I didn’t know how to handle this.

Was this really where He was calling us?

His mama’s addiction was the same that caught my husband and our family in a net and almost destroyed our lives four years beforehand.

No mistake this sweet boy was our first placement. A ripping away of our comforts. A reminder of our rescue- what our lives could have been.

A bursting of our children’s comforts is not a bad thing. They are called to more, just as we are.

I am repeatedly caught off-guard by how children love with pure hearts. No agenda or to-do list.

My kids are big sinners, like us, but they are unencumbered by life or worries. A freedom to love without bounds that I don’t have.

Babies seemed to rain from the sky last summer. My kids spent the months of June and July bouncing fussy babies, feeding hungry ones, and bringing joy to little faces.

While this mama breathed into a paper bag, trying to regulate my oxygen level. Because it was hard.

Deeply loving other people’s kids. Adjusting to different schedules and stages of babies.

As my kids begged for more babies, my heart was doubtful. Unsure if I could handle and manage this calling.

So, we detoured–pursued adoption for six months, while we continued to serve as a respite foster family.

We thought adoption seemed safer, you know? Ha! Insane thinking- my adoption friends can tes.ti.fy to that…adoption bears it’s own heavy grief and uncertainties.

The Lord shut the door on adoption for us. We ran after every country and adoption agency known to man. He slammed that door tight.

I grieved all last summer. The realization set in– He was cementing our feet in foster care.

We couldn’t run from our calling, our passion. We couldn’t unloosen what He had sealed in our hearts.

And the phone call came in October.

Would we take the little bitty girl we loved with all our hearts?

The one that had us all wrapped around her tiny brown fingers.

She had occupied our crib more than any other child, spending countless hours in our home as respite.

Full-time foster care frightened us and kept me up at night, but we knew without a doubt.

We said yes to Little Bitty, jumping in with both feet and all our doubts and fears. Holding out empty hands to the Father. Knowing this was our calling.

We are not extraordinary.

We are normal, fearful, questioning, struggling, people.

Doing what He has called us to do.

Often with anger at injustice and shaking fists.

Much of the time with fear and trembling.

We are still standing.

Because He strengthens the weak-kneed.

Gives hope to the weary.

This is not the dream I had. His plans are bigger and better.

Because we serve an extraordinary God.

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Melanie and her husband, Kevin, have been foster parents for two years. During this time, they have had twelve children in their home. Foster care has challenged their family to look inward at their own brokenness as they seek their Savior to serve the *least of these*. Only by His strength. You can follow their journey on her blog Running to the Father.