Tuesday, November 19, 2013

More pearls on the strand

Pondering the third and fourth pearls on this strand has caused that wave of amazement to wash of me again. I realize that I expressed my awe of God's brilliance in my last post but I want to do it again because, really, that's what life should envoke in us. We should constantly overtaken by his orderliness, his master plot writing, his brilliant tapestries of lives. May I, or we, never lose our wonder at who He is or what He has done for us.

The third pearl on this strand is a stormy gray pearl. It stands alone in color to represent the heaviness that I shared with this same dear friend that will be adopting the oldest. One distinct night stands out in my mind as we sat at a local hipster coffee shop. We sipped on frozen ryan's and talked about the heaviness in our heart. There is so much about foster parenting that, because of confidentiality, we aren't allowed to share. But simultaneously there are times where you feel like if you don't talk to someone, you'll burst into flames. And not in a Hunger Games kind of way.
And though I couldn't share details with her, I shared my heart and my heaviness. And because of what God was doing in her heart as she began to love this boy that lived at my house, she shared in my heaviness.
My mom once said to me, and I say often now, "Don't tell the whole world, they won't understand. Just tell God, he does."
And while this is true, yet ironic, because I am putting all my pearls on these pages for anyone to see, I believe that sometimes when our hearts aches bad enough, God gives us a flesh and bone-sitting across from me-crying tears with me-kind of person that would hear and understand. Its a gift from him, he's sweet that way. Its as if he gave me this friend and said, here: ya'll be friends and then later you'll be more like sisters.
There have been things that I haven't told the world. Not even my closest friends, because maybe He is the only one who understands that. But then, there are things that I feel like I need to speak about because it brings him oodles amounts of glory in talking about what he has done and how good he is to us.
That night, as we sipped on high calorie coffee drinks, lightning streaked and dark clouds crept angrily across the sky. We talked about our heavy hearts for orphans as we watched the storm roll in. Little did we know that there would be many heavy days and heavier nights as the storm of life and foster care waged.
But just like this stormy pearl, it is as beautiful and as rare as the others. It is just as precious to my heart as the others. For the heaviness has as much brilliant purpose as the wonderment. And I am grateful that  God saw fit to give me this sister/friend that would carry my burdens with and love this child that we now call, "our boy".

The fourth pearl is a pearl of prayer. One windy afternoon, just 24 hours before our culminating court hearing, another foster mom and I met at a park to pray. She has several of the siblings to our siblings and we have supported each other through all this, laughed together, gotten furious over things together, and prayer for each other. We sat at a picnic table and poured our hearts out to God, together. As a cool breeze blew around us, that small voice said in my spirit, "Look at what I'm doing Meg. I put people together. I cause them to pray together. I give them my heart and help them care about the least of these. This is what I'm about."
We prayed for what seemed like an hour and it was glorious. I doubt I will ever forget that day or what God did after.

These are my pearls. Much like Mary, I treasure them all in my heart. But what I'm learning is that this isn't just for me. God didn't just do this for me and my family. Though I'm not supposed to throw my pearls before pigs (because pigs can't possible appreciate fine jewelry…Matthew 7:6), what God has done in our lives and what he is about is so much bigger than all this.


What these pearls represent is what he's in the business of doing, for all of mankind:

*Bringing people to together (expanding our view of "family"): Eph 1:5, Pslm 68:6
*Causing them to depend on him, which is expressed through prayer: Phil 4:6
*Giving us his love for the least of us and helping us act of that love: James 1:27
*Using our own lives to point other to Jesus Christ: Romans 11:36


More pearls to come.

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