Detours

                I sat down tonight with every intention of writing about how disappointed and sad I was about events that transpired in my life today.  I had an awesome paragraph written about it.  It even said the word “disappointed” four times.  I counted.  So why am I now writing a paragraph about why I deleted the paragraph that I previously wrote about being disappointed?  Because my God is too good to let this get me down.  Because my God is too powerful to let this shake me.  Because greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.  And most of all, because my God won’t allow me to be satisfied with wallowing in self-pity and despair. 

                Something inside me knew that the words I was writing were not the words that needed to come out.  Finding myself in an all too familiar situation as a foster parent who loves a child that is a part of a very broken system, I have felt this sting before.  I lived the ups and downs of it for over a year with the case that included the children who were eventually to become my own.  I allowed depression and despair to come into my heart too many times when it came knocking.  I spent sleepless nights and worrisome days meditating on my fears and letting it destroy my faith. I have heard it so many times, “Fear is having more faith in what the devil said than what God said.”  It is so true! I rehearsed every horrific scenario in my mind.  I made myself sick, stressed, and depressed, and my children and I were none the better for it.  As I was typing those words of discouragement, something told me to stop.  I was reminded that the Lord just took me through a very precious time of preparation.  A two week “boot camp” if you will.  He showed me many things, and they were all very encouraging, but as I looked back through my journal entries from that time, one of them stood out to me. 

                In Luke 13, Jesus was ministering to people, and some Pharisees came and told him to get out of town because Herod wanted to kill him.  In verses 32-33 it says, “’Go tell that fox, I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.  In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem” (NIV).  What I believe the Lord was trying to show me in that verse was that Jesus was being sidetracked by Herod.  He knew He had a call on his life to minister to people, but He realized that He needed to take a detour because of the adversity He was facing.  He was cognizant of the present, but He also saw the end goal as well.  At the time I didn’t know the Lord was showing me things to come, but just like Jesus, today I was thrown a major detour.  It was one I wasn’t expecting, and it was one I wasn’t happy about, but it doesn’t change the end picture. 

                This time, I will not give in to fear. I will hold on to my faith.  Today I choose to have more faith in what God says than what the devil says.  I pray that if you are experiencing any detours in your life, you will not be discouraged by the delay in the journey, but that you would keep that end picture in sight and find joy in the things you learn along the way.  The enemy will always bring these detours, but in the end, I bet when I look back on this day it will look less like a detour and more like a speed bump.

Comparison

                I've had one of “those” mornings.  The baby woke up an hour earlier than normal on my only day of the week to sleep in. Then, while I was eating breakfast (after everyone else was finished), he leaked through his diaper.  As I was giving him a bath, his 20 month old brother was playing in the toilet…twice!  Then, when I got the brother undressed for a bath, he peed on the floor.  This was all by 10 a.m. Yikes!

                As I headed off to the shower mumbling, “Mommy needs a time out,” I wished I was just about anywhere else in the world.  I walked into the bathroom, and the Lord stopped me with a question, “Would you love your other children more if you didn't have Emma?”

                That question hit me like a ton of bricks.  Of the answer to that question is that I love all my children the same.  Sometimes I get frustrated with them because of the terrible choices that they make or because they continue to do the same naughty things over and over, but I would never intentionally favor one of my children over the other ones just because they got into less trouble.  I want to train them all up in the way they should go, but I also want all of them to feel loved and accepted for who they are.

                Recently I saw a quote on Facebook that I wish I would have saved, but it was something like, “Don’t get so caught up in raising a ‘good’ child that you forget that you already have one.” It is so easy to see the negative, but we can’t be parents who fail to see the positive. 

                As I stood in the shower pondering these things, I felt like the Holy Spirit began to minister to me that this is the heart of the Father toward His children as well.  It is easy for us to compare ourselves to other people in the faith. “That person has kids who are always well behaved” or “she prays an hour by herself every day and I can barely get out a ‘Lord help me!’ every morning” or “that family has more kids than we do and they NEVER miss church.”  That is a trap and a lie of the enemy.  If we, as earthly parents, know that we would never love one of our children less because their behavior wasn't as good as the other ones, then why would we ever expect God to love us less because there are others out there that we feel are more “spiritual” or more put together than we are?

                Sometimes we are harder on ourselves than God would ever be on us.  I know I have the tendency to regard my flaws more than the positive things about me.  I ask the Lord for forgiveness, but then I go on beating myself up about it.  Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it?”  God is constantly trying to bring us to new levels, but if we are caught up in remembering our past failures, we won’t even recognize it.  If we are to forgive our neighbor “seventy times seven” for the same offense, shouldn't we forgive ourselves as well?  If we were to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” how loving would that actually be?

If you struggle in this area, as I do, consider asking the Lord to help you learn to see yourself as He sees you: loved, accepted, and righteous.  Ask Him to help you forget the former things and to see the new things He is birthing in you.  After all, His heart toward you is the heart of a parent, and His “thoughts toward you are of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).