Who's The Boss, Part 3

Are you willing to surrender your life wholly to Him?  He's the only One I trust wholeheartedly to be my Boss, and I pray that one day I will be blessed to hear my Boss say to his worker, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

Part 3 of the "Who's in Charge" series:

Who's in Charge? Part Three
July 9, 2010 by John Moore

In two earlier posts, I shared about how Terri and I have occasionally put excessive limits on the children we were willing to take into our home as foster children. I shared that on each of those first two occasions, God redirected us to be open to the children He had for us, rather than the ones we had in mind for ourselves. And, naturally, on both occasions, when we submitted to His will, we saw that what He had in mind was infinitely better than what we had imagined. We never would have adopted four of our children had we not abandoned our desires, and submitted to God’s will for our family by being open to the children He wanted to place in our home.

I do think that whenever you open your home to a child, you need to use wisdom. If you have young daughters, for instance, it might be unwise to take in a teenage boy who has been sexually abused. That’s common sense. But the problems come when we start letting our own personal desires dictate whom we are willing to take into our home, and whom we are not. We really need to go into this with our hands open to what God has for us, not just open to what we think we want.

Well, in spite of the four physical reminders of God’s goodness and grace sitting at our dinner table every night, Terri and I once again decided to close our hands a bit when we told our social worker last fall that we were open to taking in another child. We specified this time, though, no babies – we were done with the middle of the night feedings, etc… We asked for a child 2 years and older. Now, most agencies would be thrilled to have a family that is willing to take in a child over 2, but then, on November 9th, our agency got a call for a six week-old child who needed a home. Our social worker called our home and talked to Terri, telling her that based on the information she had, this would likely be a very short-term placement – as little as a few days, in fact. We know the foster system well enough to know not to count on such things, but we also know and trust our social worker enough to know that she was giving us the best information she had.

Terri told me that we had been asked to take in a child who was a month and a half old. Evidently, I hadn’t had coffee yet, because I know I heard her say a year and a half. In my mind, it wasn’t 2, but it was only six months away from 2, so surely it wouldn’t be so bad. We called the social worker and accepted the placement. It was only on the way to the county office that it became clear to me that this child was only 6 weeks old. To be honest, I was a little bummed out…okay, I was very bummed out. This wasn’t the plan. We were not going to take in a baby this time around. We thought we had made that clear. Yet, we had accepted her already, so we couldn’t go back on our word. And besides, maybe it really would turn out to be just a few days.

We brought her home, and well, a few days turned into a few weeks. Naturally, the few weeks turned into a few months. We were in court for her case yesterday, and it is looking more and more likely that I will walk her down the aisle one day. I would love to share a picture of her, but she is still a foster child, so I have to keep her name and face private for now. Trust me on this, though – she is beautiful, she is precious, she’s a part of us…and we are so thankful that I hadn’t had my coffee when Terri came to tell me about her 8 months ago today. Once again, God took our desires and redirected us to be open to what He wanted. And once again, what He had for us was better than we could ever imagine.