Planning for Mercy (or "Everybody Needs Somebody")

The Joyful Nonconformist Blog ^ | 04/05/11 | Joyful Nonconformist

[MintyHippo1980]

Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails. (Proverbs 19:21)

One of these days, I'm going to embrace that truth with both arms and get it right on the first try!

I look forward to that.

See, I'm pretty good with planning, if I do say so myself. For example, there's just not much I enjoy more than plotting out the homeschool year...unless it's planning a trip! Oh, yeah...that's where I'm a Viking! I've organized some pretty sweet chore charts in my day too...and sticker-graphs for kids who need to remember to practice their piano lessons or learn how to keep their Pull-Ups dry at night.

Furthermore, every week I actually sit down and create a menu of what we're going to eat at every meal for the next seven days...and then I make a grocery list of what I need to buy to make that happen. And if all that wasn't enough proof that I'm the world's biggest geek (or at least Henderson County's most boring neurotic), I might as well tell you the worst:

On my computer, I have documents saved called "Packing List" and "Master Shopping List." I produced these documents so that I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel on certain organizational tasks--thereby streamlining my planning processes.

I may be beyond the reach of conventional psychotherapy on this one.

All this to say: I'm a planner. And I love it!! Frankly, in my line of work, it's a good thing. If you tell one or two children that you don't know what's for dinner, they're not happy; if you tell seven or eight children that there isn't even a dinner idea on the horizon, that's enough for a pretty respectable mutiny.

So I can make a fairly good argument rationalization that this is a gift from God...a proclivity given to me by Him to enable me to perform the tasks He has set before me.

But boy-howdy...it's a rut that's awfully hard to step out of when I need to step out of the way and let God be God.

May I make a confession right here? There are many, many times that I look at my sometimes-bossy children (Where do they pick this stuff up?!) and ask them if I can be in charge for a while. Every time this happens, I swear that, in my mind's ear, I can hear my mother snorting milk out her nose. And I can feel God's steady, Fatherly gaze upon me.

See, I have Jeremiah 29:11 committed to memory: "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." So how is it that on issues that really matter--on topics of great importance to God--I can be so sure I know the plans He has for me when I never, in fact, consulted Him?

Case in point: In my last post, I mentioned that our social worker had tried to nudge us toward foster care when we were working on our home-study for an international adoption. Some of the greatest hits from my foster-care-rejection Top-10 include "How could I ever give a child back to abusive parents?" and "I don't want to have to parent a child by the state's regulations!"

Probably my biggest seller, though, received a lot of critical acclaim because it sounds so darn altruistic: "How could we ask our children to welcome siblings into their lives and then let them go again?!"

Oh yeah...I'm good.

Sort of reminds you of my early work, "Everyone is getting vasectomies" and "Pay no attention to that still, small voice SCREAMING IN YOUR HEAD!" doesn't it? I was afraid of that.

But, as I mentioned at the end of my last post, God's Word had finally started working its way more deeply into my heart. (I'm sort of a slow learner sometimes.) James 1:27 doesn't say that God accepts as pure religion the looking-after of orphans in their distress...as long as it doesn't carry with it the potential for any personal inconvenience or discomfort.

Nope. It reads:

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Hmmm...not a lot of wiggle-room there.

However, just because this truth was incubating in my heart didn't mean that Sweet Jimmy B had yet hauled his sea-bag on board. Funny thing, that. I have known a lot of women who received a Word from the Lord about something of great importance long before their husbands were convicted...and sometimes they never were. For the longest time, I wondered why that was. I still can't say that I know the mind of God on this one, but I do have a theory.

I think it's so easy for us women to feel like we're right about something and then completely step out from under the ol' submission umbrella and start to nag. And since we're so sure that God is on our side...that this (whatever it is) is His will for our family...we readily justify our own behavior.

Our own completely unscriptural behavior.

You can almost hear the Lord whispering, "You can't convict him...only I can...but how are you going to act in the mean-time?"

Sometimes I actually manage to keep silent. (Exodus 14:14) Then I get to watch God work for me...

One day, Jim was visiting with a dear couple from our church who has done official and unofficial foster care for decades: Harlan and Edith Lain. In the midst of their conversation, Harlan was talking about the sometimes-painful decision to be foster parents, and he said, "Jim, it's like this...everybody needs somebody."

And that was that.

SJB came home to me, told me about the conversation, and before the dust had completely settled, we were registered for the 27 hours of foster parent training.

Foster parent training is...well...a story all its own. Whoa.

And just in case I haven't provided ample evidence that I'm a slow study, I entered into that training with a lot of notions about what sorts of placements would be best for our family. Since we're homeschoolers, I didn't want a foster child who was school-aged because I didn't want to have to fight the education war on two fronts. Also, I had read somewhere that it really interfered with the dynamics of the family if a foster child was older than any of your existing children. (Umm...Mary was coming up on 6 months old at the time.) And because we really knew best, we didn't think we should accept a placement with special physical, mental, emotional, or educational needs because of the extra time burden it would put on our family.

Who did we think was in foster care?! We sounded like Sally Albright ordering lunch at a deli!

But...in that gentle way He has that is more loving-kind than I deserve, God began to place questions in my heart:

When's the last time you threw down such a long list of restrictions in the delivery room? Can't you trust Me to know who to bring to the family I have created...under the roof I have provided for you? Don't you know that I know the plans I have for you...and for a child who needs a family? Haven't we already covered most of this trust stuff before?

So by the time we had completed nine weekly 3-hour foster-care classes, we had covenanted to embrace whatever child God used Lutheran Social Services of Illinois to entrust to us for a time.

Six weeks later, October 4, 2005, was a plain old school day at Stately Bennett Manor. Oftentimes, I will ignore phone calls that come in during school time, but that morning the caller ID read "Lutheran Social Services." And for a moment I thought I was going to need CPR because I'm pretty sure I stopped breathing, my heart stopped beating, and I had a contraction all at the same time!

Would we be willing to take care of a 6-week old baby girl who had tested positive for drug exposure at birth? Would we?! Duh! (Some people ask me silly questions.)

The entire house erupted into pandemonium! We cleaned...we put together the bassinet...we paused occasionally to giggle like idiots and freak out a little. After all, we really didn't know for sure what we were getting ourselves into! This baby had been exposed to a variety of toxins in utero. Would she scream non-stop? Have developmental delays? Physical problems? Would she be a keeper...or would we have to give her back one day? We knew she was on an apnea monitor; we knew she had been in family foster care (which didn't work out) since she was 3-days old; we knew nothing else. But we were finally trusting God for all of it.

When she arrived, she was beautiful! See?

Mercy, October 4, 2005...at the very hour of her arrival.

And a week or so later, when I took her to get her picture taken, I think she was already starting to look like a Bennett baby! :-)

Have I ever told you that Mary and Mercy are only seven months and one day apart? Yeah...that gets people's attention for the five months of the year that they're the same age (yet obviously not twins). If you're curious, that's my quickest baby turn-around. Whew!

And you know, that sounds like it really ought to be the set-up for a million parenting horror stories...but it just wasn't. Mary (whom you may remember as one of my most challenging babies) had just learned to crawl when Mercy arrived, so she was happy as a clam. Mercy was one of the most contented babies on the planet. And because Mary was so little when she acquired her baby sister, she never had a lick of sibling rivalry. As far as these girls remember, they have just always been together! And they are SUCH peas in a pod!

Here they are at about 2- and 3-years old.

Now, I won't try to make foster parenting seem like something it just isn't. It wasn't easy to meet (and love) the people who had knowingly exposed this beautiful child to all manner of dangers. It wasn't a dream-come-true to deal with social worker visits and parent visits and paperwork. And it is never easy for me to handle the unknown. But what a blessing it was to follow God into obedience in this!

Mercy's most recent haircut! And this one she didn't do herself!

And as we adapted to having a second baby in the house, it dawned on me...

Our loving God had gently brought us around to trusting Him completely with whatever child He placed into our family...only to give us our hearts' desire: a healthy newborn who would ultimately be ours to keep.

Only we didn't know that at the time.

And before she was six months old, we learned that she had a younger sibling in-bound.

Blessings! Missy

James 4:13-17 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.

What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

[MintyHippo1980]

Makes me want to be a foster parent...