Fostering a Broken Heart

Yesterday I was playing with my foster daughter.  As we were cuddling and tickling on the living room floor I was flooded with emotion as a thought crossed my mind. 

There are two extreme results of my time with her: I either walk her down the aisle one day or she forgets me completely.

She won't even turn two years old until late August, so she's quite young.  Her mom is doing great and hopefully will be completely reunited with her sooner rather than later.  So, the chances of her forgetting me is quite high, but I'll never forget her.  Even with the recent birth of my sweet, little Anna this beautiful girl, that I can't even name online, will always be my first daughter.

This may be the hardest part of foster care so far: loving hard core and holding loosely.  Being a foster parent means loving someone with all you have knowing that the best case scenario for them is you getting a broken heart.

I also pray that we can keep in touch with this gorgeous little girl to whom I've given a piece of my heart that I can never get back.  I pray that she and Joshua (my son who is only three months older) can remain friends who get to play together even after the great reunion we've been working toward happens.

The best way I know how to deal with these complex emotions is to make sure I remember our doing foster care isn't about my wife and I.

"Whatever you do, work at it with all you heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters." Colossians 3:23

I can't do this work unto anyone else and keep my sanity and I'm included in the anyone else category.  If I don't remember that I'm doing this labor of love for King Jesus then I will be tempted to think I'm being short sold, that I'm getting a broken heart for a small reward.  However, when I remember that I'm working unto the Lord I call to mind that:

"Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne... everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life." Matthew 19:28a-29

This isn't prosperity Gospel.  This is a realization that in doing foster care I may lose a precious girl from my life, a girl that I love like my very own daughter, but I will gain Jesus Himself more clearly and more dearly in the process.  When one works as until the Lord, one finds that the Lord works side-by-side with them.

Soon I may have a broken heart, but thank the Lord that He knows what a broken heart feels like and will comfort me appropriately.  Help us cheer hard for our hearts to get broken.  Join us in praying for us, for our kids, for our sweet foster daughter and for her mother today.