Like Fight Club, the first rule of dysfunctional families? There is no dysfunction. It’s all fine here. Nothing to see.  Move along. Ask any veteran of a family with issues and you’ll hear the familiar echo. Someone called DSS? Nothing to see here. A neighbor called the cops? We’re all fine here, officer. Again and again in the stories of survivors of abuse, chaos, and brokenness is the idea that no matter how bad it was, it was better than foster care.

In the sequel to The Broken Trail a character will consider becoming a foster parent. In all honesty, it’s something I deeply desire to do, but know is not the right time for my family at this moment. My kids are too young.  My youngest needs to be at least a middle-schooler before we open our home. I know this, but the longing remains.

Our house isn’t ready either. I’d like to take in multiple kids so we need dedicated bedrooms that currently we don’t have.  Our house is a converted barn so we have a loft that the kids all share and that’s not gonna fly with the commonwealth of Massachusetts. We’ll have to partition the space into real bedrooms or we won’t be able to be foster parents.

So we wait. I pack my hopes away and try not to look at the web sites full of children needing homes. Ideally I’d like to buy a whole new house with six bedrooms and take in a whole mess of kids, but God has not said yes to that dream. I don’t know why and I know better than to rail at Him for it. His Providence has saved our souls so many times over the years that I have learned to trust Him. I can’t tell you how many times something has gone seriously wrong and suddenly, just as we need it, a solution appears. God provides.

Since it’s God that has placed this deep desire in my heart to minister to foster children I can only assume it’s for some work he has planned. So I wait in hope.  Hope that He will use us to minister to His children.

Our youngest has been on us to adopt. He’s noticed that his big sister and brother are close in age (he thinks of them as twins) and he doesn’t have a sibling that’s close in age. He wants us to rectify this by adopting a brother or sister. He’s graciously offered half his bed. We’ve tried explaining the complexities of his request, but he’s not having it.  This morning as he was munching his granola, he again advocated for a brother “I could give him my toys. He’d like to live with us.  You should go get him.” If only we could. If only it was that easy.

God has blessed us with four babies, three living on this earth. That alone taught us that parenthood is some serious stuff. It’s life and death, really. I remember being in the delivery room when they handed me my firstborn. I stared down at him as he looked up at me and I thought “Dear God, please don’t let me blow this.” And I remember being in the doctor’s office after they couldn’t find a heartbeat during my third pregnancy and being told “We don’t know why this happens. It just does.”

Life and death. It just happens. But it doesn’t just happen. It’s God’s Providence. Even if you don’t believe in God. I like to think of the lives we live as being strands of thread in a great tapestry we never see until we reach heaven where it’s revealed in all its complicated wonder. Every struggle you’ve had, every trial you endured, every joy, every pain went into this story – this tale beyond your own understanding.

God is the author. I hope he’s written a chapter where Steve and I get to be foster parents, but even if he hasn’t I’m okay with that. I’m okay with being his actor on the stage. I long to be used for some greater purpose because it’s a privilege to be one of his actors, his characters, his chessmen on the board. Another author recently said God doesn’t use us, he partners with us and I have to admit I bristled at that. I’m not God’s equal, I am his instrument. It’s an honor to be used as I was created to be.

I now have the privilege to be an author myself. Last night I got to see the cover for The Broken Trail. I’m ridiculously excited about it. But I want to say openly that God is the author of that book. Even if it was my fingers that typed it and my life experiences that informed it, and my brain that thought it up, it was still God who authored it through his instrument who is happy to be employed by Him.