The Outside Looking In

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This is how God showed his love among us:

He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us

and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

1 John 4:8-11

I wish we had been given an honest referral from the ICBF office in Periera...

I wish that what my RAD children go through behind closed doors in our home looked even a little closer to what others see of our family on the outside looking in...

I wish that this beautiful picture above could reflect to me what others see in it...

And some days, like today, I wish that as a Christian I didn't need and even desire to do the hard things that Christ calls us to - to love the unlovely, especially when the unlovely cause so much pain.  Especially when the unlovely is your own son.

And then it hits me that God did so much more than this for me.  He sacrificed so much more than this for me.  God sacrificed His own Son, made His own perfect Son unlovely on account of my sin in order to offer me forgiveness and salvation through Jesus' atoning work on the cross.  I would be overlooking God's greatest sacrifice for me if I were to say that I were unwilling to love this one precious child for Him.  The idea of people choosing who they are willing to accept as lovable has been rambling around in my mind for a while now but was brought to mind again by a friend who told me that her family's adoption plans were met with discouragement and ridicule by her extended family.  The idea of certain children being worthy of fitting into your or my particular family and other children not being worthy is prejudice in its most base form.  All children deserve families.  To say that a child from one culture or color is unworthy of your family or mine is prejudice.  To say that a child with a disease or disorder or a traumatic background is unlovely and therefore unworthy of a family falls into that same category.  It is possible for prejudice to happen throughout the world.  I have heard my children who came from extreme poverty judge others from other cultures.  It wasn't out of malice, but out of ignorance that they were judgmental and they have been pleasantly surprised to learn their previously held views aren't true.  I have seen white, middle class, rural families decide who is lovely and unlovely right along with culturally diverse, upper class, suburban families.  The thing that saddens my heart is when people within the Christian church begin to decide who is lovely and unlovely, who is worthy or unworthy of a family or of our time.

Why do I rant about the lovely and unlovely when today was my day to struggle with loving the unlovely?  Because this is right where God has me today.

You see, every child deserves a family, but not every child knows how to function safely within a family, especially after years of hurt.  After having our newest children in our family for seven and a half months and exhausting the resources available to us, Jonah was admitted to a residential treatment facility yesterday where he will hopefully learn the skills he needs to live in a family safely and to accept love and boundaries from a family.  We did not come to this decision lightly or without tremendous love for Jonah, but after waiting on the Lord and after many doors for help were closed to us.  Please realize that what you see in the picture above does not represent our normal day-to-day, nor would our normal be what you may see if you saw us at church or stopped by our house for a visit.  Reactive Attachment Disorder can make a charming child out of the most hurting child in the presence of strangers and in the next instance it can make that same child a threat to the safety of the family.

It is in this difficult decision that I seek to love all of my children, who all deserve a safe family.  Please pray for us at home as we try to pick up the shattered pieces of our lives and as we wait on the Lord to mend the broken places in our hearts.  Please pray for each of the children at home who are coping in their own way with Jonah's absence and with what they each need to overcome in order to feel like home is a safe place again.  Please pray for Jonah, that he is able to learn the skills he needs to live safely in a family and receive love from us.  Please pray for Nic and I as we seek God's love for the unlovely wherever that may lead us.  

We can confidently say that our hope is in God, not in the results of a treatment program, therapy, or medication.  (Which by the way are all wonderful tools that God may use to heal our children if He chooses.)  Our hope does not rest on our children's healing.  Our hope is in God regardless of whether or not He chooses to heal them of their past trauma.  God be glorified regardless of the earthly results...