When It Rains: Keeping it Real

Matthew 7:24-27

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.  And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

Matthew 5:44-46

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

Psalm 57:1

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,
    for in you my soul takes refuge;
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
    till the storms of destruction pass by.

I love to count every day as a blessing.  I love to see the beauty and grace in all that God is doing in our family and in the hearts in our home.  We have been given grace upon grace upon grace.  (John 1:16)  I love to delight in God and His many blessings for us.  In an effort to keep it real here, today's post is a disclaimer about large family life, older child adoption, trauma, and special needs.  The reality is that not every day feels like a blessing.  Not every day is sunshine and happiness.  

Some days there is rain.  Some days there is a deluge of rain.  Some days there is the threat of lightning, severe storms, even tornados that threaten to blow us away.  Why should I expect any different?

In the Bible, Jesus tells us that we will have trouble (John 16:33), but he doesn't leave us in despair.  He gives hope that He will overcome, and ultimately in eternity that we will overcome, too, if we trust in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and for salvation.  But here on earth there is the promise, not just the potential, of rains, floods, winds, and storms of destruction both physically and metaphorically.  God draws us to Himself in order that we may build our hearts (and our houses) on the unfailing Rock, which is Jesus Christ.

And so, to keep it real and not sugar-coat life with the Colombian Brewed, it is honest to say that we deal with some pretty intense things that most of your average, home-grown families would never ever consider.  Most of those are things I had never considered until they happened in our home.  After reading that last statement, it sounds like we were ill prepared for this journey and in many ways we were.  There is just no way, even after attending countless hours of training and reading stacks of books from the experts, that you can truly be prepared to jump into someone else's trauma.  

The good news is that we were prepared eternally.  We built our house on the rock.  We know where to take refuge when the storms of destruction come.  And we are learning (always learning) to take both the sun and rain as God's divinely appointed blessings for our family.  The hard days come, days when one or more of our kids are overwhelmed by fear or past hurts.  Fear, hurt, and anxiety can be expressed in some crazy ways.  Sometimes they feel like scorching sun or pelting rain to my desperate mommy heart, but even in that moment I am not without hope.  My house is on the rock. 

I am confident that God brought me to today to walk through life beside my children through wind, rain, sun, storms and peaceful skies.  All of it.  The hard days draw us closer to Jesus.  The sweet days bring us refreshing and are so much sweeter than I have ever known.  In the end, our house (metaphorically and physically) will probably look weather-beaten, but this world is not our home.  I am thankful that I can weather the storms with these precious children, standing on the rock, in the refuge of my Savior's arms.  There is no safer place!