My dh and I were married for three years when we decided to add a child to our family. We always knew that we wanted to be parents and with relative ease we had our first child as planned. As she has grown, she has been the most amazing blessing and parenting her has been a true joy for us. We have poured ourselves into her-making certain that she feels safe, secure, and loved. When I entered into parenthood, I really had no idea just how much you could love another person. How your heart could literally overflow with joy when you saw your child! We have been so happy to have our darling kiddo. So often, my feelings for her have given me a whole new perspective on just how much God, our Father, loves us.
We were happy and we were done. That was our plan. We had our darling kiddo when we were in our early twenties. We would be young parents, raise her, and be done early enough that we would still be young enough to walk alongside her when she had children of her own. So here we were well on the way to our plan. We have a beautiful family. A family who loves the Lord, loves each other, and loves spending our time together. We vacationed, spent late nights playing games and talking, read our Bible and worshiped together regularly, prayed daily, and smiled a lot. The perfect picture of family-done!
Then we let God enter in..
Last spring, our good friends opened up their hearts and home to these gorgeous feet! They added three foster girls to their family! (I wish I could show you their faces! They are so precious.) Suddenly, all those verses about the fatherless and orphans-that I have read a million times and passed over-had a face. I had seen the fatherless in these girls and I loved them so much! The verses became personal. I watched these precious, sweet parentless children shown God's love through my friends. I watched their lives transform as they were introduced to the reality of living in a home with parents who were able to take care of them. I listened as they learned to pray, sing praise songs, and were introduced to Jesus. I saw my darling kiddo fall in love with them herself and gain so much by building into their lives too. I experienced for myself first hand-through the loving example of our friends-the huge difference a God loving home can make in the lives of children who are fatherless. Truly these children are the least of these that the Bible talks about in Matthew! Walking alongside these children gave me a glimpse into God's heart that I had never allowed myself to see before.
I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. John 14:18
Religion that God our father accepts as pure and undefiled is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27
So, here we are on this journey ourselves. I never would have believed it. I never planned for it. I never knew to hope for it. But wow what a huge blessing it is to be a part of it! Oh, how I feel so closely connected to the heart of God! What a true privilege that God has done this for our family. I praise Him for introducing us to those precious faces that changed our hearts so dramatically and led us to obediently follow His plan for our family.
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