I was looking for a way to get this kid out of our house.
There are little moments like on the first night when his stomach is full and he realizes he gets to sleep in a bed, that he runs up to me and almost knocks me down. He wrapped his arms around me and began to jump up down, overwhelmed, saying “Thank you, Aunt! Thank you, Aunt! Thank you, Aunt!” Despite the huge smile on his face, his eyes were filled with tears.
Those are the moments that everybody imagines when you bring a child home whose been sleeping on the sidewalk, waiting from the trash, and invisibly walking around the city being surpassed by thousands of people.
The truth of the matter is, those moments are far and few. It’s hard to see children shaking as addictions wane. It’s harder to love them as they quarrel and lie and chase other children around with sharp objects. It’s hard to break a lifestyle of shouting, fighting, and stealing. It’s hard to lose a mentality of “Nobody cares for me and the whole world is out to get me.”
It’s hard not to blame that child for disturbing and disrupting your home that has been so unified and in tact for such a long time. It’s like having toddlers in the home, who know how to walk and talk but you have to watch their every move.
The first two weeks we brought him home, I kept thinking, “We can just make a recommendation to another organization to take him because these other organizations can help this boy better than we can right now.”
Translation: Let’s make him somebody else’s problem and we can go back to our happy, quiet, peaceful life.
God so gently reminded me, “I didn’t make him somebody else’s problem, I brought him here.”
As a staff, He was calling us to fully fight for this kid. I had been looking for an excuse to get out of the fight.
Two weeks later, I’m still tired. He’s still shaking. I watch him fervently pray every night before he goes to sleep that God will protect him throughout the night, and I’m spending most of my nights being woken up and comforting a child who is wrecked by nightmares. I’m touched as the very boys he was quarreling with two weeks ago, open up their arms to him every night. He climbs into bed with these boys that are younger than he is and they hold him as he falls asleep.
Meekness now envelops his character. Being loved, envelops his heart.
There’s still a long way to go, but who doesn’t have a long way to go? The message has been made very loud and clear to me, He’s worth fighting for.
Really, who isn’t worth fighting for?
Excuses contaminate our belief. We can always always always find a logical excuse (but we usually call them reasons) of getting out of doing God’s will.
I’ve learned a hard lesson the past few years (still learning), that any time I really want to get out of somewhere, that’s usually where God is calling me to hunker down and fight. God does not give a spirit of flee-dom, to where we’ve fled from problems, people, or places our whole lives and now our paths are covered by places that we’ve fled from and we’re scared to return to, due to unfinished business that we ran away from.
He calls us to meet those people, places, and problems head on; armed with love, strengthened with joy, and resting in Him. To fight fully for the Kingdom, is to be loved fully by the King.
