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I sat in a cold courtroom last week on a creaky wooden pew
and it ranks up there as one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. A
judge, parents, attorneys, a guardian ad litem, and a caseworker were all there
and I watched and listened to these people discuss – in a very formal and
emotionless matter – details about a child that I have grown to love. The
weight of the discussions and the decisions a judge was being asked to make
were almost more than my mind could process. I’ve been in this setting before and
it wasn’t any easier the second time. It’s unfortunate when life-altering
decisions are being made about a child in a courtroom. I couldn’t shake the
feeling that it just shouldn’t be like this.
When we started feeling the tug to be foster parents, it was
easy to receive the confirmation of that call from Scripture. James 1:27 says, “Pure
and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans
and widows in their distress and refusing to the let world corrupt you.” The
Psalms talk about God being a father to the fatherless. In Matthew 18 we see
how Jesus loved children and in Matthew 25 he exhorts believers to care for the
“least of these.” When we were in the “thinking about it phase,” we kept being
knocked over the head with Scripture that made it clear that this was a path
that God was leading us down.
Caring for kids who are not your own is hard. Caring for
kids from traumatic backgrounds is hard. But knowing and believing that Jesus
loves them is not hard at all. We all grew up singing about it. Jesus loves the
little children, all the children of the world. And certainly as believers we
are all thankful that foster kids fall into that category. Who more to be
considered the least of these than helpless children who have been abused,
abandoned or neglected?
That’s why people think we are such good people for doing
this (I’ve talked before about how that isn’t true and it makes us
uncomfortable). But everybody – E V E R Y B O D Y – thinks that we are “doing
such a great thing for these kids.” Nearly every person I’ve spoken to has said
that they have talked about doing it before, or that they aren’t sure they
could do it because they would get too attached and would have a hard time
letting them go. No one has said “I don’t think I could do it because, really,
who wants to love a kid that needs love? Kids don’t deserve love or care. Those
brats need to figure it out or their own.” Not everyone is called to do it, not
everyone is able to do it, but everyone is glad that there are people out there
who are willing to do it.
And I am in that boat too. We have fallen in love fast and
hard with the first two children that we have been called to be temporary
parents to. I see pain and fear in their eyes and I weep with them. I hug them
and pray with them and ask Jesus to just help them understand that they are
loved and that they have worth and that they have purpose. Last week I prayed
Psalm 139 over L and thanked God that she was fearfully and wonderfully made, that he knew her days before they happened, and that he knows about all of
the important decisions that are being made about her life. I asked God for
wisdom for all of the people involved and couldn’t stop thinking about this sweet
little girl who has blessed our lives.
But as I sat in the courtroom, there was another thought
that weighed very heavy on my mind. It doesn’t bring a roar of “amens” and I
suppose there are fewer people who are grateful for this perspective, but it
doesn’t make it less true: Jesus loves her mama, too.
He does. He loves her mama and he loves her daddy and he
loves the other people in her life who weren’t caring for her when they should
have been. And when I looked in the eyes of her parents and
was able to tell who she gets her looks from and who she gets her size from, it
became a lot more than a story from a caseworker or names on a piece of paper.
That thought is not quite as popular and doesn’t bring the same warm fuzzies as we get when we sing Jesus loves the little children. Most of us have heard or maybe even said ourselves that “some people just don’t even deserve to have kids.” I don’t know where the line in the sand goes from being a child that doesn’t deserve to grow up in that to being that very child who repeats a cycle and doesn’t deserve to have her own kids. A lot of these helpless children become the worthless parent because they are never able to form healthy attachments or rise above the poverty that is often times the underlying problem. But the same love that God extends to the helpless child is extended to the worthless parent.
I realized that I can’t love L and hate her parents. I can't give her what she needs now or in the future if I see her people as my enemies. They are a part of her and
this whole situation is tragic for them, too. When your life is at a point where your poor decision making leads to a judge determining that you can no longer be a parent, you are covered with a shame that few people would give pity for. As soon as I think that I am better or forget that I need freedom from my own shame, then I lose a whole lot of what I can offer L.
Sometimes kids are removed from parents who really do want
to care for them but aren’t able to because of a lack of resources. Sometimes
parents love the kids but can’t get out from under the weight of an addiction
that affects their ability to care for them. And sometimes there are parents
who are terrible and do horrific things to children that are too hard to even
think about. But even though it is a much harder thought to grapple with, I know
that the same Bible that reminds me that God loves the orphans tells me that he
loves their parents as well. He loves the well-meaning but bad one, the apathetic one, and the awful one.
“But God showed his
great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
- Romans 5:8
“This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ – and I am the worst of them all.” – 1 Timothy 1:15
As a foster parent, I feel a tension where I am angry at
what has or hasn’t been done to a child that I am caring for, yet hope for those
people to be able to experience the same unconditional love that I want their
child to receive. Reunification is not always necessary or possible, but grace
for that parent is always available.
It would have been very easy to sit in that courtroom and
pass judgment. I am really glad that I am not one who has to make decisions in
child welfare cases because I would never want that responsibility. I am
content with just leaving these things “in the hands of God, who always judges
fairly” (1 Peter 2:23). But I know that,
for me, the hope of the gospel is Jesus plucking me out of my despair and
giving me a gift that I didn’t deserve. And so I hope and pray that L’s parents
could feel that same grace and that my privileged self would never lose sight
of the fact that I am no more worthy of that gift than they are. I am a lot
more like the unfit parent than the helpless child.
And because of that I am thankful that Jesus loves the little children... Jesus cares for all the children... Jesus came to save the children... all the children of the world.