05/05/2022
He is speaking about foster care here, but there are many parallel truths in our journeys hosting through Safe Families.
Foster care pulls back the veil of the world around us and shows us a broken side of it we otherwise tend to isolate ourselves from. It also pulls back the veil of our hearts and shows us the same. You can never unsee what you’ve now seen or unknow what you now know or unhear what you’ve now heard or unfeel what you’ve now felt. These things are always a part of you, and a piece of you is now always a part of them. They become your story – your new normal through which you perceive and experience and see the world around you, and within you.
You see vulnerability not as a state of helplessness but rather a position of precariousness. Everyone falls, but while some are caught quick by a wide base of support others fall far with limited financial, material or relational constructs to stop them.
You see struggling kids not as disruptive but as little brains and bodies battling to regulate while fear, anxiety or not feeling safe takes hold. Behavior is their voice when there are no words; the path to correction for them then becomes connection with us.
You see the vulnerable not as projects to be completed but as people to be cared for. It begins not with your ability to pull anyone out of anything but with your willingness to be pulled into their everything. This is empathy, the nearness of God felt.
You see yourself not so much different than the parents of the kids you care for - they too love, hope, dream and want - the same as you. It’s no longer “us” and “them” - it’s just US, all worthy of grace as we stumble through this life, together.
You see poverty not as a fruit of poor life choices but as a systemic root burrowed deep within the generational cycles of families. It’s a crushing weight that often exasperates small struggles into life-altering, family-disintegrating ones.
You see your weakness not as a source of shame but as a platform upon which the power of God is made most visible. Your broken parts don’t disqualify you from being used by God - they become the places through which He’ll often use you most.
You see your city not simply as the small portion and pattern of it in which you live, but as a larger complex system of cultural nuance and division. You sense keenly that you now live in a new world you can never unknow - and there’s no going back.
You see success defined not as a measure of your capacity to produce a certain set of outcomes but by your willingness to be faithful to what God has called you to do and trust Him with the rest. Your success is the sum total of all your “yeses”. That’s it.
You see your home as not merely being a safe and comfortable place to be, but as being a safe and comfortable place through which your family can do hard and uncomfortable things. It’s a new narrative to live by full of meaning otherwise unknown.
You see the gospel not simply as a solution for our past and a promise for our future but now the very substance through which we live in the present. God’s capacity to bring great beauty out of tragic brokenness drives us. It shines vivid - now.
You see hope not as an empty gesture but an absolute assurance that hard things won’t be final things, broken things will become beautiful things and everything’s that wrong will one day be made right. You are kept by this, so you keep going.
The lens through which we see and perceive and experience the world we occupy has forever changed. Nothing will ever be the same.
Nothing.
www.reframingfostercare.com
