God is my victory

I have been struggling to write this post for several days now.  I’ve thought about it, prayed about it, written paragraphs and then deleted them.  Sometimes your heart’s deepest longings can’t be put into words.  But there is a battle being fought as I write this, and I need your prayers, so I’ll try.

4 weeks and 1 day ago this beautiful little girl entered our lives.  We’ll call her Daniella, name changed to protect the innocent and all that.  She came to us through Safe Families, but it quickly became apparent that her case was more complicated than others we’ve seen.  I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say that this precious little child has endured more pain and suffering in her short life than I will face in my lifetime.  Yet despite her hardships, she is incredibly resilient, and has this amazing and spunky personality.  She is so sweet and funny and full of life.  And she talks.  Like Every.  Waking.  Minute.  “Mommy, let’s sing the ABCDs, ok?  Right?  Because I love that song.  Are we going to school?  Are we going to church?  I have a book.  I read it?  I like this book… an on and on she goes.  She is a girly-girl (how did I get 3 of those when I was a total tomboy?) and loves her accessories.  She can’t wait for me to put bows in her hair every morning, and won’t leave the house without fancy shoes and sunglasses.  And she loves to shop; girly's got a sense of fashion!  Every night I rock her before she goes to bed and she asks me to sing “Jesus” (Jesus Loves Me).  She loves to pray before dinner and always reminds us when we forget.  Yesterday we were walking out of the store and she said “Jesus? Thank you for Daniella.  And bless it.  Amen.” 

A few days after she came to stay with us she asked if she could call me her fairy mommy (she asked Matt if she could call him Spiderman.  He said no.).  I found that incredibly ironic the other day as I was signing an affidavit making me her godmother.  I guess that makes me her fairy godmother ;)

Tomorrow is her 3^rd birthday.  It’s also the day that DCFS is bringing her (and her 3 other sibling’s) case before a judge, requesting that they be placed in protective custody.  As her godmother, I’m technically a relative, so it has been requested that she be allowed to stay with us.  Tomorrow should be a day of celebration.  I should be blowing up balloons and wrapping gifts and making a cake.  Ok, that last part is just ridiculous.  I should be ordering a cake.  She wants one with a mermaid on it – oh how that little girl just loves mermaids.  But right now my heart is tied in knots, because while we are hoping and praying that she can stay with us, there’s just no guarantee.  If her lawyer misplaces paperwork or a social worker misfiles a report, the judge could send her back home.  She has fallen through the cracks of the system before and she’s paid a heavy price.  If she and her siblings hadn’t been placed with Safe Families a month ago, no one would be fighting for them right now. 

The truth is, this "system" can't save her.

Thankfully, we believe in a God who can.

So this little girl needs your prayers.  She is in desperate need of a Savior, of One who can redeem what is broken in her life and give her a hope and a future.  We are doing all we can to keep her in our home, so that we can give her the chance to grow up in a family that will love and protect her.  And we are praying for a miracle, because that's what it's going to take and it's exactly what our God can do.  I wrote in my last post that each of us has a job to do when it comes to caring for the oppressed and needy.  Maybe you can't take a child into your home, but you can pray for this child in ours.  Here's a few things that you can pray for specifically:

 - that she would not be returned home.  Not in 2 days or years or lifetimes.  I have returned several children home to difficult and impoverished situations and have believed that being with their families was the best thing for them.  So I can say with a clear conscience that this child should not go back home.

- that she would be assigned an amazing case worker.  Someone who will advocate for her like no one else has.  Someone who will see her for the beautiful and smart and funny and spirited little gift that she is and will fight like heck to make sure she gets all the things she deserves in this world.  Someone that will believe her when she tells them what she has gone through.

- that God would give us wisdom as we learn to navigate the system and take on the task of parenting a child with a difficult background.

It's been a stressful couple of weeks around here.  I've made hotline calls, and filled out reports and had lots of ups and downs.  Every time I talk about this whole mess I get a raging headache – I have one right now.  The verse posted on this blog begins "If you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry..."  That's how I feel right now.  Spent.  Having beautiful weather over the past several days has been such a gift.  I've always thought that Spring smells like hope.  It's amazing what a little sunshine can do.  The girls have obviously enjoyed it

too...

My 3 favorite girlies - checking out the farm behind us from their "fort"

How did my little girl get so grown up?!

My toothless wonder :) 

Is there anything better than swinging and flip flops?

There's a song by Hillsong that keeps running through my head (it's called Desert Song), especially this part...

"This is my prayer in the battle

When triumph is still on it's way

I am a conqueror and co-heir with Christ

So firm on His promise I'll stand.

And I will bring praise

I will bring praise

No weapon formed against me shall remain.

I will rejoice

I will declare

God is my victory and He is here"

Please join us in prayer for this little girl, especially tomorrow morning when her case goes before a judge.  Pray that God will be her victory, that she will grow up knowing that He is here.  And tomorrow we will celebrate - we will celebrate her life, we will celebrate her victory, and we will celebrate the miracles our God has only begun to do in her.  Now to order the mermaid cake...  

Be the miracle

The girls have a karaoke microphone, which they usually use to put on plays and sing whatever music they happen to be into at the moment (Matt recently introduced them to opera and they've been belting out "O Sole Mio," yeah, it's as obnoxious lovely as you're imagining.  Thanks for that, babe.  But the other day I overheard Isabel giving a speech about Safe Families to an imaginary audience.  She described each child that has stayed in our home over the past year or so (there have been 9!).  She talked about homelessness and friendship and helping someone in need.  And at the end she gave a rallying call to "please sign up in the back if you haven't already or go online to safefamilies.com and sign up there."  Not to be outdone, Sofi joined her on the imaginary stage and gave a speech of her own.  She said that Safe Families changes peoples' lives and it was a miracle for God.    

Webster defines "miracle" as an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.  Let me tell you the story of a miracle...

Imagine a child with no home.  No bed, only the clothes on her back, her few belongings dropped in an alley because they're too heavy for her to carry.  She holds her brother's tiny hand and the weight of the world as she follows behind her mama, who’s trying to soothe a hungry baby. Her mother knows this feeling all too well - she may have lived a thousand moments like this as a child, scared and cold and hungry and hopeless.  Maybe she promised she'd never let it happen to her children.  But the apartment flooded, or she lost her job, or her abusive boyfriend has left her running with nowhere to go.  She's broken and desperate and so she makes broken and desperate choices.  They end up in a homeless shelter, full of other men and women and children who have nowhere else to go.  Some fill her with fear, the kind that makes you hold tight to little hands and lay awake until morning finally comes.  There are rumors that the shelter has bed bugs or mice or cockroaches.  So they start walking again, with nowhere to go.  

Until someone reaches out - offers a home for the children, a chance for mom to pull things together and make a better life.  Now imagine this child in a home, not her own, but a home nonetheless.  She has a bed and a drawer full of clothes.  A family welcomes her, loves her, and for a moment the weight on her shoulders feels lighter.  Her heart aches for her mom, but she is safe.  And her mom, no longer hopeless and worried for her children, finds a job, secures a home, and looks forward to a fresh start.  

People have all sorts of opinions about the "poor."  Why they're poor, who should (or shouldn't) help them.  Most of us live our lives across the tracks, the river, or the county line from them.  When they're nameless and faceless, it's easier to write them off as someone else's problem or pretend they don't exist, or worse, judge them and accuse them of being lazy or pathetic or whatever.  That's much harder to do when you've rocked these children to sleep, or packed their backpack, or placed them back in their mother's arms.  Soapbox moment: it's not fair to judge someone who's shoes you wouldn't touch - not with a 10 foot pole - let alone walk in.  There are children out there, not as far away as you might think, who live in hopeless and desperate situations, waiting for help that may never come.  I have listened to a 2 year old tell me about the cockroaches that climb in her bed, the mean man that yells at her mom and makes her cry, the grandmother that gets angry and pushes her down (she has the scars to prove it.)  You can't look a child like that in the eye and not be compelled to do something.  We could have heated debates on who's to blame for these families' broken condition, but it would be a waste of time and energy.      

The truth is, the system is broken.  The government is failing these families, and it's not entirely their fault.  God's plan for the lost didn't include tax dollars or DCFS.  You won't find Medicare or Welfare in the Bible.  God set up a very simple system for caring for the needy, and it's called the church.  Please don't make The Church out to be a building or a room full of board members or a pious group of clergy.  The church is you and it's me.  We are God's system for caring for those in need.  Sure, God could step in and solve the world's problems - oh how I sometimes wish He would.  Then I would be relieved of the responsibility to act in His name.  But instead He chooses to work through us, broken and sinful people that we are.  He blesses us with resources and asks us to use them for His purposes.

We tend to think of Divine intervention as being grandiose and supernatural.  But sometimes miracles are cloaked in humanity, wrapped up in flesh and bone, carried out by a fellow human being.  When we listen carefully to God’s voice and obey what He asks of us, we can have this amazing opportunity to not just hear about a miracle, but be a part of its unfolding.  

As Christ followers, caring for the needy isn't an option.  We all have a role to play in this delicate web of divine intervention.  Not all of us are called to open our homes to hurting children.  But all of us are called to something.  There are food pantries to stock, shelters to serve food at, orphans to sponsor.  There are children in need of coats, elderly in need of companionship, families in need of basic toiletries.  There will never be a shortage people in need of a miracle and we all have a role to play.  

What's yours?