Choices

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say

"Lord blessed be your name."

Life seems to be all about making choices, some you just don't want to make. I am having to hourly choose to give praise to God in the middle of my storms and I am having to choose to lay my worries at His cross. There are some of you who know what we have gone through with a certain young man, S. I don't believe that it was God's will to have him in our lives permanently right now...my head gets that, but those words are not as comforting to my heart. My desire and my will is to go and rescue him. My desire is to let him get a real chance at life, but that only seems to be my heart talking, not God's will. So my choice comes in to praise God anyway, and leave it at the Cross.

My heart is beyond hurting. We had him in our home for over 2 months, and we did see many sides of him. Although many thought that we didn't see it, we chose to approach him with grace. And that's what's hard, I feel like God filled my heart with grace for him, but didn't give me him. Because I was with him more, I had the most interaction with him. And we did go head-to-head a few times. He pushed and I pushed back...to what extent? Only our family will know. I heard it said recently, "Even his friend D**** told me he is full of sin." (Hummmm...who isn't?) And in reality, he was no worse than any other teenage boy that I knew. And actually, for all that he has been through, I expected much worse.

I believed he would be cared for; I believe that he would get the help he needed (and was promised); I believed in people's word too much. I put my hope in the wrong thing. People fail. But God doesn't.

So my heart is constantly being challenged right now, but I am choosing to believe that this is God's will for his life. S often told me, and quoted Josephs life...Genesis 50:20, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done..." I know God will protect him as no other can (not even me). I don't know where he is now, or where he will go...and so I choose to believe in truth.

One other thing that has helped is something a friend once said. Her family had gone through trial after trial with children/adoptions. She once said to me...something to the effect of, "I can't wait for heaven. Then I will truly be with all those children I carry in my heart." S is my child in my heart, and if it takes until we reach heaven to be that "family" I guess I can wait.