On Just the Right Memory at Just the Right Time

There is a particular piece of my life that makes me shake my head when I think about it. When I speak of it I often say that it was when life "crumbled around my ears". I don't know how else to describe it. It was the period of time that it took for my family to completely unravel.

In the midst of it, all I knew was that things were very, very wrong. Very little felt right to me. I felt lost and alone. At the time I did already know God and I think was able to identify His hand on my life. Hindsight is 20/20, though, and now I can really see how well He took care of me during those years.

It's odd to me because I can remember lots of odd facts that don't matter about life, but from the fall of my junior year of high school until my junior year of college my memory is extremely fuzzy. I remember lots of stuff that happened but I can't tell when it occurred during that period of time or in what order it occurred.

At some point during that time... Spring Break of senior year, if I remember correctly, a sweet, sweet couple saw me for the scared kid I was and got involved with my life. I don't know if they even remember what they saw. Whatever it was, they invested. They provided a safe place for me. I can still remember how safe I felt when I was with them. They were a part of my life for a few years. At some point we lost contact. I've wondered about them often throughout the years.

Last week I was relaxing at home and out of nowhere, again, that sweet couple came to mind. I made a note to myself to check Facebook. Within minutes of launching my search the next day, I found them. Yay for reunions with long lost awesome people!

Finding them unleashed a flood of thoughts. One of the first things that came to mind was that, though our arrangement was unofficial, what they provided for me was a lot like foster care. I was in my late teens. My parents weren't really around. I was floating and they provided some emotional stability. I never questioned their care for me. I thought of them as parental figures. I've known that I've wanted to be a foster parent since I was a teen. I absolutely credit them with modeling that notion for me.

I feel like I've been fighting God for a couple years over fostering again. Our fostering experiences have been REALLY HARD. For a while I felt cured of the drive to foster. Our journey with our girls continues to be difficult at times. I can readily think of a handful of legitimate reasons why it isn't time to foster again. But, recently I've gotten confirmation after confirmation that I need to stop making excuses. Finding that amazing couple and remembering what they were to me during that difficult time in my life has been yet another "sign".

I always say I want a giant neon sign from God. This time I think I've gotten it.

On The Fairy Tale Paradigm of Life Planning

I had a conversation with a friend recently about the stage of life where we find ourselves.

Beginning in the garden the stage was set. A girl was made for a guy. So, inherently, the story throughout the ages has been built on that notion. We're made for marriage. Our job is family. Little girls dream of the hunky guy, dream wedding, beautiful children, etc. Somewhere along the line we are duped into believing that's all life is about.

I don't really remember how old I was when I began considering my "future family". I do know that I considered it. From somewhere came a mental timeline. At some point I made a promise to my mother that I would not get married before I graduated from college. My timeline was always high school-college (at least a Bachelor's degree)-marriage-children. Since I promised my mother I would wait until after college, I spotted myself a couple of years and decided that I would likely be married by the time I was 24.

My fairy tale didn't happen the way I had planned it. When I was 24 I felt like a total loser. Although I had a college degree, I hadn't found my prince. That launched a very emotionally rocky time in my life. As the years passed I felt more and more like life had just passed me by. In those days I always felt like I had been shoved off of a moving merry-go-round. Everyone else was still merrily spinning and I was left shocked standing on the sidelines watching.

The very sad part about following the fairy tale paradigm of life planning is that I believe it doesn't address something very important. We are so focused on the husband, kids, and white picket fence that we forget to nurture our God given talents and abilities. No one ever asked me as a girl what I wanted to accomplish in life. No one ever asked me about my dreams.No one ever asked me about or nurtured by talents. My primary concern was familyhood. I was made to feel less-than because I hadn't achieved it.

My friend told me that she has everything she's ever wanted and is starting to realize that she's not fulfilled. She loves her Hubby and her kids. She feels blessed, educated, and successful. She just feels like perhaps God made her for more than just the fairy tale. I totally understand that feeling. I'd be willing to wager that lots of women feel that way. We bought the notion that the fairy tale was a primary concern when perhaps it should have been a secondary or even tertiary priority.

I feel super fortunate to have married later in life. I'm super happy too that God hijacked my fairy tale. I married Superman and God graciously allowed me to skip the diaper phase of my children's lives. In a way, I had time that lots of girls don't get to consider those things that God made me to do. I wish I could say with confidence that I have accomplished a lot of it. I have accomplished some of it. I believe that my marriage is a part of God's plan. I'm certainly not saying that marriage and family is a bad thing. I'm merely lamenting that    even good things can often be hindrances to God's ability to use us.

Confession..

I'm semi-obsessed with the movie The Blind Side.