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.
WOW! Wow.
ReplyDelete-Allie