Beautifully Made: Just Jump: Letting God Move in Your Life

Here. In my house. Among my things. Here in the shadows. At my table, eating the food. Playing with the toys. Taking time, here in my life is a little boy. I cannot tell his story today, as it is not mine to tell. But I can tell you what's happening here in my heart. I am in the place where the right thing to do collides with the hardest thing I've ever been called to. The definition of collision is "coming violently together". My worldly self, my fearful self, my mommy self, the selfish part of me is colliding with this God call and there is shrapnel. Adam and I have stumbled into Foster Parenting which right now let me just say feels 100% like adoption with strings attached. It's the very most odd thing of ever. You have a child, living in your home, you do not have their memories. You did not have them in your belly, you did not rock them to sleep, kiss their first booboo or take pictures of them on their first day of school. You don't have any of the things. Yet they are here and are immediately one of your babies. You hug them goodnight, you treat them as a pack member, you give them the family crest without having taught them to fight for it. It's just a thing of mind blowing proportions, foster parenting the act of adoption.

When I pictured my life I have thought many times about adoption. In my mind I pictured our boys a bit older with a little 2 year old girl bouncing into our lives with her spiral curly hair and they would all protect her fiercely. In no part of my plan was I adopting into my family a boy that is soon to be a man from a past of pain. God's plan has caused a collision. It has been and will continue to be a complete overhaul of myself. Talk about a world turned upside down.

I want you on this journey today. I want to tell you that God's plan is not always flowers and sunshine. As a matter of fact alot of times it is dragging oneself in an army crawl through the muddiest place on a rainy day with a 150lb pack on your back and no end in sight. Sometimes this is what God's plans for us feel like. I believe it's this painful because it is refinement at it's hottest point. We cannot see the end result because it's hotter than hell over here, because the refinement is so necessary it's painful. God's plan is more painful than ours because we limit our God in our plans. We make him tiny, we are rarely being used to our full potential in our plans because we plan our life out safe. Instead of jumping into God's arms allowing him to cause us to soar we say but wait God I need to strap on this harness first and put on my helmet and make sure it's all safe down there before I jump.

The Christian body lost a soldier this week. Elisabeth Elliot passed through the pearly gates of heaven to be reunited with her husband Jim and their missionary friends. You see they were doing God's work in Ecuador when the people they were ministering to killed her husband brutally along with some of the missionaries with them. She continued to minister to the tribe that took her husbands life. You can read more about this calling in Elliot's book Through The Gates of Splendor. This was not what Elisabeth Elliot had planned for her life, she planned to do God's work in a certain way with certain ideals, never was it to continue ministering to the this tribe following the brutal murder of her love. However, an amazing work was done through that in this tribe and in the world as they looked at her thinking, "woman you are crazy to stay with those people after what they did." Her God collision changed lives hers included. In Jim Elliot's last journal entry he said the most profound thing:

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

This little boy is changing our life. We are becoming a better family, better people, better parents and most importantly walking so closely with the Lord. He calls us to walk in such a manner with him that our lives mimic his ministry. In a recent article I read by Rick Warren he states "Jesus calls us to a level of intimacy that can only be sustained by his constant presence in our lives" and to that I say AMEN.

Psalm 65 tells us:

"How blessed is the one whom you choose and bring near to you to dwell in your courts we will be satisfied in the goodness of your house and your holy temple."

This is hard, this is also a blessing. There is sweetness here in the storm. It may not be my way. It may leave me dragging myself through the mud, but at the least I have a path to pull myself through, because Jesus always goes before us, no collision happens without God's knowledge. As we brace ourselves for the impact he says "oh sweet child just jump into my arms I have gone before you let me show you the way".