Just some thoughts (on how to ruin your kids' lives). . .

For the past couple of weeks, our family has temporily grown to include two elementary school-aged children who need a safe place to stay for a while. In many ways it’s been a challenge to jump suddenly from 2 to 4 kids (especially older ones!) and to take on a whole new level of (constant!) instruction and teaching and loving on a couple of hurting little hearts, but what a privilege to have the opportunity to pour into two precious little souls for a time and to have two more constant little reminders in our home of what Christ did for us in bringing us into His family when we were pretty unlovable.

It has also been a joy to watch our own children interact with these new additions and to see how by now Javen doesn’t even question why new children are living here again – he just unquestioningly welcomes them into his home and family with open arms, and Malachi has followed his lead. Our kids can teach us so much.

Over the last couple years of fostering and adoption, we’ve gotten the “but what about your 'own' children?” comment many times from caring people who think we are not being fair to Javen or Malachi . . . or that we are certainly ruining our children’s lives . . . or that we are somehow going against our Biblical responsibility to our children or each other by bringing other children with many needs into our home while our “own” children are still so little and needy.

I agree wholeheartedly that we have a biblical responsibility to love and care for and protect our children. There have been and will be seasons in life when some of our “own” children may require that we scale back on certain things to focus on a need or a lesson for a time. We cannot and ought not throw our own families and their needs by the wayside in order to meet the needs of others. It doesn't have to be one or the other, though. I don’t think the “your own children are the most important children” philosophy holds any Biblical weight, and I've never noticed a “but only after your ‘own’ children are grown” or "but only if there is no risk involved" caveat after all the many verses that tell us to love, serve, and sacrifice our lives unto Christ and the Gospel and to protect and defend the fatherless. We can't possibly be living out Christ's command to "Go into all the world" if we follow this "me and mine first" mentality.

After all, were families created to glorify God and to hold out Christ's love to a lost and dying world, or is our primary purpose to keep ourselves and our families safe and comfortable and make sure our own kids know Jesus loves them while we stay sheltered from it all?

And how can we really be fulfilling our Biblical mandate to instruct our children in the Lord if we are just teaching them with words and not through our lifestyle and actions, walking alongside them and instructing them in God's word as we give them ample opportunities to actually live out what Jesus teaches?

We tell them to rely on God and then we carefully structure our lives so that we need Him as little as possible . . . and then we scratch our heads and wonder why our teens/young adults are leaving the church by the thousands.

So often (for me, anyway) it can be all too tempting to use my kids as a justification to excuse myself from the command of loving our neighbors as ourselves. In our desire to take care of our own kids, it's all too easy to forget that they are all His children. Instead, shouldn't our kids be an impetus for us to love more and better so that they may have opportunities to learn Biblical love? I don’t want to shield my children from the hurts and injustices in the world. I want their eyes to be opened to what sin and separation from God has done in our world and I want them to grow up wanting to do something about it.

We need to teach our children that loving our neighbor as ourselves is not just an every-now-and-then thing. Loving our neighbor as ourselves doesn't just happen when it's fun or if it fits easily into our convenient little schedule or if we can ensure that it is completely risk-free. It goes far beyond taking someone a meal every now and then (not that meals are bad - we have been the very grateful recipients this year of some delicious meals on hard days!).

Afterall, we love ourselves A LOT. Loving our neighbor as ourselves means we have to learn to think about ourselves a whole lot less so we have room think about others more. It’s hard. It’s often inconvenient. It is sacrificial. There are risks. And it will bless us to pieces and require us to walk with God every step of our day, drawing on his strength, grace, and mercy. It will fill us with gratitude and humility because we will know that in light of what He has done for us, nothing we can do is even close to worthy of being called a sacrifice. We will think we are blessing someone else when really we ourselves are the ones being hugely blessed. We will hear our 2-year-olds (those same ones whose lives we are ruining by bringing other kids into our home) tell us how they are sharing their room and their mommy and daddy so that some other kids can know that Jesus loves them.

“Keeping our doors locked and never letting people in will never teach our children – or ourselves – that all we are and all we have belongs to Christ. It is our job to teach them that no matter who walks through our doors, they are welcomed and we will love. . . They all come from a gracious heavenly Father who pours out good gifts. We need to pour those gifts out to others so that they can say, 'God intervened and sent me help.'.....We have to get into the habit of giving of ourselves completely. Poured out like the rain. Taking chances and saying, "it's all Gods anyway." My time, my money, my home are all His anyway..So unlock your doors. . .Sometimes, loving others requires hard things, getting rid of our own selfishness, and our rights to comfort and time. . . Nothing I do today is more important then teaching my children to love and to love well." ~Robyn