Last month, Dustin had an interview with Pat Doney from NBC5 about his new job with QBCountry at The Andrew's Institute at Children's Medical Center in Plano. But what began as an interview to talk about his job led to a personal invitation into our life at home. As y'all know, we have been fostering a little boy who has severe cognitive and physical disabilities for about two years. And although we are SO grateful for the comments and shares that we have received from the sweet interview, around the time that it aired I had taken time off social media because with most pictures I saw and/or posted, I was battling feelings of inadequacy, anger, and fraudulence.

This journey with our little guy has been the hardest thing we have ever done. It has been exhausting mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and MANY MANY days, feels too much. The phone calls, the doctor's appointments, the therapies, the medical problems, the prayers that seem to be in vain, the recurring infections, the throw-up, the government programs, the constant exploding diaper changes, the non-stop laundry, the seizures, the supplies, the medications, the insurance companies, the case managers, and the actual responsibility of taking care of a very dependent and hurting 2 year old boy who isn't able to give much back while raising our 6 month old daughter are all part of my daily tasks at home and all make me want to put my hands to my head and scream
"ENOUGH!! Enough of the exhaustion, enough of the sacrificing, enough of the suffering, enough of the decision to be obedient!!!"

As I have looked back on our life the past couple of years and the "decisions" we made after much prayer and thought, the same story seems to unfold with these other decisions. The blessings of obedience weren't given to us in the form of tremendous wealth and health but rather came to us in the form of pain and heart break.  The decision to stay with the Dallas Cowboys after Dustin's rookie year, the decision to retire from the NFL one week before having Foster, the decision for Dustin to work for a start up company with potentially very little income as he builds the business, etc. were all BIG decisions that we made after feeling 100% confident that we were following the Spirit's promptings. And all of those decisions made life just a little bit more challenging. 

So challenging that in recent weeks, I found myself paralyzed in fear and anxiety at the thought of making any other big decisions for our family and what the potential consequences would be for those decisions.  Some days, our life circumstance seemed so rocky (mega career transition, newborn baby, and having another child with special needs)  that I was terrified to rock the boat even more by making a decision to take one step to the right or one step to the left. So I stood paralyzed in fear, clinging only to my thriving newborn baby girl, and not wanting to make even the smallest move for fear that it would all fall apart. And as the weeks went by, this fear and anxiety began affecting every aspect of my life.  I was beyond exhausted in every capacity, I was angry at our circumstance, angry at God, and angry at my husband who led our family down this very difficult path. After many, many humbling conversations with Dustin and women who have entered the foster/adoption world, we wanted something to change so we could "gain back control of our life". (THANKS FOR THE CURSE OF CONTROL, EVE). But I was terrified to make any decision because I was fearful of what that change would bring us. It was a viscious cycle of fear and anxiety that I couldn't seem to escape.

Since baby J entered our home, I have been seeing a Biblical counselor on and off to help me filter through the various working and complex pieces we had going on in our home. At the last appointment, I had shared this paralyzing fear with her and told the counselor how crippling it had become. After sitting quietly and listening, she said that a couple of months ago, she had a health scare that, if it was what doctors had thought it was, would have given her a life span of 3-10 months. She said that a friend of hers called her up and asked if she could come over and pray for healing over my counselor. The counselor said that she told her friend, "I would love for you to pray for healing if that is what The Spirit is prompting, but I am going to pray for something else. I don't want to be so focused on my healing that I miss what God is doing in the midst of this suffering." AND HOLY MOLY. How those words spoke to me!!  I was so consumed with the "what-ifs" of the potential outcomes of the decisions that I wasn't able to rest in the story He was currently writing through the trials of that day, not in the victory or failure of the next day. 

Romans 8:28 is a verse we hear all of the time. "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose" And that's where people stop. But it continues "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be CONFORMED to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified"

You guys! All things work together for good... the good ultimately being to conform us to the image of his Son A.K.A. our sanctification. God is after our hearts!! As Michael Reeves says in his book, "Delighting in the Trinity, " the Holy Spirit is after transforming our self-obsessed hearts to direct their gaze on Him and become Christ-obsessed. He isn't after our temporary, earthly circumstances to make us #blessed although any earthly blessing that comes from Him is such a gift that we are SO not entitled to. He is jealous for our hearts and our affections and so much of our self-obsessed heart is exposed when suffering and trials hit. You can't read Scripture without understanding that God isn't after us checking the "righteous" boxes of morality. He is after transforming us from the inside out so that our love for Him transforms how we live. When asked what the greatest commandment is in Matthew, we all know Jesus' response:

 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 
                                                                                     -Matthew 22:36-39

Baby J has suffered more in his 2.5 years than Dustin and I have suffered in our combined 55 years of living and The Lord uses his life to teach us SO many incredible Truths about Himself, the pain of this life, and the incredible hope of the life that is to come.  It makes us SO excited to think that one day J's suffering will end when The Lord calls him home and his best life is yet to come. Which is the same Truth about my own life. 

My word of the year is Rejoice and it comes from Habakkuk 3:17-18 and Romans 5:2-5

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
    nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
    and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
    and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will take joy in the God of my salvation.



Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 
                                                                                        

It has been SO hard pouring my entire being into a little boy who isn't able to give anything back to us. There are so many days that I look at Dustin and question, "Why are we doing this again?" But these verses so challenge my heart in rejoicing because of who He is and what He has promised me as His child; not because of the fruit I see in all of the self-sacrificing and hard work that I have put in my children. If my victories as J's foster mom were graded on the fruit of his development or how "well" I am handling the trials at the time, I would receive a big fat F.  But because of Jesus, I receive grace as my reward, instead of the punishment that I really deserve, which makes me direct my worship upwards.

God gives grace for the moment, but He gives just enough for me to rejoice that this life is temporary. I definitely still struggle with anxiety and fear, and anyone who knows me knows how much I continue to seek control, but I am daily praying that I would put my own pen down and that He would give me eyes to see Himself and the beauty of the story He is writing. Because I am a follower of Jesus, that story is going to include suffering and pain. But it is also filled with incredible Hope. Hope that gives me joy in the trial because "this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Although obedience has looked like choosing one team over another, opening our home to a child with special needs, and blindly ending one career and starting another, I am learning that obedience doesn't have to occur through a life changing decision. Today, right now, obedience for me looks like kissing my husband every morning and telling him I love him, rolling out of bed, changing a lot of diapers, making a lot of phone calls, doing a lot of laundry, showing Christ's love by loving other people in their daily sufferings, and praying for strength, gratitude, endurance, grace, patience, and wisdom to get through the day.

Although we do not know what the future looks like for our family, we are praying that God would constantly remind us that our own story of adoption is the most important story we will ever be a part of. And as His adoptive child, I already know what the ending of that redemptive story is going to look like-- it will look like Jesus coming back again and me spending eternity worshiping Him. My prayers have changed from DEMANDING God to bless our obedience and move us to more favorable circumstances, to asking God to open my eyes to the beauty and contentment of what obedience looks like with today's circumstances.