I’m not a grandma yet, but I’m not sure what you would call me. My son and daughter-in-law are foster parents - does that make me a Foster Grandma? A Grandfoster? I’ll have to think of a catchy title. What I really want is just some bragging rights because these kiddos make me so proud.
I feel like I may be stealing something though. A little over a year ago, my son and his wife opened their home to a four-year-old boy who needed one. They had no immediate plans to start their own family, but the Lord had gently planted seeds of fostering into their hearts and hands and home. This sweet bundle of energy, who loves Spiderman and cowboy boots and every minute he can spend in water, I can lay no claim to, other than the perspective his life has brought to mine.
Living approximately 12 hours away, I am just a Snapchat spectator of his precious smile, his chatter, his hip hop moves. But even that distance can’t prevent me from seeing the hand of God at work here.
Since they graduated college, my kids have wanted to change the world. Didn’t we all? I still wrestle with whether I am doing enough. But I have learned that the best way to start that change is by loving the person in front of you. And in the furnace of fostering, they are learning that too.
It’s true religion, after all.
Last weekend the kids took their little guy to a play at the school where my daughter-in-law teaches. He had grand hopes for this play, anticipating monstrous reptiles and heroic action – until he realized the play was NOT called “The Lizard of Oz.” He barely lasted through half of it before they decided to leave for a wide-open park.
Sometimes in life, the play just doesn't match the title.
This funny kid’s short life has not been quite so funny; not exactly a walk down a yellow brick road. But my son and his wife take it one red-brick step at a time. They’re learning to rely on God’s strength for the hard days, days when missing his momma brings both silent tears and potted plants thrown across the bedroom. They bask in the glow of the golden days, when snuggles are warm and kindness is shared. When his younger sister visited on short notice and he linked arms with her and promised to comfort her if she was hurt, sick, or scared. When his cup of cold water overflowed into hers.
If this child were my flesh and blood I might try to take credit for his sweetness, to try and trace his tender heart back to my own, his sense of humor to my husband’s. But seeing my actual flesh and blood, alongside his bride, pour into the boy’s life in the name of the Life Giver; observing as they persevere through meltdowns and bedtime stories, court hearings and breakfast prayers …. all I can do is watch. And marvel.
At a good God, using imperfect people, to show His perfect love.
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. -James 1:27
“When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?” - Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
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