Author: anitalucascmc

When the “World” Lives in Your Home

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It has been a while since I have had time to write a blog.  Partly because I have lacked the energy.  Partly because of lessons I am learning could breach confidentiality to blog about. To become more educated on the life and behaviors of a traumatized child I have been doing much more reading than writing.  Lastly the ups and downs are so frequent I really have not been able to fully wrap my mind let alone my writing around the emotion constantly surrounding our family daily.

The challenges have been tremendous, the test has been hard, there are daily sacrifices of all of our own needs and wants for this hurting human being.  There has been nothing in my life that has painted a more personal picture of exactly what Jesus did for me on the cross than foster care.  Each member of our family has been told “I hate you!” one minute then “I love you!” the next.  We all have been hit, kicked, spit at, and then hugged and kissed.    The complaints, demands, lack of gratitude, and harsh words are exhausting to hear even when you know it is out of pure fear and pain from the past. There really can be no comparison to Jesus and His perfect gift of love given to human kind.  Foster care has brought a much deeper understanding and appreciation for my Lord and Savior.  The perfect sinless Savior fully human and fully God took all sin of all human kind upon Himself as if it were His.  He knew what He faced in full as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.   The humiliation, unfairness, and separation from God the Father.  The feelings of fear, loneliness, pain, regret, guilt and shame never felt before would all be upon Him as He took on our sin.  Not to mention the most gruesome physical beating and tortuous death a person can experience.   Why would He do this for us?  Because the Glory of God and heaven is worth it.

Each of us Lucas’ has excepted Jesus as our Savior and Lord and that is our assurance that we will be in heaven one day.  Foster care has been a result of the relationship we have with Jesus.  Why are we doing this?  Because the Glory of God and heaven is worth it.  If one life is led to Jesus because of this small struggle we are enduring then it is worth it all.

Recently I was told  by someone that they didn’t think I knew what I was really getting into by getting into foster care.   My reply was I knew exactly what it was going to be and cost inviting the world into our home.  That is why it took me nearly 7 years to surrender to this calling.   It took me a lot more than one night in a garden to pray “Not my will, but thine be done.”  It took a lot of fighting with my own sinful nature and selfishness.

We have also been told that we don’t know what we are doing.   Truthfully every life is unique and each person’s trauma is different so who really knows besides God what each individual needs?   What I do know is that we don’t know what we are doing, but we are no longer sitting around in our safe little world.  We are doing!!!  It is not about us it is all about God and His Glory.  The fact that we are doing something for a hurting world with God equipping us more than qualifies us.

The deeper appreciation and relationship with our Savior has been a blessing.  The blessing of God’s Word guiding us, and our pastor and youth pastor’s sermons each week are a blessing.  The prayers of fellow believers have been a tremendous blessing. It is amazing how all the books I am reading are indeed helpful, but what has offered me the most help has been the Word of God and the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

Just reminded of this verse by a fellow believer and friend.
Galatians 6:9 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

 

Just Look How Far You’ve Come

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

A couple weeks ago I took all three of my children on a hike in one of our local state parks.  Hiking is one of my most favorite things to do outdoors.  The bucket list of hikes I would love to take is extremely long and gets longer and longer instead of shorter.  This was our foster child’s first real hike ever I am quite sure.  There was severe whining and complaining the entire hike.  This was a very short hike compared to what this momma really loves to do.  All along the way there were little break throughs amongst the complaining and threats from our child.  “I can’t go any further!!!  Oh look there is the same kind of bug you and I saw that one time mom!”   “Oh I hate spider webs!!   Oh my legs are worn out!!!  Oh look at the cool butterfly!!”  All three children missed the beautiful deer that crossed our path right in front of us.  All the way were opportunities to teach about God, His creation, His love, and that in life we need to stop, listen, and look otherwise we miss the greatest blessings from Him.  As the hike grew more intense with inclines so did the complaining.  The story of the Little Engine that Could (one of my favorites)  came in handy that day.  With each step I encouraged “I think I can…I know I can!!”  At one point I turned and looked at our child to keep encouraging and I saw just how far we had come.  I said “Turn and look and see just how far you have already come!!  I know you can do this!!”

We reached the top to see the awesome view and the first response was “wow!”.   Then that hard shell of pride and survival methods from a harsh life went back up.  The guard had been let down just for a moment showing a glimmer of hope that love was winning this child’s heart.  The opportunity presented itself to explain that the reason I love hikes so much is that they are hard.  The girls started telling him how they have even watched me fall down on hikes. It is a goal that requires physical, mental, and sometimes emotional work.  All along the journey God provides little views of His Glory and His Blessings.  Once we have persevered and reached the goal then we get to see something beautiful that we never would have seen had we not made the long journey.   Each hike I have ever taken I have gotten to see more and more of God’s glory, His beautiful handiwork of His creation.

So it is with life and definitely parenting.  Anything truly worth anything takes a lot of physical, mental, and emotional work.  As God directs and leads down new paths it is so hard.  I stumble, hurt, cry, feel like giving up and then He shows little snipits of His glory.  Each new hurdle in life God reveals more and more of His Glory to me that I would have missed had I not listened and taken the path He directed.

Not only was this hike a teachable moment for this young precious child it was one for mom as well.  Just keep looking at how far you have come I can hear my Heavenly Father encourage.  Just keep taking one step and one day at a time and trust me.

It is always good to look back and see what God has brought us through and the prayers that have been answered.  The past is not a place to dwell, but to learn from and press on.

So a message to all parents and especially foster/adoptive parents.  Just look at how far you’ve come!!!

Psalm 16:11 “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”

 

 

I Love You Because you Exist

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There are daily life lessons to learn as a foster family.  So many I really can’t share.  Many things I have known, but God is driving a deeper and deeper understanding within me.

What a messy world we live in.  It seems that so many people desire to completely change who they are and are never satisfied within their own skin.  There is a desire and push within this world to completely change the things about ourselves that are clearly defined when we are born.  It is hard enough to figure out things like what school to go to and what career to choose let alone the things about us that are actually very cut and dry.

God continues to reveal to me the deep problem of humanity and what His cure for the problem is.  The greatest need of every human being is to know that there is at least one person that loves them merely because they exist.  A love that has no condition, a love that has no selfish goals, a love that is there even when we are underserving of it.  From the day we are born we are in need of this kind of love.  You cry I will be there, you cause me to be unable to meet my own needs at times…I will be there, you lash out at me…I will be there…   I will still look at you and smile, my eyes will light up when you enter the room.   We all need this kind of love and fewer and fewer are receiving it…even as a small helpless child many never receive this kind of love.

Love like this opens our heart to realizing that we exist because God cared enough to create us and plan our lives.    It opens our hearts to realize that God gave us free will because He wants us to love Him in return because we choose too.  Love like this opens our hearts to understanding that God sent Jesus because He loves us despite our wickedness, flaws, and our unworthiness.   God loves us just as we are because He is.

No matter the struggles and challenges the answer to the deep dark pains of this world is LOVE.   God is helping me love and understand on deeper levels daily…sometimes minute to minute.  To look at every human being with eyes of love merely because of their existence.  Because they are a creation of God.

The Truth Truly Sets us Free

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I have witnessed truth freeing moments my whole life!  I know what the truth has done for my own heart and life.  The weight of the burdens of this world are unbearably heavy.  We carry the weight of sins made against us leaving scars, grudges, unforgiveness, emotional pain, mental pain, and sometimes physical.  We carry the burden of regret from our own selfish, self-seeking sin.  Our own sins bring along with them shame, guilt, emotional anguish, mental anguish, and often physical consequences.  The weight that weighs the world down causes the world to want to drag everyone and everything down.  Misery loves company.

In a world that is so full of lies it is hard to know what is true.  Even amongst those that should be speaking the truth and setting truthful examples.  Within my own life the only true TRUTH and FREEDOM has been found within the pages of God’s word.  Everyday God speaks more truth into my heart making the lies of the world more and more clear.

The moments that I have seen God’s light of truth lift burdens off of others and my own life are what I live for and long for these days.   What I am learning is that speaking truth is the only way.  It is very hard and meets resistance, challenge, and sometimes rejection.  In the end it is worth it as truth and love chips away at the scars left by a deceitful world.

John 8:32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Our Journey has Officially Begun Foster/adopt#7

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For the sake of privacy and protection I can’t share too much at all about this amazing last week we have had, but I can share what I am learning.  As I have watched the divine plan of God an…

Source: Our Journey has Officially Begun Foster/adopt#7

Our Journey has Officially Begun Foster/adopt#7

| anitalucascmc

sheep

For the sake of privacy and protection I can’t share too much at all about this amazing last week we have had, but I can share what I am learning.  As I have watched the divine plan of God and His perfect timing unfold in our journey I am not surprised that this happens to be the seventh blog on this subject.  The perfect number.

God has chosen us to be the part of something so amazing and so much bigger than ourselves.

When I gave birth to our first child I remember how as a new mom I would look at her and feel like my heart would just burst with love for her.  I had never felt a greater pouring of love into my very soul like this before.  Our second child came along 3 years later and once again the love poured in.  The love doesn’t run out when it comes from God.  This unconditional I would give my life for you kind of love grows and grows when we forget about ourselves and allow it.

This has been my first experience now of parenting a child that was not given to me by birth.  God strategically laid the foundation within my heart and the rest of the family to prepare us for the blessing brought to us this past week.  As I look back at the lessons, challenges, delays, and how this calling actually began now around 7 years ago I can see the work of God’s hand.

Once again as I look at this life handed to me to care for and nurture I feel this huge pouring of love that makes my heart feel like it will burst.  As complicated and broken as life can be sometimes it is amazing what peace and assurance God brings.  It is amazing how God orchestrates lives to cross paths  showing  just how much He loves every single human being He created.  He will and does go to all sorts of planning  for even one lost sheep.

Luke 15:3-7

“3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

Ugh When I Feel the Mother Hen in Me Trying to Unleash

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chicken

Every so often and sometimes far too often I am reminded of the battles my oldest child and I have trudged through together.  From the very beginning even her time coming into this world has been a battle to overcome.  I seriously could write a battle book for her from the day I found out I was pregnant with her until now nearly sixteen years later.   There will be many more chapters to add to the book that will grow in greater intensity.  Somehow these far too frequent and early battles will have prepared her for what God has planned for her.  Since the day I knew I was carrying her I have felt this overpowering desire to protect her from a world that loves to tear down who it views as weak.

Her shyness and quiet spirit is all I can account to the reason why others have singled her out and  left her out from day one.  Usually it has been people who should be in her corner backing her that I have watched leave her out and mock her.  Most of the time it has been the  most appropriate for me to sit back and immediately treat her wounds with encouragement, positivity, and instruction how to learn from the world’s harsh reality, rather than confronting the source directly.  Oh there have been times I have had to pray, choose my words wisely, make phone calls, send emails, do research, present her case, and stand up for her as well.  There have been medical battles, school battles, sports battles, child bully battles, etc…

Yesterday I was reminded as she was in goal for an intense game of soccer that I still have that mother hen.  As she was making an appropriate choice to keep her post in goal and let her defenders do their job I hear a scream “COME ON KEEP” from behind me.  It was a tone that if I were a child and yelled at in that manner I would have been crushed and cried.  The tone was like fingernails down a chalk board to me.  The tone said “you are terrible and not doing your job” to me as the mother.    No goal was scored and my daughter had chosen wisely.

With  Easter having just been this last weekend my thoughts went to Mary the mother of Jesus.  In all her humanness I can’t imagine what her own “mother hen” felt like watching her son being mocked, tormented, falsely accused, cursed, beaten, and murdered on the cross.    I can’t imagine being in a crowd that is screaming “CRUCIFY”  and having your one small little voice saying, but he has done nothing wrong…he has done nothing to deserve this…he has never done anything wrong…   With those three words I mentioned above screamed harshly at my own child every nerve in my body stood on end.  I can only imagine with each strike, whip, and each hammer of the nails how Mary’s nerves would have been completely frayed.  She was there at his miraculous conception, his birth, and witnessed so many instances in the life of Jesus that clued her in to the fact that He indeed was the Son of God placed in her womb and entrusted care.  Her Son has the ultimate battle book and fulfilled God’s ultimate plan to fight life’s ultimate battle death.  He alone conquered death for all of mankind.  Mary in her humanness as she watched her boy hang from that cross being cursed at and mocked still did not understand the extent of God’s plan, but kept a mental record of it all.   “She pondered it all in her heart.”

There is nothing we can face or give in this life that is greater than what Jesus did for us.

As a mother I know God loves my children even more than I do and that every challenge faced is to teach them and prepare them for the next.  As a parent God continues to increase my wisdom on how to build up, encourage, and go to bat for my children out of love.  Even with our next journey in life with fostering I feel this mother hen in me desiring  to protect children who are weak and have no one to battle for them.  Sometimes it will be taking a stand for them and sometimes it will be providing the encouragement, love, and instruction to help wounds heal…   I really don’t like the feeling of my mother hen rattling the cage, but God has put this drive and fight within me for a reason…

 

Would you take in a Child that Claims to be Homosexual? Foster/Adopt #6

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This is a question that was asked of me this afternoon.  I have no clue of the perspective of onlookers , but from my own it felt like my words came with little hesitation.   The question was worded actually as “Would you take in a LGBT teen?”  My first response was no one over twelve as we want to keep the birth order as a priority, but ultimately yes to a child within our age range.  All I could think was that child needs love and a family as much as anyone.  Also what came to mind is that it is sin that throws a child into this crazy foster care system to begin with.  Whatever means the child has been sinned against the abuse, sexual, physical, mental, emotional, and/or neglect (many times all of the above) that child is going to be messed up and confused no matter what.  For me to judge and say no I will not love you and care for you defeats the purpose of the very ministry our family is being called to do.

My authority is God and His word.  His word tells me ALL have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. (Romans 3:23)  I am a sinner.  My own sin is no better and no worse than anyone else’s.  It may look different than another person’s, but sin is sin in God’s eyes.  Jesus carried the weight of ALL sin of ALL mankind on the cross.  He paid the payment of ALL sin so that ALL can be forgiven.  When Jesus walked this earth who did he minister to?  He ministered to those that the “holier than thou”, “self righteous” religious leaders of the day called “sinners”.   It was those religious leaders that Jesus truly had the hardest time with because they did not realize their own need for Him. Jesus met each person that was willing to trust Him and receive Him right at their deepest need.  He met them where they were and provided physical healing, spiritual healing, emotional healing,   forgiveness, grace and mercy.  He never condoned the sin nor  said it was ok keep on doing what you have been. He loved them healed them and said “Go and sin no more.”   John 8:11 being just one example. Jesus met them at the core of their problem and healed them from the inside out.  That is the example God has given us to live by.   To meet others at their need and love them.  Then we can point to the one that can truly bring about change and healing for a person.

Another calling on my life has been nursing.  For over 21 years now I have cared for criminals, addicts, contagious disease baring, suicidal, abusive, ungrateful, all sexual lifestyles, psychotic, mentally disabled, physically disabled, bitter, helpless, weak, etc… My calling as a nurse is to provide care, healing based on human abilities, empathy, and to meet people in their time of need.  The calling has been that I take whoever God places in my care and that I do not have the right to pick and choose.

I guess when it comes to this next/additional calling in life I feel called to the same standards as Jesus’ example He gave us in the Word of God.   We will have questions to ask case workers and have the safety of our own girls to keep in mind of course.  The fact that a child may question their sexuality I do not feel is a compromise on God’s word by us taking them into our home.  Saying that any kind of sin is “ok” IS a compromise to God’s word.  Also not loving someone because I think their sin is worse than my own is a huge compromise to what God’s word teaches.

What I do know is that I am already praying for God to give us discernment, protect us from being sinned against, protect us from sinning, for our children to flee from temptations,  for God’s protection of them,  for us to trust God with all our hearts, and for us to love unconditionally.  We are being called to meet a child/children and their families at their time of need.  We are not called to judge them we are called to provide love, safety, forgiveness, and point them to the only one who can provide true healing…Jesus.

 

So I am Going to get a Little Political

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Our country is hurting and first of all in deep need of prayer.  Personally I like to stay away from political debates and opinions, but I think no one can deny that our country is in trouble on so many levels.

My daughter’s high school team has two goalies.  My daughter being one of them.  Both are great goalies.  Both are on the JV and Varsity rosters.  This I think is awesome.  What I see happening is that both goalies are held up to a higher standard.  There is a friendly level of competition.  There is a higher level of accountability.   All these factors encourage harder work and a deeper level of commitment to the team.  On an even greater level hard work and commitment builds character and integrity.

This is what I have seen lacking in all governmental levels across the United States of America.  Even with two main political parties they both have fallen into a very selfish and lazy form.   When there is no competition or accountability bad things happen.   With no competition, pride arrogance and big ego develop.   With no accountability laziness ensues.  As one becomes more powerful and great in ones own mind the temptations become even greater.  When a bribe is laid before a politician the human nature of “self” can completely take over when there is no one looking and holding accountable.  The attitude of “entitlement”  has trickled down from the top.  All things run downhill and in the last several decades it has been nasty stuff sludging down the hill.

When a person believes that there is no one greater, “their the only game”,  and when there is a monopoly things get dangerous.   We all are replaceable and there is always someone that is more talented that will come along.

Humility, accountability, competition, commitment to the people, and integrity is lacking greatly in our country especially in the governments and those making the laws.

Life long politicians should not have happened.  Government positions are  suppose to be a service to “the people” not the power trip that they have become!    Ultimately God is in control and on His throne no matter who is the leader of our country.   We need to turn back to God and to turn back to truly serving Him and others instead of self.