fostering and adoption~ links i loved!

a Facebook friend who is a Haiti/adoption/fostering connection often links to beautiful related articles which i really enjoy reading.  this one is from a blog by Jason Johnson relating to foster care.  it hits the mark with the description of how foster care is often so much bigger than just what you think or see.  i know some of you enjoy this stuff too, so i decided to share...

"I found you simply cannot bring brokenness into your home and not be broken by it. You cannot hold abused innocence in your arms and not on some level lose a sense of your own innocence because of it. You cannot hear stories of the deep fractures in other peoples lives and not see the cracks in your own, and understand that on some level we are all the same - broken humans in need of redemption. You cannot open your heart to them and not have it transformed by them. You can never unsee what you’ve now seen or unknow what you now know or unhear what you’ve now heard or unfeel what you’ve now felt. These things are always a part of you, and a piece of you is now always a part of them. They become your story – your new normal. The world as you know it is a different place - a bigger place, a more nuanced place, a more distorted place between what you used to know about your own little world and what you now know about the rest of it. Everything changes.

The beauty of foster care reverberates upon the backdrop of the brokenness which surrounds it. In light of the gospel it is our privilege to crawl into the story of others because Jesus has ultimately entered into ours. It is the call to wrap ourselves in their brokenness and willingly be broken by it - to exchange our normal for theirs and theirs for ours and begin to write an entirely new and better normal together.

In the end, everything changes - you change them, but perhaps more importantly, they change us.

Nothing can or will or should ever be the same."

the rest of the article is here along with much more.  good stuff, i'd say...

then, a tearful adoption story filled with beautiful grace and love.  during a time of overwhelming darkness and hate in this world, where it seems daily we learn of yet another senseless act of evil involving the permanent destruction of life, it does my heart good to focus on beautiful examples around me of God's children living out their real and sincere faith in ways that changes lives for good.  for good.  just as Jesus did.  it is all around.  maybe not there on CNN's headlines, but happening nonetheless.  refreshing during a month of worldwide turmoil...