Is It Enough?

I know it's been forever since I've written an actual blog post, but I started writing this on FB and it ended up being so long that I decided to post it here...  (If you haven't followed the blog on FB, you've missed a lot the past year or two.  You'll definitely want to go catch up!)

I get so frustrated with Bug's birthmother and so many of the self-destructive choices that she continues to make.  So many times I wonder if anything I say or do makes any real difference at all.  So many times I wonder if I'm living up to what God asks of me when it comes to my relationship with her.  Just when I think that there's nothing I can do or say to help her, the thought flashes through my mind that this time so many of the poor choices she's been making are for what she truly believes are the right reasons.  She is trying so hard in ways she never has before.  She is succeeding in ways she never has before, but she is still struggling so much.  Rather than taking things one day at a time, she takes things one minute at a time and stumbles through them making one self-destructive choice after another.

But then I see the small changes...  I see her carrying a mom's devotional Bible that I got her for her birthday only one month ago, but it's pages are already worn and it's filled with papers and notes and bookmarks.  I see her struggling to fight her addiction and to stay clean for this new baby.  And while she doesn't always succeed, she has been able to regroup and start clean again.  I remind myself of what I know about her pregnancy with Bug, and I have to recognize and acknowledge how hard she is trying and how far she's come.  She is comfortable enough to reach out to me when she's struggling, and while I might think I'm stumbling through advice or words of encouragement, she writes and thanks me for "being the extension of what I've only recently discovered is God's love for me..."  Those words give me comfort in knowing that Jesus is clearly taking the wheel when I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know what I'm doing.  I don't know what's going to happen.  I've given up having "a plan" months ago because I know that MY plan and HIS plan usually don't match up.

So if you've read this far, and you have it in your heart to pray, please pray for Bug's "S," for Baby Boy on the way, and for me over the coming months.  Please pray that we can all accept God's plan for us and work together to make the best of whatever it may be.  Please pray that I will have the ability to do whatever He asks of me and am able to do it in a way that doesn't confuse or hurt Bug.  Pray that Bug's "S" continues to see His love for her - even through the hard times, because there are definitely more hard times on the way.  Please pray that we come out on the other side of this stronger and with even more faith.

I've always said that foster care (and now adoption through foster care) is the hardest thing I've ever done.  But even through the difficult times, I still maintain that it is the best, most rewarding, most life-changing thing I have ever done...  And I wouldn't change a thing.