Loss, Grief, and Love

The first third of the MAPP classes have been completed. It is becoming more and more apparent to us that these children that we will welcome in our home will have not had the "normal" childhood. These children have been robbed of some many simple pleasures and rights of childhood. They have dealt with more than their fair share of grief and loss in their life. Our hearts break as we continue to hear the stories of loss...loss of family, home, siblings, innocence, childhood, and...Love. 

We will be more than parents to this childhood, but grief experts...helping them through this great sadness. Grief is not always a natural process, and little ones do not know how to grieve. We may have to teach them how to express their sadness. Many children in the foster care system feel that they have lost everything because of something they have done. They think they are somehow undesirable or defective. They act out behaviorally to test to see if you really love them or care for them like you "say." They just yearn to be loved as themselves. The children have lost all basic necessities of life (love, comfort, and security). However, they may be lost, but they have not been forsaken. They have a heavenly Father who loves than more than any earthly human. God understands their loss. He lost his own family as well. Jesus was separated from His Father, and God the Father was separated from His son, Jesus while on earth. God understands the feeling of loss.  

Adoption is so close to heart of God. He does not forsake the children. He has adopted us spiritually into the family of God, and it only makes sense that we would bring the fatherless into our earthly families. What a beautiful picture of God's extravagant love that he lavished on us lowly sinners. 

It is a huge privilege and responsibility to love these children for being themselves and nothing else. That's how God loves us....He takes us as we are....a beautiful disaster. Isn't that what Love really is? Accepting the person with all fault, flaws, and baggage. With all of the loss and grief in their life, I look forward to loving the children God is preparing for us. It may not be the normal family, but it's the family God intended for us. 

This song has been very special to us as we've began this adoption process. We will love this child/children for being them just as God loves us as us! 

Love Me for Me by JJ Heller

Ephesians 1:3-6

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.