made for greatness: finding bravery for the next step

Posted on by August 9, 2023

It doesn’t matter how many toys we have, every two-year-old I’ve ever known loves finding the biggest pair of footwear available so they can clomp around the house in them.

We are made with this desire for greatness: to take on projects beyond our ability, to tackle impossible ventures, to commit exploits. To wear big shoes. Sometimes as adults we forget this, and we grow out of our bravery and make excuses for it, mislabeling fear as responsibility or prudence to make it sound better. But usually it’s still just fear – a tired, jaded unwillingness to launch out of our comfort zone.

made for greatness: finding bravery for the next step

But let’s not be that way. Not today, at least. Look at this with me:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

– Genesis 12:1-2

How many times has God told us to go and do something, promising His blessing along with it, but we’ve cowed and shrunk back? Umm…nah, no thanks. That blessing sounds good, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. Seems like a lot of work and unknowns, and too much risk. Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. For as many times as I have obeyed and moved out of the comfort zone, I’ve probably backed out at least twice as often.

But for those times I have obeyed, He’s done more than I could’ve dreamed. He’s brought the fire.

We tend to think that God won’t do it for us, though. Fill in the blank, whatever it is: provide, heal, restore, transform, ease the burden, make a way. Help us fill those big shoes, and help us walk in them without falling over. He does it for others, though.

So we keep praying for Him to do it for others. We have faith that He will, for them. But not always for us. Why do we think we’re the exception? Why do we think we’re so special, so particularly undeserving?

Because we know us, and we diminish Him to our perception.

But He knows us, too, just like He knows them. And our differences aren’t so huge that His blood didn’t overcome them.

If you are feeling somehow less-than or undeserving, remember this: Twice in the Old Testament the Lord held water back so His people could move forward. He is still doing it over and over in our lives, if only we have eyes to see it. He is actively, lovingly making a way for you and for me, just like He does (and did) for them:

For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

– Joshua 4:23-24

So that all the peoples of the earth may know: That’s us. You and me and them.

That you may fear the Lord your God forever: Not fear your own circumstances or failures or inadequacies or excuses for why you are undeserving.

He is still taking the Jordan Rivers and the Red Seas in our lives and holding them back so we can walk forward. So we can write down words we’ve been putting off for too long. So we can look some ideas in the face and ask God what to do with them, and what greatness He wants to do with us. So we can take those next steps in those big, unfamiliar shoes.

I can’t imagine (and I don’t want to imagine) what He would’ve done by now had I not been too afraid to do the other things I’ve backed down from. But I’m excited for what He’s going to do from here on out.

Sometimes we look at our kids and their brilliant ideas, shake our heads, and smile, asking them, “What am I going to do with you?” And maybe God does the same thing with us, but He already knows the answer. So thank Him for knowing it. Ask Him for eyes to see it. And when He tells you to move in faith, don’t hesitate. He has made us to achieve greatness, to walk in these big shoes, and people are watching for His faithfulness as we trust Him and do it.

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This is an excerpt from ABIDE volume 4: Bravery for the Next Step, available here directly from us, or everywhere else books are sold.

love changes who we are: a letter to broken parents

Posted on by August 30, 2024

The noise could almost make your heart stop. Your mind tries to process whether it is a scream or a cry, an unnatural wail that sounds like a mythological animal dying, heaving its last gasps of breath.

love changes who we are: a letter to broken parents (part two)

Then it stops…and you realize the kids are just blowing through blades of grass. Is any other innocent summer pastime as guilty of inducing heart attacks as this one? It’s just grass blades and air. Nothing to be alarmed by.

But that knowledge doesn’t keep you from almost peeing your pants when the sound comes out of nowhere.

Eventually, though, you get used to it. The noise isn’t any less annoying, but it no longer stops you in your tracks and gives you a panic attack.

You recognize what it is. You know it’s not a threat, and you continue on with what you were doing.

Parenting changes us, and the more we surrender to the process, the more He refines us. He is making us more like Him. And simultaneously, paradoxically, He is making each of us, you and me, more like the unique you and me we were always meant to be.

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before Him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything.

– 1 John 3:18-20

He knows what kind of mother and father our kids need. And He knows what kind of kids we needed to (ahem) sanctify us, as well.

Unfortunately, those things that refine us the best tend to be things that grate against us the most.

This daily consistency is not my jam. I’m also not great at it naturally. I’m more of a free spirit.

– Lacey Steel, adoptive mom

I hate to tell you this, but you probably already know it: The things we each need to learn in parenting and wholeness are probably not going to be things we enjoy learning about.

I love achievement and making progress with things, and reading and education are huge passions of mine. So it makes sense that to sanctify and mature me, God gave me some children who resist those things to extremes. I needed to learn that my success is wrapped up in my own obedience, and not the progress or growth of my kids. (I am still learning. It’s quite the process.)

And you need to learn things, too. So don’t take it as a personal attack when it seems like behaviors or situations push your buttons in just the right pattern. It is SO hard sometimes, yes. But God trusts us to steward these kids and their needs toward our own growth and sanctification, rather than our own preferences and natural bents.

Because, left to the ease of our own natural bents, we become less and less like Him — curling inward, warped and wilted. He made us, though, to stand strong and overcome.

If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.

1 John 4:12b-13

Last week a friend asked me, “This has been such a hard season, hasn’t it?” and it has been, for so many of us. It hasn’t been the very hardest for me (the first few years post-adoption still make 2020 look like a walk in the park) but it has definitely brought some of the scariest moments and deepest soul seeking for me – questions about who I am and what I’m worth, how God sees me versus how others see me, lies I’ve believed and boundaries I need to put in place.

It is like how when we learn more in any subject, we realize how very little we actually know about it. Our identities are like that. The more broken we get, the more we can heal, and the more brokenness we identify within us that still needs healing.

Don’t misread me — I don’t mean this in the sense of “God loves you very much and He has a miserable plan for your life,” or that we should pursue the kind of brokenness that comes from foolish or sinful choices.

I mean that life is messy, and if we are going to be involved in parenthood, leadership, ministry, or any other significant mission, it will involve brokenness.

So He honors some of us with a lot of brokenness because He knows we will steward it well.

You know, like He did: Beauty for ashes. Joy for mourning. Forgiveness for sin. Because He is making us like Himself, but not everyone surrenders to the process.

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us.

– 1 John 4:16-19

We have to recognize our junk to be able to start dealing with it, and once we recognize it, we start seeing it everywhere. So if you, like my friend, are asking, “How can I possibly still have this much junk to deal with?” be comforted by the fact that if you are recognizing a lot of it, you are making great progress. We only move toward healing when we’re no longer oblivious to our brokenness.

The further we go in adoption, the more I realize that God called us to it not just for our kids, but for us. Yes, they needed us – they needed homes and healing and protection and a family. But we needed the sanctification. We needed to understand more of His love for us, as we loved them. We needed to see the world deeper and wider, and to understand our own brokenness more fully so we could walk in healing and wholeness.

Because He made us to be overcomers, along with our kids.

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.

– 1 John 5:4

And look at how far we’ve come, how strong we all are now: The broken things are starting to rebuild along better paths, in us and in our kids. The hard things have become the familiar things. What used to seem impossible is now routine.

The scream of the grass blades assaults our ears like a fighter jet grazing our rooftop, but there we are – no big deal, completely unfazed, just picking weeds out of the garden as He makes us more like Him.
_______

Related: Don’t Make Me Use My Mom Voice: a 1-hour training for any struggling parent. It was made for adoptive and foster parents, but don’t let that sway you! You’ll feel more equipped in all your parenting and relationships and personal wholeness. There’s validation, relief, and camaraderie here.

love is what we do: a letter to fellow adoptive parents

Posted on by July 23, 2024

In a patch of the yard, a two-year-old boy plays in a dirt pile with his red plastic shovel. You can’t really see him but you know he’s there because of the haze of dirt suspended eighteen inches off the ground in that general area, floating lazily to the west.

love is what we do: a letter to fellow adoptive parents

And down the hill, an older boy gathers a bucket of dirt. But no, he’s not doing it for fun, but as a consequence for refusing to do school. He didn’t tell us he didn’t want to school in so many words; that would be easier but it would also mean admitting responsibility and being honest. Instead, he expresses his desire to not do school by pretending to be unable to do very simple things that we know he can do. On this particular day, he pretends not to know what the word “opposite” means, in spite of the definition and examples right in front of him in his language arts assignment. He has known what the word opposite means for many years, but today he doesn’t want to admit it. So instead of doing school, he does the opposite of everything his language arts assignment asked him to do. Ironic, hmm?

We cannot fix these choices for him. He has had so many terrific days, and made such amazing progress in the last year. But progress is scary (I feel like I tell you guys this all the time) and consequences are safer. A big world of freedom is unpredictable and uncontrollable, and when the anxiety gets to be too much he reels it in by some type of self-sabotage and makes his world very small again. Small is familiar and safe.

Adoptive parents contact me all the time, and their stories are so precious to me. It is both hard and healing to read them; it is so easy to slide into hopelessness because of how huge some situations are, and yet we need to hear from each other because we need to know we’re not alone.

You, friend, reading this: Looking at that impossible situation with that kid, or that spouse, or those neighbors, or that school, or that social worker. You are not alone.

Our stories are all different but the themes are the same, and many of our details overlap. The grief over our kids’ choices is so intense. The secondary trauma from their behaviors is so real. And the loss of our expectations, of what we imagined things would be like when we chose adoption or foster care, is something that we have a hard time letting go of. Because if we let go of those expectations, it feels like we failed. It feels like admitting defeat.

But it’s not admitting defeat. It’s not lowering our standards. It’s not failure.

It is surrender. It is acknowledging that we are not in control, we are not responsible for someone else’s choices, and we are not the savior of this child or these circumstances.

We need to remind ourselves this. And when we have a hard time reminding ourselves, we need to remind each other. God has not left us to deal with this alone, He has given us each other to speak life and truth into when we cannot see clearly for ourselves. The haze of dirt is too thick; our own frustrations and worries are too loud.

So let me remind you of a few things. I’m reminding myself, too:

You are the expert of your kid. Professionals are only as helpful as they are, well, helpful. You probably already know that, for example, some counseling does more harm than good depending on the counselor’s experience. Many professionals claim to be experts when they only have book, lab, or office understanding of these issues but no boots on the ground experience with adoption and special needs. Those who don’t have dirt under their own fingernails often have no problem piling 23 more tasks, responsibilities, and suggestions into your lap when they get to clock out at the end of the day and deal with normal life and probably even get a full night’s sleep.

The true experts are the parents who are doing this day in and day out. Sucks though, right? So hear me: Parents, you are doing a better job than you give yourselves credit for, and you are not responsible for your child’s behavior, choices, or progress.

Yes, you influence them. But no, you don’t make their choices for them or decide how they will respond to any number of triggers or events throughout the day. That is not on you.

Healing for all of us will take time. And some of our adopted kids may never want a relationship with us.  We cannot force them to do anything, and coming into their lives at such a late date, our influence was so limited.

– adoptive mom

And those extra 23 responsibilities that might be amazing? You know, the supplements, therapies, classes, programs, books you should read, videos you need to watch, skills you need to learn, songs you should sing, and all the other parts of the hokey pokey? It’s not worth squeezing them into your week if, in order to do so, you have to start eating 3-minute meals and taking one-minute showers and skip going to the bathroom and sleep only three hours a night. Oh wait…many of you are already doing that.

Well. You pick what works for you and your family, but the rest of those 23 tasks can take a hike because you have got to get some rest and eat a decent meal a couple times a day. You are not doing anyone any favors if you die on the altar of someone else’s well-meaning to do list. (Seriously, friend, don’t make me use my mom voice.)

The best thing we’ve learned to do in those hard seasons, whether it is with our kids or our spouse or another close relationship, is to pray that we will like them as we are loving them (and to pray that we will be likeable, too). Because when they are likable, when we are likeable, the atmosphere is lighter and the joy isn’t something you have to fight for. It’s easier to get out of bed and face a new day with hope when we like each other.

“Fake it till you make it” isn’t sustainable, and we need real hope to hold on to when we don’t see things improving. So here’s some comfort: When someone is still not likeable and we are still being loving toward them, we are actually “doing” love that is truer to the definition of it.

Because love is more of a verb than a feeling.

If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

– Luke 6:32-33

Jesus loved us when we were not likeable, too, and His kindness led us to repentance. When we start to learn about loving like He does, it changes us into someone we never could have become had we stayed inside out of the dirt, with our cute shoes and clean fingernails.

And friends, we’ll talk more about that in just a couple days, in part two.
________

Related: Don’t Make Me Use My Mom Voice: a free 1-hour training on adoption, attachment, and discipline that will leave you empowered, equipped, and refreshed for the days ahead.