Answered Prayer

Hello, friends. I returned today from a very needed weekend away at OK'd in Christ, our high school district youth gathering. It was a blast, and I have so many stories, but there's one in particular I'd like to share that has very little to do with the gathering itself.

While at OK'd, one of the adult leaders came up to me and asked about my foster daughter. She remembered her from when she was a substitute teacher at an elementary school in Edmond. Since my daughter's in high school now, this was obviously several years ago. And keep in mind, this person was a substitute teacher, not even someone that my daughter would see regularly. This teacher could tell, even then, even with that limited amount of exposure to my daughter, that something was off in her life. She told me this weekend that seeing my daughter again, in such a context, and so obviously happy, was an answered prayer.

This isn't the first time someone has told me that. Last summer, at the First Friday event in downtown Enid, my daughter and I ran into another one of her old teachers, who told me much the same thing. I've had caseworkers and foster care workers who knew my daughter previously share similar sentiments with me. It didn't register any of those times, but it did this weekend: I'm the answered prayer. God chose to answer those prayers through me.

That's a strange concept for me, folks. Of course we talk about these things in theory, and always in the plural - God uses us to answer prayers, he chooses to do his work through us, that kind of thing - but it just really hit me while talking to this teacher: God chose me. Out of all the potential foster parents out there, out of all the avenues he could have chosen, he looked at my daughter's situation and said, "She needs Mary."

I'm not saying this to brag. Don't take this as me being conceited, because as I told this teacher over the weekend, "There's nothing particularly special about me that I'm able to do this. I'm still the kind of person who forgets to turn off the faucet and floods the kitchen accidentally. I'm just like everybody else, except I said yes." And of course, God could have worked through so many other people to be my daughter's foster parent. But the fact is that he didn't. He chose me.

Sometimes, I question why God would do such a thing. Why on earth he would choose someone who can't wake up on time or keep the kitchen clean, why he would look at a short, overweight, out-of-place Midwesterner who still plays Pokemon at the age of twenty-six and say, "This girl needs Mary and no one else." The funny thing is that, when God chose someone in particular in the Bible, they often asked that question, too. They looked at themselves, and then back at God, and essentially said, "Me? Really?" Let me quote some of them for you:

"Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth." -Jeremiah
"Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house." -Gideon
"Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of God out of Israel? ...Oh, my Lord, please send someone else." -Moses

No one is good enough to be chosen by God. We all have inadequacies, limitations, pet sins, problems. And when God chooses us, our tendency is to panic, and ask, "Are you sure?" But God knows all of those things and chooses us anyway. Hear how he replied to Jeremiah and Gideon and Moses. It's very simple:

"I will be with you."

He says that to me, and to you, as well. We have all been chosen by God for something very specific. He looked at each one of us and said, "You are meant to do this - and I will be with you through it." Of course we are all meant to serve God and our neighbor, but he has chosen each and every one of us to do that in a particular way. For me, in this time, it's to be a foster parent. For you, it might be something different.

But I encourage you today to think about fostering. I'm not going to lie to you, it's not easy. I like to say that it's an adventure every day. That's a nice way of saying that it's a constant challenge. Fostering is hard. The kids in care have gone through more than I could have even imagined at their age, and it makes them hard to handle. There's a constant tension between "I feel so badly for you that I just want to spoil you" and "I need to discipline you because you are behaving badly." It's hard to find the balance.

But while it's difficult, it's also incredibly worth it. I've witnessed so much growth in the past almost two years. Despite all of my missteps and failures, despite all of the excuses she could have used to do otherwise, my daughter has grown in leaps and bounds. She's improved in school, in social skills, in self-esteem, in hygiene. She's made friends and gone to church camp and, most importantly, became a Drake basketball fan.

I'm just kidding (although that is true) - the most important thing is that her faith in God has evidenced itself everywhere I look. This weekend showed me that.

There's a certain stigma associated with fostering. I think most people automatically dismiss it before they even consider it. So my plea is this: give it some thought. You might be God's chosen person to change someone's life forever.

After all, it appears that I am. And that's the best feeling in the world.