Normal

Over the past few weeks I have been praying and asking God for normal.  I wanted to feel normal.  I wanted to be able to go places and not worry if the child with us is going to have a melt down...I want children who like me (our current placement could take or leave me)...I want school to be easy for the children in our home...I don't want to have to explain to others why we do things differently...I don't want to have to answer to everyone for every move we make (CPS, foster care workers, etc)...I want normal!

Yesterday as I picked up our little one from school and his teachers were telling me that he had a rough day.  And when we say rough we mean rough- hitting, screaming, then complete shut down. I got in the car and began to pray (which I have to do in situations like this before we decide to discipline); I prayed that God would teach me how to discipline so that one day we could have a normal day.

And as God always does he reminded me what I really wanted.  I wasn't asking for normal, I was asking for easy.  All those things I wanted were easy and made life less difficult.  But easy isn't normal.  What should be normal is that we are compassionate towards others, that we love people where they are but spur them on to greatness (especially little ones) and we do life together with others.  When you do all these things it's not easy but it should be what's normal for us to do (no matter if it's easy or not).

When you look at our past two years in foster care and just in life in general the right thing was almost always not the easy thing.  As I prayed for many different situations I always felt God was saying no.  I even told someone the other day, I just want God to say yes to one of my prayers-when it is my turn?  However today I am grateful life isn't easy (that our family doesn't look or do things the "normal" way).  It's a constant reminder that we need God and that I must take my ideas of normal and throw them out the window.  The healing process isn't pretty and I have to be in constant compassion mode.

And as I was reminded of this my anger was gone, my voice was no longer mad, and the rage I felt as I heard what he had done at school was gone....I saw him as God sees him and was thankful to be apart of his healing process.  I'll take that over normal any day!