CHANGED BECAUSE OF CHRIST
Mother’s Day is celebrated on May 10th here in El Salvador, regardless of the day on which it falls. Therefore, last Friday was a day of seeing lots of flowers being sold on the side of the streets and families out with their mommas. A mother often sacrifices a lot for their families, and yes, a precious sacrifice, often unseen or known, worth celebrating.
We celebrated mothers in La Casa: the house mother in each of our three homes, all the people who surround us daily who are mothers and in our family visitation program with mother ‘s who do still have connection. We must cheer these mothers on to renewed relationships. It is choosing to believe in a better tomorrow for all.
Yet, there is always the other side. The majority of the children we serve do not have their biological mother present in their life. This day is often very hard for them. The unfortunate circumstances and decisions that led to the separation and brokenness its deep. This is where opening our hearts to sit in the loss and the pain is required. It is never to close that door and pretend it never existed. That deep grief will always have a seat in their lives.
But sitting where we don’t have answers, where there are no words that console, that uncomfortableness, makes us want to be the hero, the warrior to change what is, what should not have been. But we were not called to change the world, but to be part of this broken world, as changed people because of Christ. He does the changing, even within us.
Jason Johnson shared some of his thoughts on one of his blogs regarding foster care and adoption. “We found you cannot hold abused innocence in your arms and not lose a sense of your own innocence because of it. You cannot hear stories of the deep fractures in other peoples lives and not see the cracks in your own and understand that on some level we’re all the same – broken humans in need of redemption. You can never unsee what you’ve now seen or unknow what you now know or unhear what you’ve now heard or unfeel what you’ve now felt. These things are always a part of you. They become your story – your new normal. Everything changes.”
We are indeed grateful for the mothers and mother figures who walk alongside us each day, who pray for us and who give so that those who have been deeply broken can feel and see His love. Thank you for sitting with us, even in the brokenness.
