Filled: Devotions for a Foster Parent's Heartনমুনা

Day Three

Scripture: Colossians 3:13, Luke 7:36-50, Psalm 103

Oh, loving the kids is the easy part,” a foster-mom friend proclaims to a group of moms nodding in agreement. “It’s everyone else who makes foster care hard. But loving the kids? That’s easy.”

I nod along, like someone who isn’t on the inside of the inside joke but is too embarrassed to admit it. Yeah, loving the kids is so easy. EASY. Not hard at all, just easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Last night I left my child alone in their room because I couldn’t protect myself from their violent blows. My arms were beginning to bruise from their punches as I closed the door behind me. “I hate you!” I heard. When I didn’t respond, they opened the door, slamming it into the previously formed door-handle-shaped hole in the wall. Once, twice, three times, four times, intentionally widening the previously patched cavity. I pulled the door closed and heard a whispered, “I’m making the hole bigger.” And I heard chunks of drywall cracking from the wall as dust spread under the door. This is easy. Loving the kids is the easy part. Easy peasy.

Peter approaches Jesus as Peter often does—messy and raw and practical. He wants to know, “How many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” (Matt. 18:21). This is getting out of hand, is the suggestion. I can’t just let people walk all over me, is the implication.

Jesus comes back with a shocking number, somewhere between 77 and 490. The number isn’t meant to provide a precise “strike” system for offenses. The number is meant to display that Peter shouldn’t be counting at all. The “how many times shall I forgive” number is further fleshed out by Jesus’s parable of an unmerciful servant, which further defines the number as more times than you need to be forgiven. In my case, at least, that equates to . . . countless.

This is good news for my children because, as many offenses as my kids may tally up, their in-need-of-forgiveness number is always trumped by my own. My kids aren’t the biggest sinners in my house; I am. I’m the chief of them all (1 Tim. 1:15).

Loving my kids through their hard behaviors is anything but “easy peasy, lemon squeezy.” It’s hard, hard, lemon hard.* But I find the supernatural power to “be kind and compassionate” and “forgiving” to my kids through the punching, kicking, insulting, and drywall-destroying when I remember that I’m called to forgive “just as in Christ God forgave” me (Eph. 4:32).

The forgiveness I’ve experienced incites the forgiveness I offer. “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,” Jesus says (Matt. 6:14). “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (v. 15). This is not so much a command to forgive (and a threat of what will happen if you don’t) as it is a descriptor of someone who has been forgiven. The forgiveness we receive becomes not only the motivating factor but also the empowering fuel. Yes, Jesus has forgiven me, so I should forgive others; but also, Jesus has forgiven me, so I can forgive others.

Being forgiven transforms me into the kind of person who forgives others. Like the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’s feet with tears and expensive perfume, if we forgive much, we love much (Luke 7:36–50). I have been forgiven so much. When I am in awe of the Jesus who would forgive and love me, I am empowered to forgive and love those around me. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you,” Colossians 3:13 commands. I’ve been forgiven—countless times—with a love that is unconditional and supernatural. This is the kind of forgiveness I’m called to offer to those who sin against me. This is the kind of forgiveness I’m empowered to offer to those who sin against me, including and especially my children.

*Yes, of course, I understand that these behaviors are shaped by trauma, but they are also fueled by sin. My kids—and I—are in need of both healing and forgiveness.