We have three young men’s lives in our hands. Lives that so far have experienced neglect, abuse, and abandonment. Lives that are broken and aren’t just laying in pieces but lives that are missing pieces all together.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling. God, how do we do this? Who are we to heal their deep hurts? Who are we to silence the voices that have told them they’re worthless or an object to be used? Hopelessness tried to get me to pull the covers over my head. And yet, hope stilled my hands.
When my husband and I decided to move into a home where we would care for young men aging out of foster care we didn’t think life was going to get easier. From the moment we applied, we knew our dependence on the one who tends to our own brokenness would increase.
Jesus alone is the healer, and right now my husband and I often sense Jesus asking us to be his paramedics. We are living in a home with wounded hearts that are in critical condition. They could die, but the other option is that they could live. We, more often than not, live in emergency mode. We are constantly assessing a situation and determining what the best course of action is to sustain life so that more can be done to change the future of these young men.
Like a paramedic, we urgently attempt to transport them to the one who has the power to heal deeply and truly. Every day we put one foot in front of the other, hoping to lead them one step closer to Jesus. One step closer to the one that sets his life and his hope over their hearts, protecting them from that which intended to harm them.
There is a quote I love from the book Les Miserables that says, “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.” These young men have been in darkness where they have committed sins but have also had horrible sins committed towards them. And yet, as the quote above says, the guilty one is the one who causes the darkness.
There is an enemy and he is after these young men, but so are we. We are coming with the light to push back the darkness, but there is resistance. The enemy doesn’t want people to be saved. He wants them left in darkness to die of the wounds he’s inflicted and possibly become ones who inflict harm as well.
But, we believe God brought these young men into this home so that the ending of their stories would be different. These young men in our care were not given rooms here so that they will leave as wounded as they came in. Hospitals don’t admit people in the hopes that death will come. People are brought in so that every measure can be taken for them to live.
It is not easy fighting for a life. There are moments of strength and moments of weakness. We have felt protected and we have felt vulnerable. We have felt hope and yet at the same time brokenhearted when we have seen how hard hope will have to fight for these young men. Luckily our hope is Jesus. We can’t win this fight without him, so we fight with hope.
Who in your life are you fighting for? It may be someone in your family or at work or maybe it’s even you.
Can I ask you to embrace one truth?
This is not your forever. I want you to stop for a moment and put yourself before Jesus. Reach out and grab his hands and cling to those hands until you can breathe again.
The one who is holding your hands, He is your forever.
Jesus won’t reject, abuse, neglect or abandon. He accepts, cares, protects and gathers all of us into his home when we have been left for dead. If you can’t find hope anywhere else, find your hope in that.
So many in this world are right now wondering if where they are, what they are feeling is their forever. Let’s show them that it’s not.
Take hold of their hand and take them one step closer to Jesus.
I’d love to hear how it goes…
