The Building that is our Family

There is story after story of families torn apart through the process of adoption. Families who are working to put their lives back together because of a child or children who have torn them apart with their own hands. Disruptions, parental right terminations, institutionalizations.... I don't want to be another statistic. I don't want to earn the rights through losing this battle to join the masses of those who've gone before us & have been destroyed. With God's help, can our experience be different? As I was praying and asking God to help our family this morning, He spoke to my heart. Our sons and one, in particular, are attempting to tear our family apart. Daily, through their dysfunction, they pull the blocks down that have held this family together for the last 24 years. And with every fiber of their being, they throw those blocks around and turn a once beautiful building into a pile of rubble and chaos. Through their physical abuse, verbal abuse, through poop and pee everywhere, through violating us by pushing their faces into our bottoms and hitting us in our private places, while we are attempting to provide food & nourishment for them while standing at the kitchen counter. Through tearing us apart by cussing at us and telling us the way he wants to hurt us. Reminds me of God's truth in the book of Proverbs...."A wise woman builds her home, but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands...." But God showed me this morning that I have a huge part in this. It is my choice to whether we succeed or fail in this. And that with His help, if I seek it daily, hourly, by the minute, that I can take each block that is torn down and put it back with love and truth. I pick up a block that is still warm from his little hand and gently place it back while lovingly reminding him, "The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God", then another "Love is patient, love is kind...", then another " I will love you as long as I live, no matter how you act"... For a while, this act of picking our life up block by block and placing it back into the structure that is our family will seem futile. There will be times when we feel like we are losing ground because we are. Then there will be times when we can't get it to look even a little bit like it was before they came. And even though we aren't getting anywhere and we are barely able to keep it together, & we haven't crumbled, it will feel like a loss. But over time, the attacks will lessen. As we choose to respond in love, with patience, refusing to enter into the rage, modeling a godly response to sin, confessing and repenting both to God and them when we fail to do so, God will work. Soon, we will not just be repairing and maintaining. One day God will help us to build. And we will build. We will build into this new building that is our new family. And with God's help, it will be a monument to His glory. It will be a building that those who come after us can point to and gain hope from. Dear Lord, may it be....