Into the Light
What is it about the darkness that is so scary?
Why are we scared of the dark as children?
Childhood is supposed to be full of light and laughter, but sometimes… it is far from that. On average, a child is abused or neglected every 48 seconds in America, 1,785 children each day, under six years of age, and out of these? 251,359 entered foster care. That’s convicting.
Our Fostering Experience
Six years ago, my husband and I survived 160 hours of trauma training and gained the biggest textbook I’ve ever owned to become foster parents.
“Don’t worry about the birth order!” they said. Well, those Foster Care Specialists evidently did not know our kiddos. When we introduced our three boys to their new foster sister and two brothers, at first, they were excited. At least they were excited for the first ten minutes. Soon, it was clear this would be rough for everyone involved.
You must realize that I was a Boy Mom up until this point. Soccer games and passing gas jokes were our family’s mainstay. With the introduction of Sarah* to our family, we were now the proud foster parents to a full-on pre-teen, who regularly threw herself dramatically onto her bed to prove her point. And we had “twinned” our two younger sons with the addition of identical aged foster brothers.
There were excruciating lows and exhilarating highs when fostering a sibling group. We experienced the joy of sharing about Jesus and watching them absorb the stories we told them of Him while also witnessing our own kiddos’ jealousy at having to share Mom and Dad. We also experienced the most ridiculous depletion of physical energy that we’ve ever experienced in our entire lives. These kids never slept. Our power came only from Jesus.
After a few months, we realized these kiddos had walked an extremely dark childhood. Not everything these kids experienced had been recorded correctly in their case files. We went from wondering if their biological parents were ever going to get their act together to realizing that the state would never allow these kids to go back to their parents. It was also a devasting blow to discover that we could no longer home these children and keep them safe. Their trauma and darkness would only heal in therapeutic foster homes.
When we cried out to God, asking why He had brought these children to us, only to have them moved to another home, He responded, “I wanted to bring the darkness into the light.” We try to conceal so many sins from others… but God wants to expose them all. Our family learned the value of bringing those sins that we want to hide into the light through this process. God will eventually expose them, but we need to let our light shine to do so.
Ephesians 5:8-13
For once, you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.
Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them,for the light makes everything visible.”
When you usually read a Scripture like this, you may skim past it.
But STOP- and ask yourself, what hidden sin am I keeping in the dark?
What would truly happen if I allowed myself to expose it?
Through this time, I learned that everything rests on Jesus. Without Him, I could never have fallen in love with these beautiful yet broken and abused children. But they wrapped their little arms around my heart, and I could only forgive them for their brokenness and gut-wrenching emotions. Those children pulled out emotions and sin issues that I never thought were possible coming from me. Jesus has softened my heart, and He’s taught me patience in ways I never knew I would need. He’s also taught me about forgiveness in the hardest of ways.
And through the process, God exposed my own darkness and brought it into the light.
