Perspective.

This entry was posted by KK on Thursday, 19 April, 2012 at

People look at me like I am a saint. I know because that’s what they tell me. Every time I leave the house I am asked about my crew…”Are all these children yours?” to which I answer yes and go on to share a fraction of our story in hopes it raises awareness of the plight of orphans in the world, a fact that albeit very real to me is commonly unknown to most others. My husband and I foster children who are in unsafe situations and need a safe place to call home for a short while or in some cases forever. We’ve adopted a couple, Lord willing another in the near future, but we are not saints. I am no saint. I am so very human. I get mad at my kids when they make messes. I get really frustrated when my house is unorganized and messy. I yell at my children far too often. I treat my husband like a doormat and rarely ever put him before our children like I know I should. My priorities are out of order. I slack in homeschooling my children quite frequently to do something I’d rather do which is always less important. I care what others think about me and what I look like instead of what Jesus thinks of me. I could really go on. And on.

At the end of the day I am nothing on a grand scale and it often bothers me when people put me on a pedestal because I know deep down how truly human I am when others think I am superhuman and I know that what I do is very, very miniscule. I immediately think of my cyber-friends Adeye and Kim and I truly believe they are superhuman because it appears to me that they are living their lives in complete abandon to their creator although they would argue the same thing as I am now, that they are  human and selfish and lack the discipline that God desires for them as His disciples despite what others see in them.

And then there are days when I stumble upon a video like the one below…

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And I am reminded.

As I began watching that video, I began crying so uncontrollably that I couldn’t even see out of my eyes. I was reminded once again the perspective that I want to walk around with all day every day at the forefront of my thoughts. I want to abandon this self absorbed life I am living now and GO and pick these children up and hold them. Give them water. Give them a morsel of food that they’ll see as a feast. Wash their frail bodies and just hold them until they stop crying and don’t hurt anymore. Yesterday I wanted to kill someone because I couldn’t find my chacos and was late for an appointment when I have at least two dozen other pair of shoes, including another pair of chacos, that I could have put on instead. Today I don’t even want to wear shoes because they don’t have shoes and they don’t even care. Yesterday I walked around my house and felt like I was suffocating because I often feel so cramped in a 2400 square foot home where 8 people live and I wanted to beg and plead with my husband to agree to sell this house and buy a bigger one so we’d be more comfortable. Today I realize that this house is half full of useless junk that no one needs and if we got rid of it we could fit a few more beds in the bedrooms and give life to more children. The past few weeks I have been worried sick about my almost 15 month old son who still wears a size 2 diaper and barely weighs 18 pounds and have put him through some pretty invasive testing only to find out he is perfectly healthy. Today I realize that he actually weighs more than Adeye’s fourteen-year-old daughter that she and her husband have just committed to adopt from Eastern Europe who has been rotting away in an orphanage for fourteen years confined to a crib and only given a bottle with enough nourishment to keep her alive. I could go on. And on.

Perspective. It’s good for the soul.

“… whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:33

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