By now many of you have been made aware of Q’s salvation. I(Kevin) wanted to share a more with you all to give you a deeper understanding of what Jesus has done in our little guy’s life and how he is using this situation to give Anna and I a deeper understanding of his love.
When Q and A first came to live at our house we asked a LOT of questions to fully understand who they were and what we were getting ourselves into. We had become fully licensed foster parents about 2 months prior and had anxiously awaited a placement, so we were both excited and a little nervous when we heard about Q and A. We were told basic things like “Q likes Ninja Turtles and Spiderman, A likes princesses, and they are both polite and well-behaved kids.”
Our time early on with the kids was simply FANTASTIC. Many of you likely remember pictures from birthday parties, build-a-bear, etc, and could see that we were clearly having a BLAST. To be honest, aside from occasional tears and temper tantrums, foster parenting seemed somewhat “easy” at first. However, as we got to know our kiddos better and began to build a bond, things got WAY more challenging very quickly. I’m sure many of you also remember a blog post that Anna wrote some months ago about the difficulties we were going through. I cannot get into specifics, but basically our children were slowly revealing the hurt of their hearts, and it was manifesting in some extremely difficult behaviors.
In fact, there was a time in January when the kids started trying to be bad on purpose to push us away. This is a common situation that we had been told about in our foster parenting classes, but I could not have guessed how hard it would be to deal with in real life, and how many serious conversations would need to be had with our kids to show them tough love, extend grace to them, and give them an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
Honestly, it tested our patience to the core, and there were times that we really considered giving up. I can remember having conversations with Anna about how easy it would be to just give in and let them push us away, but with help from the Lord we were able to find a way to keep moving forward one day at a time.
So, how does all this relate to Q coming to know Jesus? Well, during their time with us, we have surrounded the children with biblical messages. They listen to Christian music while going to sleep, we read Bible stories at night, we go to church together every Sunday, we have taken them with us to all our Bible studies and introduced them to many friends from our church. While I believe all these activities may have helped, there is one thing I believe made the difference for Q: Love. We have loved this child for nearly 9 full months. We have loved him through his struggles, his triumphs, his joys, and his pains. We have pushed him to learn his numbers and letters, to learn to be responsible and independent, and to learn to be honest and do the right thing, even when no one is looking. We have dealt with his tantrums, the tears he has conjured to simply “get his way,” his stubborn reluctance to work hard in school, his angry, pouting faces, and his stomping to his bedroom when he is angry with us.
What Anna and I didn’t realize is that what we did for Q is what Jesus does for all of us. Jesus loves us and continues to fight for us despite our rejection of him, despite the fact that we believe that we know better, ignore his words, and often push him away. I have had a few other experiences in my life where I have been blessed with the opportunity to lead another to Christ, and the story has always been the same: the opportunity only came after many, many hours, days, months, and sometimes even years had been spent showing that person or people true, unconditional love.
I wanted to share this with all of you to encourage you that YOU have a role in this. You don’t have to be a pastor or professional evangelist to share Christ with others, you simply have to love the way that He loves and never give up on people. You have to love people right where they are at in life, no matter how painful, difficult, or uncomfortable it is. None of us are perfect at this, but with a little help from the Lord we can give others just a glimpse of who Jesus is, and Jesus is so wonderful and perfect that a glimpse is all people really need to see how He can change their lives.
I have no doubt that many of you have prayed for Q and his sister, and I want to thank you for that and would like to ask you to keep praying. For now, I will rest in peace, because Q was once lost and now he is found, and we can understand that all the hard times were there to help him come to know his Heavenly Father, and there is nothing better in life than that.
The story of Q coming to know Jesus
Today Kevin let Q watch the Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe. While we were in the car tonight after a long day I (Anna) started telling Q how we are like Edmond, that we all make choices that are bad, and follow the wrong person. But, that thankfully Jesus (like Aslan) gave himself up to die in our place. Because of that sacrifice we can be forgiven for our mistakes. That Jesus will be the most perfect daddy for us because He will never leave us. That Jesus can give us joy in hard situations. We have talked for MONTHS about this. We told him if he ever decides he wants to be a Christian and follow Jesus, admit that he has made bad choices and that he wants to follow God's rules to let us know. He was quiet for about 10 seconds and then said "I want to be a Christian." I asked him why, and what that means....and without hesitation he explained the entire thing back to be in his own sweet words. We pulled in the driveway and the 3 of us prayed together.
He is already so different. He told us he wasn't afraid to go in the dark anymore, because he is a Christian now!
Thanks for reading!
Kevin and Anna
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