Good Deeds and Grace and Strength

This past Friday my husband and I had date night.  It was a different kind of date night in that I have recently started the Grace & Strength Lifestyle. Friday was my last "loading day" and I needed to eat, eat, eat!  So we went for our usual Friday night dinner of Hibachi and to see the new Tyler Perry Movie, "Good Deeds." 

My husband and I adore Tyler Perry movies (Yes, ladies, I was lucky enough to marry a man who enjoys a chick flick or two ) and have been dying to see this movie.  You can see the trailer HERE  We had known from watching the trailer several times poverty would be a central focus of the film.  It opened my heart and brought tears to my eyes watching a single mother who lost her husband in Iraq struggle to keep a roof over her daughter's head and food in her belly.  But then the hardest part of the movie came:  when social services came to remove the daughter because they were homeless and hungry. 

I felt my heart being ripped out of my body.  That's how our children will come to us.  Our family will increase because another family was forced to decrease.  Therein lies the beautiful pain we will experience becoming parents.  We are preparing to welcome broken children in our home.  We are prepared to complete our family with children who feel empty when they arrive.  I cannot grasp the concept. 

Becoming a mother is one of the most beautiful times in a woman's life but how can I be so happy when I know the great cost that has been suffered by my children so that they were able to become mine?  How can I be excited (even though I am) to have children in my home when I know they have faced a world of hurt unlike anything I can imagine?

How can something so beautiful be so painful?  How can something so painful become so beautiful?  It's amazing how much just a single two minute scene in a movie can spark a thought process and cause you to think of every avenue other than what you initially expected.

There will be foster children that come into this house who will only stay with us for awhile.  We will love them, help them, care for them, support them and send them home.  But eventually there will be children who come into our family and will stay forever.  As hard as I try and as much as I can imagine I still will not be able to come close to identifying the pain these children will have experienced.

It's a very humbling experience.