Luvin...

If there’s a tear left in me today, I wouldn’t begin to know where to start looking for it. Might be a couple left in my toenails, but I’ve cried the rest of them out I can assure you. I have had the most difficult day that I’ve had in this position in this place. I had to take one of our little guys back to the judge today and say that he couldn’t stay. Now, for those of you who know me, I’m the girl who roots for the underdog to the end. I don’t give up on people and I believe that the power of God can always change a person and this is certainly no exception. I believe this little guy has the opportunity to change.

Now what you need to know is that when we bring the kids into this home, they don’t come in as “some project” or another kid, they become sons and daughters to this heart. They are in visual form the reason I came. They are knit to my heart much like yours have become knit to yours based on the fact that they came from your womb. I don’t know how to explain all of that, I just know that it’s true. I cry when they hurt, I want to jump up and down when they do things well, I want to show every picture I have to everyone, God birthed within this girl a momma heart and I didn’t know it was happening, I just know that it did.

So when I brought Luvin in, he wasn’t just “some project” or “another kid who needed a home” while he might have been that for moments, with every night he waited for me to kiss him goodnight and every time he walked out of his room wanting me to hug him good morning and every time I watched him make progress with his anger or make a right choice instead of a wrong one every single time he wanted to help me do anything I was doing or be with me wherever I was going…he became more than just the kid who needed help, he found a spot in this heart as my son. He called me mama and asked if he could first and I said of course. So allow me please first of all to tell you there’s not just an empty space at our table tonight or an empty bed in a room there is this wide empty space in my heart that is begging God to take care of a little boy that I love.

With Ashley in the passenger seat and Luvin in between us today we drove to the judge’s office and made the longest 45 minute drive of my life to date. I thought of every single option, I doubted every decision I was about to make, at least 15 times I wanted to turn the truck around. I replayed the past 2 weeks in my mind, with every single scene from the moment we picked him up until the moment we dropped him off today. Every smile, every hug, every memory.

See the problem is that he came from a family that beat the tar out of him and he’s a 12 year old boy. He lived on the streets for a while and has “street” mentality, which basically means, tough guy wins. So he came into this house with all of that and wanted to hit our kids and tried to run away numerous times and he just took soooo much time and energy. Not one second of which I would take back, because I know that somewhere within his heart tonight he’ll remember that it was done in love. Oh please let him know it was done in love Father. Let me interject here, that I never came here for easy. If easy was what I wanted I can assure you I’d be sitting on a deck tonight or in a den or with my best friend or around the table with my family. I’d be with people I love, not far far away, crying for little boys who seem as though they never had a chance. So it wasn’t for a lack of want to or willing to on my part. It truly wasn’t and in the deepest places of my heart I know that’s true.

The problem or the privilege depending on how you look at it at the moment is that I have 15 other little hearts here that are trusting that we will keep this as a safe place when they’ve never had another one in their world. They are willing to put their trust in this white girl that when I said I’d take them home that somehow that would prove to be better than what they were leaving and with everything in them they latched on to the fact that for the first time they would be safe here. So even when it means it rips a part of my heart out to do so I am forced to make difficult decisions to keep it that way to the best of my ability. When our kids were scared of his “tough guy wins” mentality I knew something had to change. Now let me tell you that not one of these sweet ones has failed to ask me where Luvin is tonight. He became part of our family and I pray we all learned lessons in the process. I want them to know that God called us to love each other, that this house was opened for the outcasts and forgotten of the world in some ways and that they will come in “difficult” packages sometimes but that we will attempt to love them like Jesus. I am not interested in raising a bunch of “saved” from their situation kiddo’s with no heart to save the rest who are in similar boats. I want them to live with a heart like Jesus, so desperately I do. I hope we learned some of that together over the past 2 weeks, I know I did.

As I wept this morning and have grieved in no uncertain terms today, I thought about how God must feel so often when He offers us everything and we say no thanks, that looks nice, it is nice, but I’m not willing to give you all of my heart to get it. Not willing to go by your rules. Not willing to choose you over everything else. I think He feels much like I felt today. I think He cries. One thing I know for sure though, He never forces. I get to decide. I can stay within the confines of his property and within His heart or He will allow me to walk away. Somewhere in my humanness I thought walking away meant that He kinda gave a “well you made you choice” huff. I realize after today that with tears coming even from His celestial toenails He weeps that we didn’t choose Him.

I had no idea how much of the God story would be revealed as I walked out the calling to be here with some precious children that God sent into my life and have built homes in this heart. I have learned more about them in my daily dealings with them than I have learned in 30 years otherwise. They teach me something every single day.

Today the lesson was horrendously hard…but yet I love God more after today if that’s possible, cause I loved Him so much it hurt yesterday.

As a final note, I told Luvin that my house was always open to him that he was my son and that when I told him that it wasn’t just words, he was leaving an empty space in my heart that would forever be his and anytime he wanted to change and wanted this home more than he wanted to fight and be rough and run away to other places that this home was his for the taking but it came with rules because it had to for the safety of everyone. I cried my gutts out when I left him at the judge’s office. He cried too. I reminded him that I loved him and I’d pray every single day for him. I will.

I would ask that you’d pray for him too. Tonight there’s a 12 year old little boy that doesn’t know where he’ll pillow his head and this is a whole new element of trusting God for me. I have to believe that as huge as God was to bring Rudy and Brayan home, he’ll find a way to bring him “home” to, wherever home is that will change his heart. If it’s here, we’ll welcome him back with open arms, I can assure you. If it’s not we’ll wait for the seeds that God asked us to plant to grow and wait in eager expectation to see him in Heaven and I’ll squeeze him until his head pops off.

Lord, please be near that little 12 year old heart tonight when the one he trusted to call “mama” can’t tuck him in or hug him before he sleeps. Will you please be so real to him and find him a home that can help him find his way. He wants help God he does, he just doesn’t know it yet. Would you change his want to? In the meantime will you help this momma heart to trust you with all of your children that you’ve granted to my care, even this one that for at least a time had to leave.

Guess I did find a few more tears as I wrote this. A few still in there. I figure God did too, every single time I wandered away.

He never gave up, we won’t either. Please pray with us and for Luvin…my son who I miss tonight in ways I’ll never be able to explain!