What I really, really want

This post is adapted from a talk given at the carol service at church; it gives a bit more of the back story to my fostering journey. I'll go back to posts that focus on the kids next time.

I know it feels like months ago already, but...

What was your favourite Christmas present this year? 

Did you get any gifts that totally missed the mark?

I met a woman in town two days after Christmas who was exchanging her unwanted gifts. Impressive levels of decisiveness and organisation, I thought admiringly. I don't suppose I will ever manage to do this.

Perhaps more interestingly, have you ever had a gift that transformed from one to the other? – maybe it looked amazing at first, but then turned out to be rather less so… or it seemed a pretty poor choice at the time but has become something you treasure?  I remember a lodestone – a naturally magnetic rock – that I gave to my little brother when we were both kids.  It seemed almost like magic – until one day he discovered that it opened up, and was made of plastic, and had a magnet glued inside. 

We were both gutted. 

I’ve had a few lodestones in my life.  And a some other gifts that looked pretty wonky – but have become very precious to me.

For this to make sense, we need to go right back to the beginning.  My parents met in a Christian choir at Cambridge university, and that fact alone explains a lot about me.  I’ve always been academic, always been musical and always wanted to follow Jesus.  In fact I’ve been performing in all three areas for as long as I can remember – getting top marks at school, singing and playing in choirs and orchestras, and being a good little Christian girl.

Unfortunately when you are the kid who sings solos in assembly, and who believes weird God-stuff, and who is a massive, massive swot – there isn’t a very long queue of people who want to hang out with you.  (Having jumble sale clothes and liking classical music didn’t help either).   I struggled with friendships, and was bullied on and off pretty much all the way through school.  And although my parents loved me dearly, I somehow didn’t internalize my belovedness very securely.  Maybe it was just that the family was big, and as the oldest I was often helping out (or, let’s admit it, being bossy).  There were lots of kids around – we had a fantastic time together – but the downside of all the crazy was that our parents’ attention was divided about a million ways.  Somehow through it all I learned that the way to gain affection and approval was to earn it, and I believed that I probably wasn’t really loved for my own sake.

I’ll repeat that I know that was wrong.  I have always been dearly loved, and I am so grateful for the family God gave me.  But however baseless it is, this sense of being unwanted is part of my story too.  And God is making it into something beautiful.  But let’s not jump ahead…

I was earning approval.  And so I got really, really good at performing.

By the time I was in my mid 30s, I had clocked up quite a list of achievements.  A few highlights from my reel: singing at the Royal Albert Hall and in international choir competitions; a starred first degree; rapid promotion as an outstanding teacher; leading the Christian Union; running a kids’ Christian holiday; oh yes, and marrying my best friend after he’d become a Christian. It all looked so good…

…and only God knew that I was bullying myself relentlessly to keep the performance going. 

Only God knew that I believed that if I wasn’t a bit better than everyone, at everything, they’d all walk off and leave me alone.

And God wasn’t OK with that. 

He could have sent an angel to tell me I didn’t need to be so afraid, and that he loved me, and that we were going to do things differently.  Maybe he did – but if so I didn’t recognise him.  I know he gave me some wise friends, and good teaching; a few red lights appeared on the dashboard and I could have slowed down and taken notice.  But I wasn’t listening.  (I was busy, remember?  Performing takes a lot of energy).

So he allowed some pretty weird-looking gifts to come my way.

Now I don’t believe God causes us harm.  But I do believe he allows hard things to happen, so that he can bring something wonderfully good out of them.

So… My marriage fell apart.  I left teaching, became a foster carer, and tried to care for a string of vulnerable kids.  Each of them rejected me; in the harshness of the care system, we call them ‘failed placements’.  A company I helped to lead failed too.  Then I hit menopause – or it hit me – and that triggered fatigue.  I gave up most of my work.  I have spent so much time in the last 18 months flat on my back on the sofa, unable to work, or sing, or read, or study – unable to do anything at all except cling desperately to what God says about himself.  I’ve lain there, repeating Bible verses over and over, through gritted teeth, in mostly unbelief, between sobs, and in exhaustion.  No performance, no audience, no applause.

And God has loved me.

In the enforced quiet, he’s lifted the burden of the old gifts.  And he’s breathed life, and love, and healing, and joy, back into me.  Through songs he’s sung over me, through friends who’ve loved me in my non-performing, through truths shared at church, in conversation, in podcasts and audiobooks and simply in reading his word slowly enough to take it in.  Not least through insights from fostering - a journey he's used to show me his heart for me as I learn to call him Daddy, as he reparents me and patiently woos me despite all the mess of my attachment disorder. He’s taken away my performing, and instead, he’s poured his love over me, into me.

And slowly, the knowledge is inching from head to heart. 

He loves me. 

He loves me. 

He loves me. 

It’s not earned, it’s not deserved.  It’s his gift, from him to me.  It’s the best gift. 

In 1 John, there’s a verse that says, ‘we know and rely on the love God has for us’.  All my life, I’ve relied on God to save me, but on my performance to get through life.  But I’m learning there’s a better way.

He loves each of us.  He loves you.  If at the moment that doesn’t feel very real – please, invite him to show you, and to help you receive this gift, from him to you.  And if you’re facing some ugly-looking stuff right now, rely on his love to bring good, even from this.

Sometimes the shiny gifts turn out to be plastic and glue.  And sometimes the gifts we don’t want, the gifts we fear, the gifts that make us weep – they turn out to be exactly what we need.  Sometimes it’s these wonky gifts that bring us to him, to the one who loves us through it all, to the one who always knows exactly what we really, really, really want – even when we don’t know it ourselves.

Just a note:

If you are reading this thinking that you’ve given some wonky gifts to your own kids – as I have to my fosterlings – I want to remind you that we’re living between the cross and the homecoming.  We’re forgiven – done deal – and we’re being transformed – ongoing process.  We’re not there yet.  Our brokenness is still real, and however hard we try, our brokenness still hurts others.

We can trust God with our kids, and everyone else we love, too.  He writes their stories, he gives their gifts, and the pain we cause is not bigger than his creativity, his compassion, his transformation.

Don’t beat yourself up.  Bring it to him.  He forgives and he has compassion.  And we need to be like him – which includes forgiving and having compassion on ourselves as well as on each other.

This side of heaven, we’ll get it wrong at times; we’ll continue to do damage as well as good.  And God has that, too, in his hand.  When the gifts we give are wonky – he can still use them to do something beautiful.

Relax.  He loves you.