I have a kiddo who is heading out tomorrow for a week-long camp experience. She is a “guide-in-training” for a foster care camp. She’s still technically a minor (even though her soul is so, so old) so she cannot do the official guide or other roles. She is a helper. For now, she’s ok with that. She is only 16. She went to training today and tomorrow morning she will get commissioned at church and pack up with 70-ish other adults to go set up a camp for the week. More than 30 kids in foster care will have a week of fun and love. My kid gets to help with that.
Earlier this summer, she and her dad went to serve and love the kids from One Vision Children’s home. This is a care center that Katelyn’s Fund partners with. She was undone by the experience she had there, loving the kids, adjusting to the culture and just generally being uncomfortable.
She is finding a mission field far away, closer, and then right here at home and I am watching God play an amazing production right here in front of her eyes, of all the ways she is capable of serving and loving “the least of these”, the widow, the orphan…..the church.
I wonder who I would be now if I had had her opportunities and experiences at 16. I cannot even imagine how high I would have reached. That was not my journey. My story sounds more like slicing away the tangled roots and vines and weeds and trees to pave a way to Higher Ground that God Almighty showed me. My story is one of prayer, aching, crying, begging and eventually stepping forward…..out of the boat and onto the water….and Jesus met me there. And I walked. Forward. Because I did……this girl gets to pick up where I now stand….on the water….with Jesus.
She gets to know that she knows that she knows that God is So Faithful. She gets to dream big dreams and expect that her parents will help her get there. She gets to start her journey where mine is……her floor….is my ceiling. I’m not washed up or done, but I am likely at a teaching phase and not an adventure phase for the most part. My child is hungry for what I have dipped my feet into. With God’s help, I hope she can do more than dip in…..dive in maybe? My ceiling….her floor…is where she starts and she has started years ago already.
Tonight, I have to help her pack and calm her nerves and pray her through….to things I wish I was going to experience with her….but there are 4 other kiddos here who need me to be at my ceiling-best and parent well, love well, serve well, teach….well. Oh. And a husband who is keeping up just fine but deserves some attention too, ya know? Wink wink.
If God calls our kids to missions, and if we have answered a call to missions and/or adoption, and/or supporting foster care……lets all talk about that some more, ok? Sometimes, the ceiling feels kinda lonely…….
