I haven’t slept much in the last week, and I was starting to feel a little grouchy with my family today.

I’m trying to do too many things and felt (probably accurately) that I was in over my head with all of the appointments, emails, phone #s, work deadlines, plans with friends, homeschool co-op, etc.

Sweet baby girl was placed with us 8 days ago. Besides the UFO I’m pretty sure I just saw while I was walking the dog, things are going well overall. I’ll chalk that up to sleep deprivation and move on because I don’t have time to fret about extraterrestrial activity!

Prayer And Foster Care

Everyone was in love with baby girl at first phone call! The older kids stayed up hours past bedtime while we waited for her to arrive and my mom and my sister even came to meet her that night. Everyone took turns holding and snuggling her!

As soon as I got off the phone with our licensing worker, we started praying for baby girl and her momma. We desperately wanted to submit every ounce of this situation to the Lord! God is Sovereign over all things, but the Bible tells us that he intervenes on behalf of the prayerful (John 15:7, Matt. 21:22, 1 John 5:14 just to name a few).

The sad thing is, as soon as I started feeling really tired, prayer was one of the first things I chucked out the window.

**NOTE** In true overtired parent fashion, this post was never finished and is finally being resumed three months later! Baby Girl is still with us.

I felt like I needed to make sure my other kids weren’t sacrificing anything they cared about during this transition and didn’t feel displaced by our newest family member.

I felt like I needed to be in control of my time and still do ALL of the things I love. Hey, I’ve worked hard to train our other kids to be flexible and to build up their endurance hiking and act semi-decent in public – don’t I evveeerrr get to reap those benefits?! Babies just feel like a setback!

And praying? Who has time for that when there are meals to make, bottles to clean, diapers to change, sleep deprivation to cry about, writing deadlines, and don’t forget homeschooling?!?!

Ugh, there I go again worshipping the idols of this world and forsaking the creator of the universe. Prayer is paramount! It’s essential to survival in times of plenty and it is the only lifeline that can save us when things feel impossible. And believe me, in foster care, things feel I.M.P.O.S.S.I.B.L.E.

Thankfully, Romans 8:5 reminds me that “… those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.”

When my focus is on God (and not on how much sleep I’m missing), I act according to the Spirit. I serve and I sacrifice joyfully because I’m not in the flesh. I’m new and I have the Holy Spirit working supernatural miracles in my everyday life.

And so, I repent for not praying. For not submitting myself to the Lord and relying on Him. For worshipping idols like getting everything done, and sacrificing my well-being and my family’s to them. A Spirit-filled life is full of prayer in the forms of praise, thankfulness, pleas, and questions.

We are blessed with this opportunity to love Baby Girl (and her mom!) for a season and that means staying home more, living slowly (which I claim to love but always forsake in the name of getting more done), and not sleeping very much and trusting the Lord to provide patience for us nonetheless. And asking all my friends and family to pray that Baby Girl will start sleeping soon.