Ready

I am ready for a new chapter in my life to start. I am ready to live for someone else and not just for myself. I am ready for God to use me to make a life brighter. I am ready.

Or so I think. I am thinking about tomorrow, meeting with the woman who's doing my home study. Will she think I'm ready? Is my house ready? Is the kid's room ready? Am I emotionally/physically/fiscally prepared for the change that could be coming my way?

Am I ready to wait, and wait some more? Am I ready to know how badly we humans really treat one another? Am I ready to love the way a hurt child needs to be loved? Am I ready to let that child go, and in the process, have my heart shattered? Am I?

Those are my questions and my prayers as I head to bed tonight. I know what I am able to do and who I am able to be is perfectly orchestrated by God, but it's SO hard to turn off all the questions and the doubts, and to quiet the stubborn, insufficient places within me.

This is my prayer tonight: God, you are so good. you give us all that we need to take each breath. You are a good, loving, generous Father, who gives to us in abundance. Lord, do not let me rest on that abundance. Do not let me stagnate in my own insecurities. Father. let me trust you now, and every day, that you lead me down paths that are good for me and glorifying to you. Thank you, Lord, for your hand guiding me to this point. Thank you for sweet, loving friends who have supported me on this journey. Thank you, without measure, for the perfect life and gruesome death of your Son, which allow me to stand before you and continue to ask for more than I deserve. Lord, give me grace on this journey. Let me show some sliver of your light to Chris, who will be conducting my home study. Let me love the children you place in my care. Help me to gently and genuinely pray for their families, that even while their kids are with me, you would knit them back together and make them whole, through your Son. Lord, let me love the way you love. Let me pour into these little lives the same kind of sacrificial love you have poured into me. Lord, show me again and again that the right path is almost never the easiest path. Move in me, Lord, so that I may love these kids until it hurts me, so that their hearts and bodies and lives can heal. And I pray, Lord, that these kids and their families would run to You and cling to You as the one who provides more than we can ever ask. Lord, may it be true, now more than ever, that I cannot make things worse. Amen.

I think I'm ready.