Survival: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Forge on in Faith?!
We had an interesting start to this year when two young foster children were placed with us. The joy of having these children placed in our home and family was worth the risk that they might go back home to their birth parents, but they were on the foster-to-adopt track, meaning that the possibility for them to be adopted might open up.
As I took them to their visits with their birth parents several times a week, I was getting mixed messages. Sometimes the situation looked like the children would be staying with us forever, and sometimes, it looked like they were going home soon. All the while, we were falling in love with them as members of our family.
Eventually, the wear and tear of the system and wondering whether or not the children were staying or leaving wore on me. The typical fight or flight response kicked in… I wanted to avoid the pain and concern that they would be going back, but I wanted to fight for them as I would for my own children. Then, the freeze response would pop up sometimes as well. I didn’t know whether to plan for them to become our own or to plan for them to be reunited, be glad for them and the birth family, and prepare ourselves for the inevitable pain of saying goodbye.
While I wish I could say that I handled it all with grace and skill, my maternal heart felt like it went through the heavy wash cycle of my Maytag machine and then got tossed into the fast, cyclical tumble of the dryer. It was a place of joy, pain, and limbo, and not one that I wanted to get comfortable with knowing any further. Yet, the end-point was not known. It was feeling unbearable. I wanted to hope that they would legally become our children, but I also wanted to hope that they would be able to be reunited for good with their birth parents, as I’d never wish a family to be torn apart. It was cognitive dissonance at its best or worst.
Fight, Flight, or Freeze may be the natural survival responses, but I needed God’s supernatural response(s). As it turns out, God taught me that there is an alternative to the three known “Fs.” He taught me that another “F” option exists, an option which must be chosen, a response which those who know Him can employ for situations when life is too much to bear. This is the option Forge forward in faith.
Forging in faith means that while we do not know the twists and turns of the path we may be on, we can trust that He will be with us each step of the way. It means that when we have no further strength of our own on which to lean, we know that our Heavenly Father’s shoulders are strong enough to lean upon. It means that when we don’t even know which way to pray, we can trust that He knows the answers and holds the outcomes.
Forging means persevering and trusting, hoping and releasing, doing our part and resting in His sovereignty. It means surrendering to His care all the messiness of our situations, all the jumble of our feelings, and all the fears, cares, and dreams.
Ultimately, it means knowing and trusting that we walk with a Heavenly Father who loves us and who gave us Romans 8:28 and knowing that: “All things work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.”
Our foster-to-adopt situation is currently at a place where those children we love have been reunited, and while it hurt to let them go, God has seen us through. The cool thing is, we were blessed to have them for the time we did, and God’s not done yet. He’s got us, their birth family, and those children in His arms, and He’s never letting go.
Are you in a situation where you need to Forge? Please share with us in the comments so that we can pray for you. You are not alone.
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