Harriet Tubman and a Month of Absence

It’s been a month since the kids left, and I don’t have words to express the heartache I’ve succumbed to. Every day I struggle to garner the motivation to engage in the world around me. I find myself praying the most powerful, desperate prayer a Christian can utter: “Lord, help.” Lacking the vocabulary and strength to plead anything else, I repeat those two words like a leaky faucet, a constant, steady drip.

A huge, unexpected blessing is we’ve been in contact with the kids and were able to see them a few days ago for the first time since they left. It was good… but I could barely get out of bed the next morning. To hear them call us Mom and Dad and see their eyes well up with tears when they couldn’t come home with us was gut-wrenching. We’re trying to offer all the support and encouragement we possibly can to their new caregiver while also navigating our own loss. Juggling those two things is excruciating. Putting on that happy face and being a resource for someone else to parent the kids when it’s killing me inside is a challenging new chapter of foster care I haven’t experienced yet. It’s forcing yourself to be strong and selfless when all you want to do is throw a large pity party, lash out, or make demands.

The grieving process comes in stages. We took a last minute trip to Florida to escape from everything for a while. I put off dealing with my emotions until we came back (I mean sort of. I did almost cry in a Florida Cracker Barrel at the sight of minature cowboy boots my foster son would have loved), but now that we’ve been back a few days, we’ve returned to the frigid Minnesota tundra and empty bedrooms. Vacation was fantasy land; being back home is confronting hard realities.

One of those hard realities is noticing the age gap between my biological sons. They’re 6 years apart, but we never saw the age difference since there were always two other kids sandwiched between them. For the first time, I’ve gotten comments on the age gap. It’s like everyone can see the balance of our family is thrown off, and something is missing. Now when I look at them, I don’t see brothers who will grow up playing together. I see my youngest being an only child in the house for 6 years after my oldest moves out. Our family just doesn’t feel complete anymore.

Yesterday, we read a biography on Harriet Tubman from cover to cover. She endured trial after trial in her lifetime, but she never once let fear overcome her or lost sight of God in the midst of hardships. What impressed me most was she never seemed to question God in the darkness. She was hunted, overworked, carried the weight of responsibility for hundreds of innocent lives, and her husband moved on and married another while she was leading slaves to freedom. Yet, she never wavered. She somehow understood her purpose and had such a close relationship with the Lord that she heard his voice in order to escape a myriad of dangers on the underground railroad and throughout the Civil War. Her faith and how she was used by God are downright awe-inspiring.

And here I am, questioning whether or not God cares, if he actually has a plan for these kids, and wondering if we’re destined to be damaged goods for life. Why did it end this way? Why did it last so long to end this way? Couldn’t God have spared us all the heartache by having us part ways years ago? Why is it He seemed to intervene countless times to give them the stability of being in our home to have that yanked out from under their feet now? I have questions. I have a few bones to pick the author of life.

Harriet Tubman said:

’Twant me, ’twas the Lord. I always told him, “I trust to you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,” and he always did.

God’s time is always near. He gave me my strength and set the North Star in the heavens. He meant I should be free.

That last quote stayed with me. We’re in this lifelong struggle to understand God and to figure out our purpose on earth. We put the same questions to God that Job did thousands of years ago: why is this happening? Why am I suffering? And He comes back in the whirlwind with the booming reply that his ways are higher than our ways… It’s not exactly comforting.

We’re promised persecution and told to rejoice in trials “for suffering produces endurance, and endurance produced character, and character produces hope (Romans 5:3-4).” It seems our fate for misfortune to guide our paths. And yet, God has set eternity in the human heart (Ecclessiastes 3:11). Harriet Tubman knew God’s purpose for her life because of the innate design of his creation. She didn’t question her thirst for freedom because God set that North Star in the heavens.

When I reframe my present troubles in that light, I lean on the truth of God’s love. He loves the kids. He also created me with enough love in my heart to pour out on them. He didn’t allow love in our lives to permanently cripple us in its absence. That’s just not his design. I can theorize all day that maybe we’re different, and the trials coming our way will cut so deep we can’t recover… but I don’t think I’m the unfortunate exception. God still loves us. There’s a purpose presiding over our lives.