Sometimes love is a lot of work. I wish I could tell you that 90 percent of what I am able to do in our home is sit down for life-changing heart-to-hearts with the girls and help them come to amazing realizations about their inherent worth and the love of a God of grace. And I wish that when I opened the door to the Barton Home on the night of these girls' arrivals that those would be the kind of things that naturally happened in the course of our relationship. However, it takes a lot of time and a lot of work before these culminations have even a chance of being our reality. Sometimes love just takes a lot of work.
Before I ever find myself in a heart-to-heart, I must first be the limit-setter, the boundary-enforcer, the disciplinarian, because strangely, it is through these things (among others) that I am able to earn trust. Before I can impart any kind of idea about value or faith, I must first live it out and humbly be ready to admit my own failures to do so. Before I am able to paint the picture that most people have in their heads of what I do, I have so much work to do. So much work from the time the door opens in welcome until in closes in departure and even afterward. So much to do. And it can be frustrating when all I want to be doing is sitting and listening to their stories and encouraging their hearts. It can be tiresome, too. But what I am realizing more and more is that all the work is part of the love, too. In my own broken, human way, I am imparting love when I put in all the work. It is love before it is recipricated. It is love before it is noticed. It is love before it is known. Because if I don't give the love... the patience, kindness, goodness, self-control ...in the beginning, I won't ever even reach the kind of love that I can recognize or feel or on a really great day, see the results of. But its still love and it is still needed in a huge way. I have to remember that all the work creates small deposits into the bank of their hearts that allow the vessel to slowly open more and more to let what it has recieved change them. And to remember that...to DO that...takes all the strength the Lord can give me.
Before I ever find myself in a heart-to-heart, I must first be the limit-setter, the boundary-enforcer, the disciplinarian, because strangely, it is through these things (among others) that I am able to earn trust. Before I can impart any kind of idea about value or faith, I must first live it out and humbly be ready to admit my own failures to do so. Before I am able to paint the picture that most people have in their heads of what I do, I have so much work to do. So much work from the time the door opens in welcome until in closes in departure and even afterward. So much to do. And it can be frustrating when all I want to be doing is sitting and listening to their stories and encouraging their hearts. It can be tiresome, too. But what I am realizing more and more is that all the work is part of the love, too. In my own broken, human way, I am imparting love when I put in all the work. It is love before it is recipricated. It is love before it is noticed. It is love before it is known. Because if I don't give the love... the patience, kindness, goodness, self-control ...in the beginning, I won't ever even reach the kind of love that I can recognize or feel or on a really great day, see the results of. But its still love and it is still needed in a huge way. I have to remember that all the work creates small deposits into the bank of their hearts that allow the vessel to slowly open more and more to let what it has recieved change them. And to remember that...to DO that...takes all the strength the Lord can give me.
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