Sending Out My SOS

I didn’t see it coming.

            The tyrannical rain. The dark-as-demons storm clouds. The floodwaters.

            I must have missed the warning signs, but it’s too late now. Now I’m stuck. Right in the middle of the muddy waters where I had entered to help rescue the others who didn’t know how to swim. But now, my ability to swim means nothing against the hell-like rain and dragon-like waves. My feet, my ankles, and now my calves are being swallowed by the muck as the water rises above my waistline. There’s no one left to save but me. Yet, I can’t move.

I panic. But with every movement and maneuver to try to free myself, it seems to get worse. I sink deeper. My tears mix with the rain hitting my face as I call out my SOS. Where is everyone? I wonder. Darkness seems to swallow me in, and I can’t see more than a few inches in front of my face in any direction. I choke unexpectedly when the water laps across my face, rising from the level of my collarbone. This is it. I think. I’m done. I’m going to drown. And with my last few words I yell out to the heavens, “This isn’t fair! What more did you want from me? I gave you everything! How did I end up here?”

            With the last question, my body goes still. “I have nothing left,” I whisper. How did I end up here?

I hear you whisper underneath your breath

I hear your SOS, your SOS

I hear the whisper underneath your breath

I hear you whisper you have nothing left

I will send out an army

To find you in the middle of the darkest

night, it’s true. I will rescue you.

I will never stop marching

To reach you in the middle of the hardest

fight, it’s true. I will rescue you.

                                    (From the song “Rescue” by Lauren Daigle)

            I wake up as if it’s all a dream. But my throat feels scratchy, my body aches, and my heart feels like it’s still stuck in the muck at the bottom of the ocean. I’m tired. That’s all I can say, that’s all I can hear over and over in my head, “I’m tired. I’m just so tired.”

            I may not have been in a physical hurricane, drowning in a sea of darkness, but it feels like it just the same. My spirit has fallen, I feel like my feet are stuck in the muck, and all I can tell Jesus is, “I have nothing left.” Try as I might, I cannot be my own savior.

            Burnout. The storm that hit me at my already wobbling knees, and down I went under water, gasping for air. But the truth is, though the storm burst at once, it had been forming over the years, I just ignored it. My first year I was at 100%, my second year going pretty strong at 95%. My third took a dip to probably 80%, my fourth down to 70%, my fifth, down to 60%, and I’m currently riding out the storm at a weak 50%.  You see, when it decreases slowly like that I couldn’t really tell I was only at half of who I really am. I never felt such purposelessness, emptiness, and lethargy before, and I had never been so completely and utterly un-empathetic in all my life. It truly scared me. Seeing myself so… lifeless.

             

            After time with my counselor (“You don’t need their approval” she told me), advice from my spiritual mentor (“I’ve been through burnout, too; make a strategy to get back to 100% and give yourself time”), and accountability of rest from my boyfriend (“I know you’re doing great things at the girls home today, but please get home before 6 p.m.; you need your rest, too,” he says), I felt hope again. Just the feeling of hope crashed against my lungs, though, because I hadn’t known I had let the hope go for so long. How did I not know? How did I lose hope? How did I lose myself? I realized Kate had drowned somewhere in the past couple years of ministry – the fun-loving, life-giving, crazy-dancing, goofy redhead with a flare for the impossible was now lifeless, sending out an SOS. I had buried her under the weight of the ministry.

Because The Girls had become my WHY…for everything. For example... I remember previous telling Bonolo about my dilemma in whether or not to officially adopt Benji and Lucia. I said blatantly, “I’m hesitant to adopt them because of the girls; it will cause problems and jealousy and drama…” and he cut me off immediately.

“Kate, did you hear what you just said? Your reason for not trying to adopt them is about pleasing the girls?”

Just hearing him repeat it back sent a cold shiver up my spine. But it wasn’t until my 10 day retreat, when I was removed from the world and distractions, completely unplugged yet plugged into the Spirit, that the depravity of condition came as a revelation.

It took a few days of solitude for this revelation to sink in. In my journal I wrote:

“6-18-19

                  I put them first.

                  I equated serving You as the same as serving them(the girls/ministry).

                                    #1 priority = God and the girls/ministry

                                    #2 Family, career, friends, finances, etc.  

I started living like You and The Girls were on the same level. I didn’t realize the idolatry because I justified that You are still my First. And this is true. But what’s also true is that I elevated the girls to Your level – a level that has room for only One – a level that is meant to be SET APART. Instead of being consumed by You, I was utterly consumed by them. They were my waking thought, my priority, my daily duty, my why, my god; and Kate began to drown. I didn’t know that the very ministry you called me to birth was the same ministry causing my death. 

I am so sorry, Jesus. The ministry is not my why. They are not my gods. I do not serve them nor please them. I don’t need their approval. They are not the reason I do what I do.

You are. You alone.”

         
Presented to me as good things, “angels of light,” Satan twisted what was good and holy and honorable to be the very vice that put me under. The girls had become my god. No wonder I had nothing left! My heart felt pulled apart in twenty-five different directions, each girl taking a piece of it for herself rather than for the body of Christ. 
Now, I don’t think anyone would argue with me that the work I’m doing is “good,” “honorable,” “important,” but that’s how satan deceived me, who was trying too hard to be perfect and holy; he didn’t come in the form of “sin” or passions of the flesh, he came in the form of “good, ‘holy’ things.” So I was multitasking to an impossible end; burning the candle on four ends (yes, four); responding to so-called crisis moments and cries from each girl to then painfully hear them complain because they will never be satisfied, will always have a reason to be jealous, to compare, to blame me for playing favorites or complain I didn’t love them enough, that I spend too much time helping so-and-so, etc. I let their self-fulfilling “cries," latch onto me like leaches that sucked me dry; yet, I did nothing to help myself get free because they had become a part of me, my why.

While this revelation seems simple, it was earth-shaking for me. And immediately after realizing I had lost my why and the work of the enemy was exposed, more depressing thoughts came. It almost felt like I could hear the enemy laughing at me.

“Hahaha! I knew I could twist it all up! I knew I could trick you! You fell for it! You rejected God and didn’t even know it! You drifted so far from him, that you got stuck in the muck! I threw distraction after distraction into the river, knowing you would go in because you can’t sit still, but it was all to lure you in and away from the true Savior! What do you think God thinks of you now? How can you ever move the ministry forward now knowing that you fell for the wolf in sheep’s clothing?”

On and on went these dark, depressing thoughts. And I felt miserable. Was God angry at me? After all, I failed at the one commandment I thought was so easy to follow: “You shall serve no gods before me.” How did I fall for this? I had been reading my Bible and praying every day. It's not that I had felt far from God, just empty. Was he now disappointed? Shaking his head at me? Wishing He chose someone else instead of me?

But then I was reminded that the Holy Spirit reveals our own darkness to us with tenderness and with the purpose to heal, while Satan (whose name means accuser) speaks to condemn for the purpose to destroy.

And all I could hear, even in my failure, was God my Father say, 

“Well done, good and faithful servant. I love you.”

Because He didn’t see what I have done/ or failed to do. He sees me. My heart. My SOS.

In my guilt and shame and taking on the full responsibility for my own burnout, I had been temporarily immobilized by hopelessness, but with the love of the Father, suddenly, I didn’t feel so hopeless. For, the root cause of my condition was now exposed, and it made the sun rise like never before. It’s not a ‘quick’ fix, but a simple one, and it all begins with why.

My WHY belongs only to Jesus. What I do, I do because of Him, not “them.” That way, when my love is not returned, when I am betrayed by those closest to me, when I’m lied to and my trust is broken over and over, when I am rejected or criticized and made to feel I’m never enough – it’s okay because I’m serving Jesus, not them; it was never about me and them anyway.

My WHY has been resurrected; Kate is back.   

I feel like a veil has lifted.

I am the bride again; He is my everlasting Groom.

And I am free.  

“Here I am, Lord; send me.”

[What about you? Each of us serves something/someone, even if it’s yourself. But what we serve can enslave us. The world presents freedom in a myriad of attractive, rebellious, wild, “do what feels right,” “believe what’s right for you,” ways. The irony is that “freedom” comes with chains, and lots of consequences – realistically and eternally, there is no freedom there at all. There is only one Master, and the greater irony is this: serving Him is what truly sets us free.]

Love at First Sight

I hear the giggle of a couple who are holding hands

as I leave a line of single footprints in the sand.

The ocean waves white cap close to the shore

like a surround sound stereo of remarkable white noise.

But it’s not loud enough to drown out the giggles and playful screams

of couples splashing and yelping at the icy cold sprays of ocean

or parents watching their kids run in and out of the waves like yo-yos.

“Are you lonely yet?” a voice in the wind asks and 

moves on without my answer;

I didn’t know that my single string of footprints made me out of place.

Am I alone? Yes.

But lonely? No.

The farthest from lonely I have ever been,

though it also seems like the farthest from home.

For, I’ve searched the world to find

There is no place like home

And there is no home like here.

Here.

Where there is a string of single footprints in the sand

Yet I am surrounded by love.

I run my fingers through the million grains of sand,

marveling at the smooth, warm sensation

of holding Your Hand.

My skin prickles with goosebumps as the wind skis across the ocean

and then a gentle counter-wind brushes the stray wind-whipped pieces of hair off my face,

like a lover tucking a strand of hair behind my ears.

Then the sun begins to set with eye-popping, uncapturable, undefinable colors

that can only be described as

Love at First Sight.

I can’t take my eyes off You. 

The way a whisp of clouds wraps around the sun’s waist

like a husband’s embrace.

And when the sun peeks above the horizon, barely visible before it disappears,

I hear a whisper, “I see you.”

As it sinks out of sight, flamingo pink, lilac violet, and other vibrant colors emerge

And take my breath away.

My heart skips beats as I watch the train of rays

form like a majestic robe filling the temple of heaven.

I fall in love.

All over again.

As if I never knew this feeling before.

Nothing else matters.

Not my age, not my single string of footprints, not my disappointments, failures, stresses, dreams, wishes, regrets, heartbreaks, betrayals, rewards. Nothing.

Nothing but being loved by the King.

And as if He already hasn’t done enough, he lights up the sky with millions of fireflies

dancing in the moonlight, spelling out the words

“I Love You. Be mine forever.”

I know I am home.

I am loved.

I am His.

Forever.

Someone Borrowed

Someone Borrowed

I find my isle seat on the 10-seat-wide airplane bound for Dubai from Jo-burg. The almost nine-hour flight excites me, and the upcoming four-hour layover plus another fifteen-hour flight to Chicago doesn’t bother me at all. Why? Because I get to be in my own internal bubble for the next 28 hours – uninterrupted. I’ll be surrounded by people, yes, but truly, thankfully, greedily alone in a crowded room. I haven’t always been like this – craving isolation and alone time – but recently I just can’t get enough of it. Life has utterly consumed me. Yet, I’ve put on a good show, kept up my strong front, marched into the battles, painted on my smiles, posted the positivity to social media – hoping that I can just fake it till I make it, trying to convince myself that everything is fine, and really I’m okay, just tired – that’s all.

But that’s not all.

Being tired of making plans, tired of being patient, tired of giving second chances, tired of empathy, tired of pain, tired of disappointment, tired of loss, tired of my attitude, tired of my poor mothering or poor leading, tired of multitasking, tired of unanswered prayers, tired of letting someone down… that’s not “just being tired.” That’s a dangerous condition of spiritual depletement, of compassion fatigue, of emotional emptiness. It’s like being a soldier coming back home with PTSD after a war – only my wars are spiritual battles against an unseen enemy, and serving very, very wounded and sometimes lifeless victims.

So, I’m soaking in the next 28 hours as a benefit. Not only that, but I also didn’t tell anyone I was coming home, except my siblings. The plan is to surprise Mom for Mother’s Day, then celebrate my friend’s wedding, and then rest rest rest for the remainder of the two weeks.

I put on my headphones and look through the movie selections. I saw previews for the movie “Instant Family” while in Eswatini (Swaziland), so when I see it as a selection for the flight, I eagerly put it on. Little did I know…

I’m giggling and bawling so much I have to get up, go to the bathroom, and get more Kleenex. Not sure my neighbors enjoyed hearing me blow my nose for almost 2 hours, but I couldn’t help it. It is is too close to home. Far too close to my heart. But in a good way, it evokes the tears and emotions and grief of my own that I’ve buried, as I watch a married couple go through the same pains and joys I have experienced over the past five+ years…of basically being a foster mom, which by now feels more like an interim mom, a borrowed mom.

As I watch the movie and witness the teenage girl do anything to get her birth mom back in the picture - even defame, reject, and hurt her foster parents in the process – the pain of my own rejection, being badmouthed or defamed behind my back, and being hurt purposely by the very ones I gave my life to help emerges in pools of tears down my cheeks. Yet, my tears are for the teenaged girl, too. They are for her inability to accept love, to believe in hope. They are for her desire to be loved by and belong to her birth mother, to want to believe that she is worthy. Oh yes, this is all too familiar for me. But in the process of watching the movie and reliving my own pain, I begin to discover the source of my bitterness, the source of my compassion fatigue, the source of my pain. I feel like I am only someone borrowed. Someone used to fill in the gaps, someone used to provide stability, hope, but then they move on. Just as something borrowed is never kept, neither am I. I am not their real mom, and I never will be. They will always want their real mom(or dad), no matter where she/he is, who she/he is, or what she/he has done to the child.

I remember vividly the first time Benji taught me this a couple months ago. I thought it would be Lucia who would make the first comments like this, and I didn’t think it would be for a couple years yet. But I was on my knees in the bathroom as Benji sat on the toilet seat with an injured knee. His scraped knee was infected and I was tending to the disgusting amount of puss coming out as I squeezed it. He screamed in pain and as he continued to cry, he spat, “I don’t want you, I want make!” I was stunned at his innocent comment, more so stunned at how sharp it hit me in the heart. Like a sword piercing my own soul. He’s only five, and he’s already saying he wants his birthmom? I’m not good enough already. My pain turned rapidly into anger and I threw the bandage and ointment down on the floor and yelled, “Then go and find her! If you want her, go get her!” and stormed out of the room in tears. My anger wasn’t at him, though. It was at her. I was so angry at her, not just for abandoning her kids but for abandoning me. The perpetual runaway. The habitual promise-breaker. For those few moments, I wanted to hate her. And I wanted to pack the kids up like a box of returned goods I never ordered. I didn’t ask for this! I yelled to God. They want their real mom, then send them to their real mom! Where is she, huh? What has my 10 year long prayer for her ever done? How long must I wait? How long will my prayer go unanswered? When will you do something for me? I never asked for this!  I start to cry again, this time realizing my own self-pity and hating my bitter outburst.

I wish it was just that once, and I wish it was just with Benji and Lu. But it’s the same type of situation with all my girls, especially the runaways and now the older ones who are transitioning out. At a certain age, no one is as good as birthmom or birthdad, no matter the situation. No one can replace that bond, the sense of belonging. In as much as we try to create a family at the girls homes, for some, they never see it that way. In the movie, when the couple first wants to pick foster kids, they notice that all the teenagers are grouped together and no adults want to go and talk to them, let alone foster or adopt them. And the teenagers know it. This happens with us, too. Most of the girls we get are older because other homes won’t take them, they are beyond the acceptance age (usually before 12 years old). And I see why. They are hard. They know they are with us for just a couple years, so why make it a home? Why risk seeing us as family? In the movie, the fact that the teenagers are overlooked moves the couple, though, and they sign up for a girl who comes with two younger siblings, and so begins the journey they “never signed up for.” At one point, the couple is so exasperated that they tell each other they are done, they want to send the kids away, and for a moment they are serious. But the comments quickly fade and the wife says, “We’re never going to do that are we?” Her husband responds, “Nope. We’re stuck.” That scene honestly refreshed and encouraged me. I didn’t feel so evil or alone for wishing to quit, wanting to ship kids off, or throw in the towel and still escape a hero.

And then near the end of the movie, when the kids are going to get placed back with their birth mom, I was empowered by the grandma’s encouragement to the couple to fight for the kids.

“She doesn’t hate you, she just thinks you don’t love her. You get reminded what a sack of sh*t you are five times a day, after a while, you can’t believe anyone could ever love you.” And as I watch the couple both fight and let go all at the same time, I wonder if my “letting go” has been my excuse to give up instead of an essential balance to the continual fight of love.

Did I let go or give up? Because there’s a fine line. Did I let go because it’s a piece of the puzzle or did I give up because I’m tired of being someone borrowed?

After five years of raising the girls, the staff, and spirit in the home, more joyous yet painful moments are coming. The ones of letting go. The ones of watching the girls grow out of me being “mom” like they once adorned me with the most honoring name. The moments of letting go to watch them test their own wings, pave their own destinies, with or without me. And then there are those special moments every full moon or so, the far off steps of the returning prodigals, that make me realize it’s not over yet.

So, as I land in Chicago, I wipe my tears, I embrace the brokenness, so I no longer have to fake it. And after 2 weeks of resting in Love Himself, I know I’ll see myself again as being more than someone borrowed. After all, to Him, I am someone purchased, ransomed with a price no one can replace. I am His “instant family.” And that alone makes every breath, every tear, every smile, every hug, every reprimand, every battle, every loss, every prayer… worth it. All of it.   

   

  

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