The Owners Manual?
Child Protective Services shows up right on time, Thursday afternoon to the house. We have been anxiously awaiting the delivery of our two boys “A” and “B” (protected for legal reasons) for over a week. Unlike most parents who get a 9 month gestation period, we had about 9 days; quite a culture shock for both them and us.
We meet the boys in the driveway and carry them inside, everyone eager to see how this is all going to turn out. The CPS worker comes into the living room and looks at us as if we were pros and this is the umpteenth time that we have fostered children.
Long pause, uncomfortable silence with all of us just looking at each other like teenagers at their first school dance just hoping the other will say something clever to break the awkward moment and I say “so, do we get a receipt or something?”
After the initial, ‘are you kidding me’ look wore off the CPS workers face she says “oh, yea I have lots of paperwork for you to sign.” She wasn’t kidding either. For the next thirty minutes we signed more paperwork than I did when I bought my first house.
Somewhere in the madness I am certain that I signed for an owner’s manual, but I haven’t have enough time to find it, let alone read it from the constant feeding, burping, changing, playing, feeding, burping…did I mention changing…routine.
In the midst of the last week of chaos and instant family addition, we had failed to realize that we don’t know the first thing about parenting. In the last twenty-four hours I have had at least seven ‘ah-ha’ moments and a half-dozen “wont do that agains”. Don’t these things come with instructions? Sometimes we do the same thing with our Christian life.
If we come to Jesus later in life we have the appearance of ability and understand that comes from age and physical maturity and it is assumed, from us and everyone around us, that this should just come natural. Yet we don’t know the first thing about walking by faith and living a Spirit filled life. After several ‘ah-has’ and ‘wont do that agains’ we start to learn how to function as a Christian in a fallen world.
The difference between becoming a new first time parent (foster or otherwise) and a New Believer is that as a Christian we have an Instruction Manual. The Bible has often been referred to as “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”. It tells us everything we need to know if we will take the time to read.
I may not have an instruction manual for my new boys so I am going to make a lot of mistakes before I get this figured out; but I do for life. My prayer is that each of us makes it a priority to read and apply what God has so graciously written down for us.
