Submitted by Jane Rogers
Has anyone ever failed in what they were trying to do to help a child? If you haven’t, God bless you because if you continue, failure is going to happen sometime. Success and failure come in the same package. Did you hit the ball the first time you swung a bat? Remember the ones who hit the most home runs also strike out a lot. Don’t worry about failure; think about the chances you miss if you don’t even try. Failure happens; it is what you do afterwards that counts.
If your foster child moves on, salvage whatever you can. Try to give him some love and hope to take with them. Each experience is a chance to learn. The more we learn the greater our chances of overcoming the impossible. We never know when and how the seeds we plant will begin to grow.
We had a young man come to our home. He had taken a ride with a friend who had stolen a car. They were caught. When he came to our home his excuse was “I didn’t do anything, I was just there.” We kept telling him it was his choice to be there or not to be there. When he left our home he was sent to a low security detention center. He walked away with another person. That person killed someone to steal a car. They were caught. What do you think his excuse was? At seventeen years old he was sentenced to forty years without parole.
That was years ago. Recently we received a letter from him. He is remembering what we had been trying to teach him and he wrote to thank us. The seed we planted had started to grow. Failure and success came in the same package. It is up to us to plant that seed. Thirty nine years ago God planted a seed in our home. He blessed us with a child with Down syndrome. When he was about four years old we took in a child with a disability, so he would have a peer. God set our feet on a path that brought us about one hundred children, most with disabilities, to care for.
We are still blessed with the opportunity to plant those seeds.
~anonymous~
