Unexpected Visitors

"Hello?"

"Hi.  I'm calling from the Department of Children and Family Services.  We have a child who has been taken into protective custody and is in need of a foster home.  Would you be interested?"

Whenever I receive a phone call from a social worker, asking me if I can take a child into my home, I usually have a general idea of what I am getting myself into.  I am given the child’s age, gender, brief background and family information, and any known problems or challenges.  I know that I will host these little visitors who will have needs that I will try to meet, who will stay temporarily, and then will leave to continue their journey with someone else.  I anticipate welcoming them into my home for as long as necessary.

However, there have been a few visitors along the way who have entered my home by surprise.  During the monotonous routines of daily life while battling the weariness of attending to the many needs of my fluctuating family, these visitors have suddenly come knocking at my door asking me to let them in.  The names of my unexpected visitors?  Resentment and Doubt.

The Wild Ride

I am a twin.  My twin sister gave birth to twins, as did my cousin, my grandmother, and great-aunt.  It’s pretty evident that twins are an inherited trait in my family.  It is providential, therefore, that even though I am biologically unable to pass along the family genetics, I have been able to experience the joys of being a mother to twins.  It didn’t just happen by accident, though, nor even by my own calculated efforts.  As only God can do, He had been preparing my husband and me to be parents, placing us in just the right place at exactly the right time, and interconnecting plenty of isolated incidents in order to miraculously deliver twins into our family.

Five Mothers

Once upon a time, in a country far, far away, a beautiful newborn boy entered the world into the waiting arms of his young mother.  Now, normally a child will have just one mother who will love and care for him during his entire life, but occasionally God has a different plan.  He blesses some children with more than one mother.  This particular baby will have had five different mothers who will have loved him before his first birthday.  This is the story of an innocent child making an incredible journey, touching the hearts and lives of those five mothers along the way.