Episode 9: A conversation with Karina Venable about foster parenting, adoption, and carrying on when life feels like death

Karina and I enjoy a conversation about all sorts of subjects. Karina is a woman of God who I very much appreciate for her wisdom, peace, and kindness. She is an enthusiastic mom, wife, friend, and loving family member. I feel like I rediscovered a little about Karina and her heart for prayer in this podcast.

She is writing for her church from time to time and is open to being contacted on social media. She writes at her blog karinavenable.wordpress.com and would love to hear from you there too!

When we started talking about her and David fostering kids my heart just broke a little. Karina is fierce, strong, persistent, and kind…in my opinion that’s a winning combination!

Something Karina said that I think is amazing and will stick with me…

“Good things grow slowly.”

“Read his word and take him at his word.”

At one point in their fostering journey the pain was so great she didn’t want to wake up. Boy… Karina is someone who knows how to walk with her God!

Mystery, Magic, Parenting and Fear

There’s probably more in this title than I ought write in this one post. My friend and guest, Katie Robinson, on The 11:38 Podcast, and I were recently chatting after our interview and the topics of heaven, parenting, humility, and fear came up. She said, there’s another blog post…so here goes…

Me:

“Amen! I think and have thought for a long time now that the grey is where life is lived. I think we as younger Christians live in black and white. It’s easier and helpful. Don’t touch the burning stove. Don’t run in the busy street. Parenting is good this way too in my belief with younger kids. But life is difficult with all of its mysteries and so too is parenting with all of the deep waters of the heart. Mystery and magic (as C.S. Lewis) called it is vital to life but for us Christians- life in Christ. Mystery evokes fear (sometimes bad fear) but thus the exhortations of the Scriptures (often and numerous) to “not fear and take heart”!! Just some quick thoughts.

The context was a text conversation about dying, the afterlife, and what we were saying is most of life being mystery. Katie mentioned, and I agree, that her thinking and beliefs have shifted towards the grey from the black and white. Many more things in life might be considered mystery than we might want to admit.

I for one want to admit such mystery…for to me there lies awe. At the intersection of mystery and magic is awe. Awe in the God who knows all things and held Wisdom with him in the beginning. Awe in the God who forms the human heart into essentially the size of our fist and yet contains the deepest of waters as to make full exploration perhaps the truest last frontier of man. I am simply in awe of God…my God…his name is Jesus!

As for parenting…well much can be said and perhaps ought to be said. Not that my words might add some novel approach to one of Societies’ noble tasks, but rather to bless my children, my friends, and honor both my God and my parents. Still in the middle of raising 3 kids in our house and having been blessed to be a father to an adult daughter and now her family (including our grandson) I remember the days of black and white. Those seem like easy days now. And yet each of my kids with their deep watered hearts land me more in the grey of life…and fortunately I’m color blind. :) So I want to trust my God who knows them well. I want to do my part to impart magic into them as I explore the mystery of life with them. I want to entrust each and every one of them to my God who has also become their God and who knows how to bring color to the grey of life.

What do you think of such matters?