Lydia (not her real name), the five year old girl we were fostering, had been taught by her mother that she must never tell the truth about her own activities: where she had been or what she had been doing. This remarkable piece of advice Lydia communicated to me after I had noticed that she, in fact , didn’t give me simple answers to simple questions in “normal” conversations. I told Lydia that it didn’t work well in trying to understand each other if we don’t”tell true”. Then I said, “And God wants you to be a straight arrow. Do you know what that means, Lydia?”

“It means telling true! How do you know that God wants me to tell true?” she demanded. “I know because He wants me to tell true,” I answered. “Oh”, she said. She seemed convinced, and I was sure that this message was over, so I suggested that she do some coloring, and opened the coloring book randomly. It fell on a picture of a single straight arrow placed diagonally across the page. I asked Lydia if she’d like to color the straight arrow. “Yes”, she said. While she colored I talked about the difference between a straight arrow and a crooked arrow, and she listened.

Lydia didn’t stop lying after that, but she responded when I asked her if what she said was”straight arrow.” She would tell me “yes” or “no”, almost always truthfully. It wasn’t a giant improvement, but it was enough for me to thank the Lord for giving me another way to cope. I had felt that, though I could live with someone who might be less than truthful sometimes, I couldn’t live with someone who believed that lying was an important life skill.

I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that He is able to keep that which I’ve entrusted to Him until that day.” (2 Timothy 1:12)

Everything about this foster placement I had to entrust to Christ, for I was entirely inexperienced in dealing with the adults and the children in the system. Most of them were from circumstances I had only read about in the newspaper. My caseworker told me that while poverty and death of parents used to be the main reasons for the need for foster care, today the situation is much more complicated by drugs and crime. It was a small glimpse of a world that is very hard on children as well as on adults. It’s a world in which God is alive and active, looking for those , like St.Paul, who have entrusted their choices to Him.

Lydia is grown up now, and has three children of her own.

Love in Him,

Prue