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I have never broken a bone, but I think a lot of that is due to my graciously loose joints. My right hip is one of the ones that is especially loose. And lately, it has been more sore than normal. Aggravated by weather, a strain, a pull, a lengthy car ride, sitting too long at a desk... I honestly don’t remember the recent trigger, and it is likely a combination of those things.
My physical therapist sister has encouraged me with some specific exercises that can help keep it in line and strengthen neighboring muscles. Yet my primary purpose today is not to regale you with my physical ailments.
Rather, I want to draw some parallels between our physical and spiritual state because literally and figuratively, or even spiritually speaking, my hip hurts.
Remember when Jacob and God wrestled all night and the next morning, as a part of his blessing, the angel wrenched Jacob’s hip? What an awesome war story Jacob got for his hip injury! Glorious story or not, the truth hurt. And every time his hip bothered him, it was a gentle reminder of his time of wrestling with God.
I am learning to treat the physical pain in my hip as a spiritual reminder of God’s patient wrestling with me through the watches of the night. He is faithful. And He has a plan. My pain is minimal in relation to His mighty working to mold me into His image and lead me in His way everlasting.
I will spare you the enumeration of my detailed wrestlings with God in this context, but I know that you have them too. What are you wrestling over right now? What is God teaching you through this time?
As we conclude our emphasis on women’s spiritual health this month, I encourage you to share the battles and the lessons with a Christian sister and friend, an Iron Rose Sister. Just as God Himself works in us using the firmness of iron, sharpening us to be His best instrument possible, He gives us Christian sisters that can serve as iron sharpening iron. And as God, the Divine Gardener, treats us with the tender delicacy of a rose, He places others in our lives to encourage us in the areas we are striving to grow and bloom.
Take a moment today to share your wrestlings with an Iron Rose Sister. Pray together through the Common Threads and you walk together on the journey toward healing and fullness in Christ.
#IronRoseSister #spiritualhealth #CommonThreads #wrestlingwithGod
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Meet Carla Sumner, Secretary for the Iron Rose Sister Ministries Board of Directors!
Carla, tell us a little about yourself and your family, especially how you and your husband have been blessed to be a part of the foster care system.
My husband, Ryan, and I have been married for 22 years (23 in August). We have three kids. John is 22. Lexi is 20 and Anna is 13. John and Lexi are adopted. Actually, we fostered to adopt them. God had His plan in that part of our story.
We started out offering respite care (when a foster family needs a break, we take care of the kids, like for a weekend). With Lexi, we took care of her for a weekend because the family was going to a family reunion. Then we watched her again in August and joked with her foster family that they might just not get her back. We got to visit her again several times and the older couple that was fostering her realized that they would not be able to adopt her. They were an older couple and wanted her to go to a young family. She became a permanent part of our family on September 18, two days after the due date for a child we had miscarried.
Lexi had been in the foster system for two and a half years when she came to live with us. We adopted John when he was seven, but he had been in the foster system for four years. I finally got pregnant with Anna after years of trying. And that’s our family.
I am a licensed speech language pathologist and my husband is a special education teacher, so we were uniquely equipped to help children, especially if there are any delays in their development. We feel like foster care is something God has called us to do. Neither of us grew up with it in our own families, but I was always taught to serve and help. This was one way to do that.
We have been out of the foster system for the past fifteen years, but last September we jumped back in because some friends had a four-year-old boy with very similar issues to our son. After all we had learned in our experience with him, we knew that we could help this family and make a difference in that boy’s life.