The Root of It All

There's a decent chance you're exhausted in a way that's hard to explain to people who haven't done foster care. The kind of exhausted that goes bone-deep. The kind where you've given everything you had today — and yesterday, and the day before that — to a child who may not have been able to receive it, and you're sitting here wondering if any of it even matters.

I see you. And I want you to know something before you read another word: you are not on that island alone. But I also know that feeling intimately well, and let me tell you where I go when the island feels the loudest.

Jesus is my root. Not a root — the root. Every branch in my life grows from that root. My capacity to love a child who is actively making it hard to love them, my ability to stay steady when everything in me wants to react, my reason for walking back into that hard conversation one more time — all of it comes from the root. Not near it. From it.

And here's what I've learned about roots: they need tending. They don't just run on autopilot. They don't stay strong just because you know they're there.

If I'm honest, I neglected mine for a long time. I fell into temptation. I walked away from what I knew was good and right, blatantly, because the world made it easy to do so. And I think a lot of us in foster care quietly do a version of this without even realizing it. We white-knuckle the world's frameworks, the trauma-informed handouts, the best-practice trainings — leaning so hard into what the research says that we slowly set aside the one thing that was actually sustaining us. Not because we stopped believing. Because we got busy. Because we got tired. Because survival mode doesn't leave a lot of room for stillness.

I know. I've been there too. I am there right now, walking a unique chapter I've never witnessed personally.

Here's what I keep coming back to, especially on the hard nights. My relationship with God looks a lot like my kids' relationship with me. He chose to love me through my defiance. Through my testing, my walls, my walking away. Through the seasons, I was sure He was going to give up on me because honestly, I had given up on myself. And every time I came back around — crawling, walking, running, whatever I had in me — He welcomed me. With grace and love and warmth and zero "so you're finally back." Just: welcome home.

That's the picture I'm trying to replicate in my house. Not perfectly. Not without losing my composure sometimes or saying the wrong thing or going to bed wondering if I did more harm than good today. But on purpose. Intentionally. Because I know what it did to me when someone stayed when I expected them to leave. I know what it feels like when grace shows up and it's real, and it costs the other person something.

I want these kids to know that feeling. And I think you do too — otherwise you wouldn't be doing this.

So on the days you're on the island, on the days the cultivation feels impossible and the roots feel dry and you have nothing left to give and you're not sure God even sees what this costs you — He does. He is near. Near you and near your kids and near your home and near every exhausted, trying-her-hardest corner of your life.

Keep tending the root.

Not because you have it together. Not because you're doing it perfectly. But because the branches — the ones growing in your house right now, the ones you may never get to see fully bloom — they need what only the root can give.

The tree knows the difference. So do the kids sitting under it.

I am a Christian, wife, mother, and writer exploring faith, identity, and what it means to build a life that flourishes — not just functions. I have a passion for the teenagers the system forgets and the families trying to stay.