By Kat Silverglate ©2023

She had irrepressible hope. And then it was tested.

“Up until the very moment she drew her last breath, I knew God would heal my mother. I posted healing prayers around the walls of her room and showed up at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day to claim them over her life. Minutes into my healing prayers one day, she took her last breath. The nurses saw it coming, but I refused to let it stop me from believing she would be healed. I just couldn’t believe He let her die.”

On a timeline one might call ridiculously providential, Carlisa first shared this story with me during Lent, a time commemorating Christ’s testing in the desert and our reflection on our own human frailty. With this dramatic opening to her crisis of hope, the stage was set for either a dark tragedy or a redemptive epic. Her peace filled demeanor foreshadowed the latter.    

A talented musician who performed on world stages and co-founded the Bahamas National Children’s Choir, her mom didn’t have just one end-of-life celebration, she had three.

“I participated in all of it, but I felt so betrayed by God. Those promises seemed like fairytales now. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to do with Him.”

Carlisa, in her grief-stricken state...

This was going to be a bit of a challenge since she and her husband earned an income from the church as worship leaders. A YouTube clip of the funeral shows one eulogizer speaking these words over her and her siblings by name: “May God sustain you in the faith … Carlisa...”

Prophetic considering what was to come.

The anger hit when she got home. And it hit hard. She withdrew from church adopting this mantra:

She felt shame and guilt about it, but she simply couldn’t deny what was going on inside.  To anybody who attempted to crack open the door to a singing opportunity, the words “I don’t sing anymore” came back with a definitive slam. Eventually, laying bare the rage in her heart toward God to a friend who had also lost her mom, she braced for a holy rebuke. Instead, she got this:

It was a game changer leaving the door to holy communication slightly ajar. She started to ask herself God questions again.

“If we don’t do God anymore, what do we do? What does ‘not doing God’ look like?”

By the Lord’s amazing grace, she found her way to Grief Share, a faith-based grief group that systematically helped her process her pain and her brutally honest faith questions. “It saved my life.” But it was a sermon on sovereignty that would plant a seed that would define the tap root of her future hope. She can quote the essence of it from memory:

“You get to a point in your walk with the Lord where God is God. If He takes something away, He’s God. If He gives, He’s God. He is good and He is love but He is also in charge.”

If subplots give texture to the main plot, Carlisa’s story had nine – her nine foster children.[1] “That sovereignty message became real to me through the kids” some of whom arrived before her mom died and some after. You see, the tests that would sustain her in her faith and contribute to the strength of her hope muscle began years before her mother died. Only those early tests felt more like annoying pokes than fiery furnaces.  

Married at 23, Carlisa knew she wanted children one day but also felt the luxury of time. Six years later, nearly 30, her Goddaughter entered the world. She was smitten with this kiddo as were her parents. So they pressed: “Do you plan to have children,?” Music education degree in hand and finally settled into a rewarding job, was this the right time?

One day, a thought came from nowhere: “Orphans are everywhere, not just in faraway places like Africa and India. They are here too.” It was invasive. As if an uninvited visitor with a private key had opened a hidden passage to her heart where this notion kept creeping in. Another day in a hopelessly long grocery checkout line, she spotted a faith book on one of those round racks. “I might as well read while I wait,” she thought. The book flipped open to a story about a couple so moved by a presentation on foster care, they got licensed and welcomed twin toddlers to their home.

The story penetrated her soul so deeply that day, she tells it now by memory. By the time the birth family wanted the twins back, they were deeply in love. Their broken-hearted decision to never do THAT again was waylaid by a baby boy in need. So never became just this time with one proviso – they would try to adopt right away. The adoption was going swimmingly until the agency discovered the boy had siblings. An adoptive family willing to keep the sibs together would have priority.

Standing in the checkout line between Juicy Fruit gum and the National Inquirer, Carlisa was filled with emotion as she read the last paragraph – turns out, the boy’s siblings were the twin girls they desperately wanted to keep. As she closes the book, she has the slightest sense that God may actually be trying to get her attention, but she rejects it. “God can’t want me to do this, I’m so busy!” So, she pays for the groceries… and the book.

She knew nothing about foster care. Nada. But the God-incidences became so intense, she would have no choice but to question whether God was testing her willingness to acknowledge His hand in all of it and respond to His nudges by learning more.  

She gets a paper cup in the Wendy’s line and notices “support national foster care month” on the side. She walks into a restaurant grand opening and spots a giant chalk art drawing on the back wall – 4Kids: Loving Children from Hard Places. The owner’s wife had been a foster kid. The proceeds from the opening would go to 4Kids, a local fostering agency. Now she knew the name of an actual agency. At this point, Carlisa says it felt like

“my insides were on fire.”

Helping out with worship rehearsal at church, she sees an older couple with a child. As she admires the baby, they share: “We just became foster parents.” She knows God is screaming at her now, so she tries to block the reception: “I don’t want to talk to you about this.” Months pass. She comes off a stage after leading praise and worship and sits to unbuckle her shoe when a flyer on the floor catches her eye: “Make a difference in a child’s life today. Foster.”

She begins to yield. Decides to pray about it. Finally talks to her husband who listens attentively. And while she did take a bold step to sling the seed of the idea into the soil of his heart where it would begin to root, she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to water it.

Life goes on.

And then Joyce Meyer comes to Orlando. In the car on the way to see Joyce, Carlisa shares what’s going on with her copilot, a good friend. The cup, the chalk art, the faith book, the flyer. She listens. They go in and Dr. Meyer, who sometimes advocates for victims of human trafficking as part of her ministry, tells the audience, “I’m feeling something different today. I want to talk about fostering children… There’s someone here today that needs to consider fostering a child.” Her friend turns bright red.

She bawls like a baby. She’s convinced.

“It was stupid clear at this point.”

The Tap Root Moment

While the journey from “yes Lord” to fostering nine children could fill a whole ‘nother mission called proVISION (or even a book), we are going to fast forward to a singular moment with one of her kids. Keep in mind that this child wasn’t conceived when Carlisa and her husband said yes to God. She wasn’t even conceived when her mother died. Yet now, after going through a lot in her few short years of life, she found herself in Carlisa’s home feeling mad. Really mad. Mad for no apparent reason. Mad for reasons she couldn’t articulate at her young age. Carlisa waits for a moment of a calm.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“I WANT my mommy,” the child says with an anger that resembles Carlisa’s after her mom died. With an anger that essentially communicated: “YOU aren’t my mommy. I don’t do YOU as my mommy.”

It is almost as if God curated this moment for her. Like God had chosen and prepared and tested this one woman who could handle her being angry and disappointed with her because she had been angry and disappointed with God. She had spoken to God in just this way and it didn’t deter Him from loving her.

Her response to the child comes with little forethought:

“I want my mommy too.”

There’s a pause. This little one realizes for the first time that this foster mama has felt her pain. The pain of wanting something that has been taken away. Something you can’t bring back no matter how desperately you miss it. Instantly, their shared loss fosters connection.

“Does it make you sad?” Carlisa asks.

“Yes,” the child says with an ache. And then, the now less angry girl, surprises Carlisa by reaching deeper into her foster mama’s suffering to see what she will find there.

“Does it make you sad Mama Lisa?”

“Of course it does” she says without an ounce of shame; with a tested hope that would not bend to her anger; with a faith that had been sustained through trials.  

The Trajectory of Hope

The Apostle Paul tells us that

“…suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame…”

Romans 5:3-5.

In short, God assures us that Hope does not disappoint! Carlisa will tell you that it didn’t and it doesn’t and it never will, because God is good and He is loving and He is also in charge. And while she doesn’t understand why the Lord went all that way to ready her and her husband to be messengers of hope in a zillion tiny moments with these foster children, she can say without hesitation to these kids that her tests have led to a hope that will not disappoint them. Will not disappoint her. Will not disappoint you. No matter how confusing or hard the struggle.

Our May Mission Challenge:

Your Mission Pack this month is overflowing with equipping pieces. Consider this your Test Kit. If you don't have one or would like to receive them monthly by snail mail, we'll be thrilled to send 'em your way. The sign up link is here: Get Started! They are free. We recommend that you check two boxes to start: 1. Regular Mission Packs in the mail monthly, and 2. ONE email a month [which has the podcast and other links].

1. First, pull out that large sticker that says “YOU HAVE BEEN TESTED.” We’ve all been tested. Tried. Our faith challenged. All of us. Our first mission is to make a list of the trials that have tested our faith. Can you look back and see how God sustained you? Carried you? Pursued you? What grew? Changed? Perhaps your trials have led to disappointment in God? Anger? Resentment? In the words of Carlisa’s wise friend, God can handle your anger. Write it out. Talk to Him. Open the door to holy communication. Watch what He does.

• Second, pull out that round sticker that says YOU WILL BE TESTED. For most of us, the thought that tests will come is daunting. Dreadful. We don’t love tests. But what if we saw our future through the lens of Romans 5? The building of a hope that does not disappoint? Does not bring shame! Romans 5:5 goes on to say that “hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Our second mission challenge is to meditate on the way Romans 5:3-5 may impact the way we face future trials. Because they will come!

•  Third, pull out that sticker that says “I WANT TO BE INSPECTED BY _____” with a small heart at the bottom. When we are tested, what is in our hearts is revealed to us. Tests bring out the things in us that need attention. Don’t we want to see these things? Know them? But more, have them inspected by the ONE who is the lover of our souls? Made our hearts? Knows everything there is to know about us, including what lies ahead? Things He’s preparing us for? Listen to Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Our third mission challenge is to fill in the blank on this sticker.

• Last, pull out that row of TRY ME stickers. When we pray Psalm 139:23-24 over our lives, we are asking the Lord to try us. Test us. Show us our anxious thoughts. The ones that are not rooted in His sovereignty. His goodness. His grace. As this month progresses, use those stickers to record the tests you face. Let Him lead you to the way of everlasting hope. To invite the test is to invite the hope. Amen? Amen!

[1] Some of the details involving her foster children have been altered to protect their identity.