For two hours I pushed Elowen on the playground swing, and she screamed when I tried to lift her out. Sharing the love of the Heart of Christ looks different in every season, and right now it is this simple: pushing a toddler in a swing. And this hard: doing only that for two hours.

Elowen is one of nine foster children who have come into our home over the last seven years, and that journey has shown me how sharing Christ’s love can be both simple and difficult. The swing is one small example: pushing for two hours could be frustrating, but instead I grew curious about why she loved it so much. What might it be healing in her? Foster care has taught me to look beyond behavior and see the wound, trauma or need underneath.

This started with the obvious: the children. Every child had a different story and different needs, and we learned how to love each one into healing. The heart of Christ sees beyond the exterior. Throughout the gospels, people who asked Jesus for physical healing received spiritual healing first. He was not ignoring their request but seeing what they truly needed.

Admittedly, this journey got harder. God opened our eyes to the humanity of the children’s parents and the trauma behind their behaviors, just as He had taught us to see in the children. I sat across from a mother as her life fell apart. She had been told she would lose her children forever if she could not get clean. For the first time, I truly saw her, and I wondered if anyone had ever shown her what motherhood should look like. I wondered if she herself had ever been loved. I decided the only way the children could win was to help her win. We went all in for her, and that love gave her a foundation to stand on. She is the first in generations to get clean, sober now for six years, and a foster and adoptive mom herself.

The lives we encountered may or may not have changed, but without a shadow of a doubt, we have changed for the better. Bit by bit, our vision has cleared, and we have begun to see God, in His image and likeness, hidden in the people we encounter. Loving people has been easy after that. There are people God is calling you to see and love, and their lives may depend on your action.

Lord, help me to love the people around me with Your heart. Open my eyes to see their needs.

Michaela O’Keefe Rodriguez '01