What Time Doesn't Heal

It is the little things that are struggles for us step-moms. I got a letter in the mail stating my step-son was to represent our county in October in a State Variety Contest since he won a regional variety contest this past summer. I was immediately excited. I thought, "We're going to be able to see the boys!" That was my first thought....geeze when will I learn it isn't up to us when we see them. I sent an e-mail to the mother letting her know the situation. Her husband, the boy's step-father, is home from overseas this month, and they have a trip planned with him - so the contest is a no-go. I'm trying so hard to understand. I'm really trying not to be selfish. It is right - it is right. It is right for them to be together, to have their family united for a short time. I guess it just feels like there is more evidence. More evidence that the boys don't really have a life here, a home. It is just where they spend a few weeks in the summer. Sighs. I'm grieving. I'm grieving not having a family. Time only stacks up more evidence it seems. More evidence prooving I don't have a family.
Then I remember. I remember about the sacrificial love of our Father in heaven. I must focus on this. He gave up His only Son - His very position at the right hand of the Father in heaven so that we could be a part of His family. So we could be adopted, grafted into His family. So we could have unbroken fellowship with Him. I remember that it is my reasonable service to sacrifice my life to Him because of this. It is the least I can do. I don't love the boys because I can see them, because I have the opportunity to share my life with them. I don't love them because they are my husbands boys, and therefore mine. I don't love them because they love me. I love him because He first loved me.
I know what I'm doing here, being a step-mom, isn't anything compared to what many people go through, what their struggles are. I've never lost a child to death, I've never struggled through cancer. But this walk is hard to accept nontheless. It goes against human nature. That I should sacrifice my finances, time, energy, plans, and dreams for children who could never give me what most children give their parents - simply themselves. They aren't mine to receive, yet I've been called to give of myself to them. When I grieve what I can't have as a stepmother it comforts me to remember the sacrifices our Father has made so that all those willing could be grafted into the family of Christ. I remember the many times I rejected His sacrficial love. I look around at our world and I see how He is rejected by so many over and over. When I feel rejected I have learned to feel ever closer to our Father in heaven. Just because I feel rejected doesn't mean what I'm doing is worthless. It could be the most important thing I've ever done. What time doesn't heal, God can still use.