Thanksgiving Prayer

Thank you for the opportunity to welcome children in our homes, no matter for how long, and giving us the chance to love them, guide them and perhaps be a small becon of light in their lives that they can look back on with warm thoughts and good will. Please allow us to make our home the home for as many little hearts as we can through the years to come and to perhaps one day have the opportunity to make our home a "forever" home to a child or two who has no one else. Please guide us to understand their needs and differences and to keep our patience with both the "system" and situtations that the families they come from are dealing with. Please help our hearts heal and grow each time a child leaves to be reuinted or to be adopted into the birth family or to their special forever home because even though we have come to love them in a special way we cannot adopt them all. Help us accept that we cannot heal all wounds but perhaps help a child learn to function productively in a world that has often been too scary and lonley a place. Amen