I just got off the phone with  Nina, my sister — and one of my best friends — who adopted two kids out of the foster care system nearly 9 years ago. She called while I was at Mosaic, but didn’t leave a message. I called her as I was leaving and have been on the phone with her ever since — over two hours.

That’s not all that spectacular as conversation times go. We’ve been known to talk for over three hours on the phone before. Part of the deal for me on these calls is that I just don’t want to say goodbye. I don’t want to cut the connection — even when we’re not talking about earth-shattering deep things, at least I hear her voice. Hanging up cuts off that sound and leaves a huge void in its wake. It’s like those pangs of homesickness I’d get every time I left my parents’ home. My heart hurts.

Nina’s daughter, the second of two siblings she and Toby adopted, is not doing well. Nina is once again at the end of her rope. Frances has been through hell in her short 18 years on this earth. There are things buried so deep in her past — abuses of all sorts — that we only know they are there from her violent reactions to even the slightest touch. She was doing so well — she progressed through a program at a facility and was finally able to come home, for the first time in over three years. Not only that, but she actually wanted to come home, wanted to live with Nina and Toby, wanted to get her life straightened out, go to college, become more than she currently is.

She’s been home maybe two weeks and already has gone back to old behaviors, patterns of manipulation and out of control actions. It’s less than it was in the past, but severe enough to send Nina back into post traumatic stress overload. For you to fully comprehend and appreciate what Niina and Toby have been through and how traumatic this current turn of events is for them, would take longer than we have here. And besides, that’s Nina’s story to tell, whenever she’s ready.

The bottom line is that wounded people wound others, and the deeper the wounds on the former, the deeper they cut the latter. Frances’ wounds run too deep for us to fathom. She in-turn inflicts deep wounds that  cut to the core and leave Nina and Toby decimated.

Nina’s heart is huge. I mean HUGE. She loves with a passion that I can only dream of. She loves the unlovable. As a teen I just thought she had poor judgment in friends. But as an adult I see that God has gifted her with a tremendous capacity to love beyond all reason, a longing to nurture others and a passion to invest her life in bringing healing to those who are incredibly broken and needy. Even as we spoke of a need for her to set boundaries of acceptable treatment from Frances, Nina’s main and overriding concern was for Frances’ current and future well-being.

I know where Nina got this from. Our mom loved with a passion like this. But Nina’s passion mixes with a stubborn resolve she got from both parents — and a healthy dose of self-respect (which, unfortunately our mom often lacked) to create a most formidable Lover Of The Unlovable.

So many would have given up on Frances long ago. The false accusations of abuse, the verbal and physical assaults they’ve endured, the endless nights worrying, crying, praying, the pain of no one understanding what they were going through…. Nina and Toby have never surrendered. They love Frances passionately even now. Even in the midst of more-of-the-same painfully deep woundings.

Nina leaves a mark on everyone she touches in life. Her mark on my life is deep. She’s my older sister, so of course I never appreciated her growing up.

But I do now. I see now how blessed I am to know her, and even more so to call her my sister and my friend.

Please pray for her and Toby as they walk through this latest dark night of the soul.