Loss and Foster Care

If I've come to understand any Biblical truths thanks to foster care, it is Matthew 16:4-5 and, conversely, if a passage of scripture has shone a spotlight on my spiritual lack, it is Matthew 16:4-5.

"Then Jesus told His disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

Denial.  Loss.  Laying down of rights. No one wants to identify with loss.  Not a one of us prays for it. As a little girl, my dreams of future life certainly did not include, "I can't wait to experience loss so I can see Christ more clearly".
Yet here we are.  Foster care calls us to pick up a cross and die to self. From the littlest of ways like interrupted sleep and additional laundry to more significant surrenders such as denial of our wishes and death to our comforts. I want to save my strong beliefs in what is right and and what is wrong.
Foster care calls me to pick up burdens I could do without.  The gospel compels me to care about the limbs on someone else's broken family tree, to step in to decay and speak life with grace and even delight.  I get to be a part of someone's story in coming to Christ. They may not accept Him till sixty years from now on their deathbed but they get to see Him and meet Him now in me.
Trusting that God is sovereign takes on a whole new fall-to-my-knees surrender (not defeat) and trust when you're called to surrender a child you've come to love to an uncertain future. This is the unending chorus of foster care.
It is death to my foolish pride.  Perhaps I think God can only keep a child safe through me or I am that child's only hope for a safe future.  Do I believe that a childhood of safety and comfort is the only way for this child to come to know Christ?  My heart of pride screams yes.  Scripture rebukes me and in the same breath comforts me.
Perhaps I'd forgotten Joseph.
Matthew 16:4-5 are verses I can't afford to skim over.  They lovingly haunt my days of parenting the masses and kissing a head I didn't birth, calling me to remember that the losses we've experienced and the ones to come are abut so much more than me.  They are for His glory.