by Mike Peercy, Executive Director of Fostering Grace

In 1976, a very talented young band known as Kansas released an album with a strange name, Leftoverture. As musicians are often inclined, the juxtaposition of two very different terms, ‘leftovers” and “overture,” was simply a clever play on words. The album starts with the tight moving harmonies and musical complexity of the classic, “Carry On My Wayward Son.” I highly recommend giving it a listen (at least that first track).

But that album title always catches my attention… Leftoverture.

Leftovers.

I have to be honest that it’s not my favorite thing, though I’ve come a long way on this idea. It is, of course, most commonly used to describe the uneaten food from a meal that is saved to eat at a later time. Sometimes the leftovers just aren’t the same. Sometimes they’re even better the second time (prime example: chili).

The term leftovers is really describing what was prepared before and left unfinished.

Overture.

In the world of music an overture is generally used as a sort of musical introduction to a large musical program. Most operas and many broadway musicals begin with an overture that gives a sort of musical sampling of the journey ahead. But the big idea of the overture is to look forward to what is forthcoming, a glimpse of the immediate musical future.

As a musical theater enthusiast I find the beginning of the overture like a plunge into a refreshing pool on a hot summer day. It’s exciting.

So these two words, leftovers and overture, are stuck together in a way that seems to be calling our attention backward and forward at the same time, perhaps studying the unfinished things and considering the grand possibilities before us.

I interact on an almost daily basis with people who are living in this kind of strange juxtaposition—we call them foster parents or kinship parents or adoptive families. The challenges they face keep them constantly doing everything they can to make sense of the leftovers from this child’s existence before coming into their home. They try (at least we urge them to try) to treat this child’s unique story with dignity and reverence even though it seldom makes sense from where they stand.

I’ve come a long way on leftovers, but I’m still probably going to balk at someone else’s leftovers.

At the same time, those parents are trying to help write a song of hope for these kids and their futures, to help them find their voices, grow their skills, and begin to heal the soul-deep hurts from their pasts.

It’s this sort of strange ballet, at once joyous and tragic, sorrowful and celebratory, sweet and very deeply sour. It is a seemingly impossible task to honor the very relationships that have been the avenues of their trauma and to hold sacred even those broken hearts that broke the heart we hold in our insufficient hands.

They’re going to have moments that they can’t stand the leftovers and other moments that they cannot hear the overture. But for that precious child they do everything they can to just keep on going, keep showing up, keep trusting that somehow they will have what it takes to ease the pain, calm the fear, and ignite the hope so desperately needed.

May God help them, every one.

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