Found my voice again

Did I ever tell you the story of when I cried like a baby waiting to meet Aladdin and Jasmine at Disney World?  

It had been a long few weeks of foster care.  We had left our foster son of two plus years in respite because we never imagined he would still be in care by the time the trip rolled around.  We planned the trip for our core family, and to spend time with our forevers.  The afternoon before we left there was a phone call.  Basically he was going to leave foster care while we were gone.  We wouldn't be there. Suddenly it was our last night together. Devastating sums it up. We said our goodbyes in the driveway of a dear foster mom friend.  I was afraid I would never see her house the same way. 

And then by craziness of this life he didn't leave.  Waiting in line to meet Mickey we found out we had a few more weeks.  

Fast forward a couple of more days.  Tired from several days of all the magic of Disney World, and feeling torn with one of "my" kids back at home it happened.  We wanted to meet Aladdin and Jasmine.  The line wasn't bad, so we decided we would wait.  

These two were a great pair.  They were perfectly in character.  They were playing off of each other, and the people they were meeting.  It was a lighthearted time.  And then I started crying.  They were treating each child (and teenager and adult) as if they were the only child there.  They were noticing details about the child, and asking or commenting.  They were treating each child as a precious child.  I couldn't hold back the emotions of the past several weeks of foster care anymore.  

You see that's what foster parents try to do every day.  We try to show a child, that likely has been convinced they are not precious, that on the contrary they are extremely precious.  And unlike those dressed up fictional characters who are pretending to be princes and princesses there is a true King who knows just how precious they are.  He knows because He made them, He loves them, He died for them.  And I have the beautiful privilege of introducing them to Him.  

It was all too much and too overwhelming for this momma's heart.  So I just stood in line and quietly cried. 

They are precious in his sight. 

It's here.  The hard, difficult, don't want to do it part of foster care is here.  Transitioning a child who has lived in our home, as one of us, for over two years back home.  

People keep asking me how I feel.  I think sometimes they expect me to break down right there into a puddle of mush.  Sometimes they look at me like I'm crazy.  

I feel a lot of things, a lot of varying, even contradicting things.  

I feel hopeful that a family is being restored.  I feel sad that my family is shrinking.  

I feel some measure of relief as we will soon take a break from living under the microscope of case workers for a little while.  I feel anxious to know what our life will look like 6 months from now.   

I feel thankful that God saw fit to give me 25+ months of loving one child.  I feel heartbroken when I think of month 1,2,3 . . . Without this child. 

I feel helpless as I comfort a confused toddler during this transition.  I feel confident that God is sovereign even in the midst of circumstances that seem impossibly difficult.

I feel like smacking that person who said to me for the umpteenth time, "isn't this going to be so hard on you guys.". I feel thankful for grace when I say and think dumb things.

I feel confident that My God has a plan for our good and for His glory even when this is really difficult.  I feel envious that His plan for our family includes saying goodbye when His plan for others does not.  

I'm sure I feel a thousand other things.  Just stick around for a little bit, I'm sure something else will surface.  But here's the thing, how I "feel" is not to be trusted.  My feelings can be swayed, influenced, diminished, and changed.  What I cling to everyday are the things I know:

I know God is sovereign over joys and sufferings.
I know that we have been obedient to Him during this time.  
I know we have shown His love to this little one and little ones family as best we know how.
God works all things together for good.  Even hard things. Maybe even especially hard things.

What I hear

I'm not sure if I can explain this well, but I want to try.  We recently went to a family reunion with pretty distant relatives. I had an interesting conversation with a distant cousin's wife.  She doesn't know our story, but immediately started talking to me about her daughter's difficulty having children and their thoughts about trying to adopt.  (This is what happens when you have a multiracial family)

Anyway, I did not offer up my children's stories.  Maybe someone had told her we were foster parents, I don't know.  She kept saying that her daughter just couldn't do foster care because she just couldn't take it "if they came and took the baby".  It was a unique variation on the, "I could never do that, I'd get too attached"  comment. 

I want to write what it feels like to me at this stage of foster parenting when someone says they could never do that because they would get too attached.

1.  I passed too attached a long time ago, and it scares the snot out of me (thanks for bringing it up)

2.  So if I have willingly signed up to live this life, then I must be heartless because I will one day give them back (this is what foster parents hear when you say this to us).  

3.  I agree not everyone should be foster parents (particularly those still struggling through infertility.  Our life has had stages, we would have made terrible foster parents a decade ago.)

4.  What if it were you? What if your life was falling apart, you made some stupid decisions and as a result you temporarily lost custody of your children? (don't get on your high horse, there but for the Grace of God go all of us).  Wouldn't you hope for a second chance?  Wouldn't you hope your kids were treated well, loved , supported, encouraged to love you during that time?  This life is bigger than my comfort and needs.

5.  Not giving them back is called kidnapping.   

6. We signed up for this willingly.  We were trained, and are continually trained in caring for kids that are not our own from tough places.  No one lied to us, we knew what we were getting into.

7.  The pain of giving them back is a result of great joy of living with them.  If there wasn't a whole lot of good in living life with our kiddos it wouldn't hurt.

8.  If it doesn't hurt, I did it wrong.  We are talking about standing in for parents to kids.  In our current situation young kids.  Sometimes for a large percentage of the child's life. They only get one childhood.  They deserve to have a parent that adores them even if it's for a little bit.  Even if that parent is a foster parent .  Grief is a sign of a job well done.

9.  I (&you if you are called to it) can do all things(including letting go of a child I love) through Christ who gives me strength.  

Walking through it

Sometime in the next few months, our family will go through one of the things that scares people away from foster care.  We will have cared for a child for years and that child will leave our home.  When people list reasons that they feel they couldn't be foster parents, this one usually makes the top three.  "What if we have a child in our home for a year or even years and they still leave?"

So today, I'm writing from that place of knowing that we will soon face this reality.  I should preface this by saying that I have known of this reality for a little bit.  The place I am in right now does not reflect my immediate reaction to this news.  The place I am in now comes from much prayer and stepping back to remember why we started the process to become foster parents.  I have drawn close to God, and in some ways asked Him "why?"

I'm not a stranger to really painful circumstances related to children and my desire to have a family.  At 24 years old I stood alone with a surgeon and received heart breaking news about our ability to have children.  Several years later I received more heart breaking news about our attempts to adopt our now son from Guatemala.  Several years after that we were looked over and turned down many times over in an attempt to adopt domestically.  And all of those moments led us to and prepared us for foster care.   I know that.  If you have talked to me in the last three years about our decision to become foster parents you have heard parts of the circumstances I just listed.  They are the life events that step by step led us to where we are today.  God used the hard to bring us to His best. A life I would have never planned on my own.  I would have said, "how can I love and care for a child for years and then let them go?  It will kill me.  Especially after living through infertility, that's just crazy talk.. "

But I was wrong.  It wasn't crazy. It was our path that taught us to trust God, to trust His promises, His timing, His correction, His guidance, and His love for us.  Oh how I have questioned all of those things.  I have been sure that if God loved me He would allow me to get pregnant again, or bring my son home on my timetable, or have a surprise pregnancy against all odds, or not have a child stay in our home so long and still leave.  But the reality is His love for me is not based on my current circumstances.   That was settled a long time ago.  When he chose to send His son for a pitiful sinner like me.  When he chose not to spare His son the hurt and humiliation of the cross in order to reconcile me to himself.  God is good. God loves me. These things are not influenced by whether life is going my way at the moment. They are truth.

I'm not going to lie about this.  I have had a hard time adjusting back to my initial thoughts about foster care.  When a child lives with you for an extended period of time, case workers do ask a about adoption.  It has been an adjustment to get used to the way case workers talk in long cases.  Often the direction of things changes multiple times in a short amount of time.  I let myself dream when I probably shouldn't have.  We didn't become foster parents to adopt again (though my foster mom friends like to tell me that if you stay in this long enough someone is going to stay).  Somewhere around the 12-15 month mark I lost my foster mom hat.  Recently I have found it again.  That doesn't mean I won't grieve.  It will be similar to a death for us.  Our family will change forever again.  But, I believe that God created my family for this life.  I believe that when this little one moves on from us He will place someone else here because it will be their time of need.  He holds our future just as He always has. 

When we were dealing with infertility, people often told me to "just relax". What they didn't know is that I could have relaxed until I completely lost all muscle tone in my body and it would not have mattered.  We had diagnosed reasons that we could not conceive.  Unless God chose to work a miracle of healing we were not going to have a baby.  So when people said that, it just made me feel misunderstood and so very alone.  

I guess in a way He did work a miracle.  He changed our hearts and opened them to the fatherless children He needed us to care for.  

Now people say another phrase to me all the time.  They say, "it's just going to be so hard on you when _________ goes". Well, true, but what good does it do for us to dwell on that now?  How does that help me in being the foster mom that God has called me to be? Once again, it sometimes leaves me feeling misunderstood and alone.  

This time next week my family will be surrounded by hundreds of other families living in the trenches of foster care.  There will be fun and snacks and heat.  My kids are about to bust to pack up for camp.  All I can think about is that for a few days no one is going to point out how hard it will be when children leave. They are going to give knowing glances and laugh at the beautiful children that we all have "for now".  They are going to love all my children as if they were aunts or uncles.  And at some point we will all agree that we live a crazy life, but we wouldn't trade it for anything.  

Dangerous

A long time ago when I first started being the foster mom, I was better at remembering that this child has a family (not my family).  I was better at thinking of my core family as a unique unit separate from the whole of the family that included foster little.  It was a dance, but I had a mental separation that kept me in my foster mom role.

It wasn't that I didn't love, I did.  It wasn't that I didn't nurture, I did.  I advocated, loved, nurtured, investigated needs, fulfilled needs, loved, cared, and was the everyday mom.    But I kept a wall around the forever part of my heart.  It was there to protect me.  I felt safe with that wall in place. Like I would be able to survive being a foster parent.

Lately though I feel like someone handed the little one a pick ax or crow bar or sledge hammer and told him to whack away at my wall.  I can't find it anymore.  Forever, for now, it's all mixed up in my heart. Little one has snuck in and made a place in the forever part of my heart.  

Maybe it was the middle of the night stuff.  Maybe it was the passage of time.  Maybe it was watching the baby who came to me turn into a happy, healthy toddler.  Maybe it was when the talking started, and I became "Momma".  Maybe it was when the snuggles into my neck started, or the sloppy toddler kisses.  Maybe it was when the running hug began at daycare pick up time.  Maybe it was the soft dinner time prayers offered by a toddler again years after my forever kids left toddlerhood.  But somewhere around the 12 month or 15 month or 18 month mark my wall disappeared.  

It's gone. 
 (maybe it really always was, and I was kidding myself) 

This is a dangerous love.

The double life of a foster parent

Some days being a foster parent is about fielding questions for social workers, answering text messages, paperwork, packing the visit bag, preparing the child for a visit, advocating for the child's needs, logging Meds, and praying you are making a difference in a broken system.   

Other days foster care is about watching the child who was afraid of water run in the sprinkler.  Or the child who didn't know how to play with toys tell you an elaborate story of make believe.  Or watching the child  who was afraid of any sudden movement, being tossed in the air by his foster father with his head thrown back in a fit of laughter.  Or realizing the child who had little language is pretending to read his favorite storybook with expression.  

This is the hardest thing we have ever done (and we've done hard things). But I wouldn't trade the hard because then I would have to give up the amazingly wonderful.