An Ordinary Pen

How Will Foster Care Impact My Bio Kids?

2018-09-18T13:11:00.000-04:00

When my husband and I were taking our first steps into the foster care journey, my biggest concern was always the impact it would have on our bio son, "Big Bro." He was a toddler at the time. I Googled "How will foster care impact my bio kids" extensively, but unfortunately there was no script from the future to tell me how my kids would process this journey. We have had to figure it out as we go!

Big Bro always shared a room with foster siblings. Until two years ago, foster care was his only "normal" for having siblings. Now he has a bio sister, "Baby Gigi," and he can compare the experiences.

Last year I asked him some questions. I wanted to gauge the impact this is having on him. I asked him if we could share his answers with other people who might wonder if they should do foster care in their home, and he agreed.

Sadly, the answers got buried in my Gmail for the last year, but today they've resurfaced! Hooray!

So, for those of you who have wondered, here's a six-year-old boy's take on having foster siblings. The responses are exactly as he gave them, except for the name changes to protect privacy.

~~~

Mom: What does it mean to be a foster family?

Big Bro: It means we are helping a kid that his mama or her mama can't take care of them very well.

Mom: What do you like about being a foster family?

Big Bro: That Rooney can come here.

Mom: What do you not like about being a foster family?

Big Bro: That Rooney wrestles me a lot.

Mom: What do you think a little boy like you should know if his first foster brother is coming to live in his house tonight?

Big Bro: I'd tell him it's a little bit hard. Because Rooney just wrestles me a lot even when I say stop, stop.

(*I have to note here: This is just normal brother stuff. We've got one physically active preschooler and one sit-and-read kindergartener. This is what happens sometimes when they mix!*)

Mom: Can you tell me a little bit about Rooney's other family?

Big Bro: Birth Parent is sick. Nothing really different from being around anyone. To have her in our house feels good just like if anyone was in our house.

Mom: What do you think about the babies who went home?

Big Bro: It's sad. I know that because Rooney went back home and then it was sad but then he came back.

Mom: Do you think kids should go back to their birth families when they can?

Big Bro: Yeah. Because if they can then I want them to go back to their moms. It would probably be sad if they never saw their real mom again.

Mom: Is it different having a little sister who's a forever sister?

Big Bro: Yes. She is different than Rooney and she's not a foster care baby. We didn't get her from another mom. She's a little bit more my sister even though Rooney is still my brother. If we adopt Rooney then he will be as much my brother as Baby Gigi.

Mom: What do you want other people to know about foster care?

Big Bro: It's good for everyone and Jesus likes when you do it.

Mom: Have you learned anything by being a big brother to foster brothers?

Big Bro: I don't know.

Mom: Does it hurt you to be a foster brother?

Big Bro: Kind of cuz Rooney wrestles me.

Mom: Are you glad or sad that you're a foster brother?

Big Bro: Glad and sad. I'm sad because I get hurt a lot from Rooney but I'm happy that he gets to be safe here.

(*Again: This is a little overly dramatic; Rooney is not a violent little man!*)

Mom: Is there anything else?

Big Bro: Bye to the person who reads it.

Missing Christmas

2017-12-23T07:41:00.000-05:00

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others."

Philippians 2:3‭-‬4

What would you give up for someone else?

Would you give up seeing Santa at the mall?

Would you give up sleepovers by the Christmas tree?

Would you give up frosting cookies?

Would you give up an evening with friends?

Would you give up listening to Christmas music?

Would you give up Christmas dinner?

We can give up good things for others in love, but sometimes when our children need us to give up those good things, we feel guilt. We want to help our family feel normal. We want to help them enjoy all of the pieces of Christmas we always used to enjoy. We want to experience the traditions we always envisioned in the days before children.

Missing good things for your children who can't cope is not failing your child, your family or yourself. It is living out the nature of Jesus, who "made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:7-8)

No more guilt this year. If you can't do the things you wish you could, give them to Jesus as a sweet sacrifice. It's not that you're not doing Christmas well enough. It's that you are taking this opportunity to value others above yourself. You're not missing Christmas. You're willing to find it even when it means letting go of a lot of fun little pieces that were not really Christmas anyway.

Planting Marigolds

2017-08-28T18:42:00.000-04:00

We have our good days and our bad days around here.

Everyone has days they're simply not their best. Sometimes I wake up and I just know that every moment of self-control today will cost me a whole lot of effort because I'm ready to throw up my hands from the beginning.

I think for Baby S and for other kids who have suffered trauma and/or have a lot of other factors playing against them, self-control takes ready-to-throw-up-my hands level effort every day. Thus, having a good day is something to be incredibly proud of. It's also straight up exhausting for them. So sometimes that good day, or group of good days, results in a lot of really difficult days. It's like they can take an advance on self-control and then wind up empty for days or weeks.

Hard days can be so deflating. Regression is discouraging for all of us, including Baby S. Going from dry diapers all day to not using the potty a single time from morning to night is frustrating. It's hard not to say "you can do this because you did it yesterday!" even when I know that's not fair. There are some days that he's simply not able to do the same things he's been doing. (He's three, so there are plenty of days he's choosing to do wrong, but I'm drawing a distinction between the days he's choosing to be naughty and the days he's not able to regulate enough to make a choice.)

We're noticing a cycle. A couple of great days with big win moments will almost certainly be followed by another round of regression. We don't know when we wake up in the morning or sit down to breakfast whether it's going to be a good-listening day or a behavior-filled day; whether I'll be able to do a load of laundry without another adult in the house or whether there's a 27-second countdown before things fall apart when I've left the room.

This weekend we had an incredible couple of days. Our little guy really shines through in these moments. His smiles melt me to pieces. He giggles and laughs and interacts and chats and just absolutely blows me away. These are glimmers into who he really is, who he was always supposed to be, and who he is becoming. I am always proud of him, but even more so in these moments.

And then this morning we were back to difficult behaviors. This (finally) didn't surprise me because I'm figuring out the cycle a little better. But it's still hard to feel so out of control about what we can do as a family on a given day. We don't know what we can reasonably expect out of Baby S and what will be out of his reach.

As I struggled with not knowing how long the downward spiral might last, I looked out my window into my backyard. And I noticed these flowers.

The baby wasn't chilling out there during said moment. Just so you know.

We don't leave babies wandering in the backyard alone.

These flowers were a gift to me from Baby S on Mother's Day. They were just bitty little green things sticking out of a red plastic cup decorated with stickers.

When he gave them to me I pretended to be excited, but inside I was grimacing. I was there the day he planted those seeds. It was a special activity for parents to attend at Baby S's preschool. I found childcare for Big Bro for the afternoon and brought along Baby Gigi in her stroller. We sat together with Baby S and his class on the grass in the shade of a tree.

Right on cue, another class came out with a ball. A BALL. During Baby S's time of maximum obsession with anything round. They decided to play with said ball RIGHT NEXT TO US. They were HITTING IT WITH A BAT. AND RUNNING. All of Baby S's favorite things in one place. He was mega excited.

And then we told Baby S he couldn't go there. And then we told him to sit quietly and do a fine motor activity.

And he said, "Heck no!" Not in words, you know, because pretty much his only word was "Ball" (which he screamed at full volume on repeat). His meltdown pretty much lasted until they left... Which was when it was time for us to go.

We managed to get him to focus just long enough to scoop some dirt into the red cup and throw some seeds on top. There were marigold seeds, mixed wildflowers, and at least one other kind. The spray bottle was a good distraction for a moment while he was watering the flowers, but then he had to pass that to the next kid, and it was maximum meltdown time again.

And the wind was blowing the dirt in my eyes. And I wanted to melt down too.

So in summary... It was a disaster. He didn't have fun. I didn't have fun. Baby Gigi didn't get my attention. I had to cash in on a babysitting offer with Big Bro, and those are valuable and not to be wasted.

I didn't realize until this morning that something beautiful came from that disaster of an afternoon. The splash of orange along my fence that makes me smile as I do the dishes... The smile Baby Gigi gives me as she touches the flowers and enjoys their soft feel (and taste, but don't worry, Google says they're not poisonous)... The fun Big Bro and Baby S and I have watering them together with the hose... All of these things came from that rather terrible afternoon.

I'd like to think that this pretty bunch of flowers in my yard is just a glimpse of deeper things that came from that day and many days like it. So often we don't get to see what was at work on the most discouraging of days. We don't get to see how God will use our sacrifices for our good and the good of those around us.

But sometimes we get little glimpses. I think we need to hold onto them. One of my favorite bits of wisdom from Paul and Timothy in their letter to the church in Philippi is this: "[be] confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

Try not to lose that confidence, friends. The dark days and downward cycles will come, but they are not the end. We can't always see what is growing in those moments. But I pray that God will faithfully use them for good, and I trust that he will keep his promises.

To The Moon

2017-08-16T20:08:00.001-04:00

This morning, Big Boy Baby S asked me to give him wings and help him get to the moon.

More specifically, he wanted me to attach wings to his arms. Then he could bounce off of the trampoline and fly up to the moon!

He expressed a hugely abstract thought through his words, sounds and gestures. He beamed when I understood him. He laughed and grinned as I flew him "to the moon" on his little airplane.

A year ago, he wouldn't make eye contact. His smile was MIA. And now he's dreaming about flying off to space with wings, and being up in the sky in an airplane, and driving a big tractor.

He's a three-year-old boy and he can finally share his sweet visions and ideas with us. I love it.

Baby S, I can't get you to the moon, but if you still want to go there when you're big, I believe YOU can get you there! I love you, big guy! I'm so proud of you!

When We Met You

2017-07-22T14:26:00.000-04:00

Three years.

It has been three years since we met our little man Baby S.

We'd said two quick goodbyes already to foster babies, and we were starting to think they'd all be quick goodbyes. But this one wasn't.

Baby S's birthday rolls around in June and we celebrate his achievements and how big he is getting (so big!). We celebrate him, and we celebrate knowing him. And then this day rolls around six weeks later, and we're reminded that we aren't his only family. Someone else did those first six weeks with him.

We have a set of memories from this day: getting the call while I was checking out at Wegmans; Big Bro A choosing that moment and that particular phone call to see if he could get my full attention by opening and dumping an entire box of elbow macaroni; going out to lunch to celebrate Big Bro A's successful potty training efforts while we waited to find out if Baby S would really enter care; going to a tall building in the city and waiting outside to meet our little guy; driving a baby home in our spare carseat without having had a chance to really get a good look at him yet. The onesie with the little ducks. The first bottles. The precious moment when Big Bro first held his new little brother. The pictures we always take so we can be prepared if we're still telling these stories when our baby turns twenty or if our baby leaves the next day and we only have pictures and memories left.

This is our story of that day. We'll tell that story with joy. But we'll always tell it with reservation, too. We have only bits and pieces of the other stories from that day. We weren't the only ones involved. Our gain was another's loss. Our sweet hello was the start of a nightmare for another. This relationship evolved over time into something positive, into a team effort to love on a little boy who is certainly lovable enough to hold all of that love, but it started as someone losing a baby to strangers.

I've said goodbye to foster babies. I've watched them get driven away by strangers. Even with time to prepare, printed schedules and notes and a bag of his favorite bottles and pacis and blankies and clothes, you can never feel prepared for that moment when your child leaves and is no longer under your protection. Baby S's family didn't have the ability to prepare in this way. Trying to imagine the pain of watching that car drive away is staggering.

There is so much joy in the day we met Baby S. It would be wrong not to smile and celebrate when this day rolls around. It's the day we gained a son! But we want to honor his birth family by telling him their side of this story as he gets old enough to process it. We want to validate their experience by remembering their pain. Their pain in this moment is a testimony of their love, and someday, Baby S is going to need to hear us tell him about that love again and again as he wrestles with his reality. He's going to need the stories, quotes and pictures from birth family that we've saved for him over the years. He's going to need us to handle our baggage now so we can help him with his when the time comes. However painful this journey continues to be for us, it is his life and his family. He needs to be able to process this openly without worrying about my feelings.

This is not a one-sided story. Foster care and adoption never are. God's redemption is beautiful, and we will celebrate it, but we will not forget those who are still hurting.

Happy Birthday, Baby S!

2017-06-09T11:06:00.002-04:00

We are celebrating Baby S's third birthday this week.

I am much more emotional leading up to this than I ever expected. I mean, I'm frequently an emotional hot mess, so it shouldn't be surprising, but I still caught myself off guard when I started sniffling and gushing sentimentally in my head over all the little things this weekend.

We try to make kid birthdays a big deal in our house. Josh and I decided that we would do birthdays big when we got into foster care. We realized that we might have a child in our care some day who had never celebrated birthdays before and we wanted to make sure they'd have a special day devoted just to them. Knowing there would be a lot of very hard moments meant that we needed to be prepared to party hard when there were causes for celebration. And now, we realize just how hard it is just to get through each day sometimes, and stacking 365 of those days together is certainly a very big deal!

The rest of this is for Baby S as I celebrate his third birthday. You are welcome to tag along, friend, but know that this is my heart for my little boy today!

Baby S, today I am celebrating you. Today I am writing to you so that future you knows how very proud your Mommy and Daddy are of you. I want you to know that you are so very loved. You are so very wanted. You belong. You are an incredible little boy.

Baby S, your birthday is a big deal because you are a rock star. You have gone through more than most adults I know, yet you are the most joy-filled person I have ever met. You are motivated by your love for those around you. You want to be smiling! You want to make friends. You hold no hard feelings against people who have caused you past pain. You love so unconditionally. You play with every kid at the playground, and when they feel uncomfortable around you and don't know how to act, you keep inviting them and keep smiling even as you're asking me why they won't come and play. You don't dislike children for treating you differently. You just keep loving them and keep smiling until they give in and realize what a sweet, fun little guy you are!

You are a rock star because you don't compare yourself to others. Your brain and your mouth fight as you try to make the sounds you are thinking, but you're never upset that Baby Gigi is making those same sounds already, and you love that Big Brother A can tell you so many things. You've been fighting against trauma and change for forward progress your whole life, but you've never given up, because you are strong. You are capable. You want to grow and you will work relentlessly to do so! And you are going to make it. The past six months have been incredible. I am blown away by your progress already! I mean, Dude, yesterday morning you begged me to bring you to McDonald's on your way to school! How is that even happening??!

As if burgers weren't reason enough to love this place, you've now learned that sometimes McDonald's has a giant playground full of happy children. Why would you ever want to be anywhere but here?!

Your birthday is a big deal because you've gone through challenges no three-year-old should already have faced, yet you find the energy and the willpower to fight for self-control. There are grown-ups who choose not to exercise self-control because of what they've been through, but not you. You want to make your life good! I love you so much for that. I celebrate that about you and with you! Thank you for letting Daddy and I push you harder than anyone else, and thank you for responding so positively to our pushing. Thank you for growing! Thank you for letting us love you by believing that you are going to make it.

You are amazing for your love of other people. You are amazing for your trust. Again, grown people aren't always as strong as you when it comes to trusting those who have caused past hurt (intentionally and unintentionally), and you are an example to me. You show me unconditional love and acceptance. You show me pure joy at seeing your people, and when it's hard to be happy to see someone, you fight to make new positive memories, because that's just so you. You worry for the happiness of others who seem sad. "Cry" was one of your first words, and you go to comfort people who are hurting. You, who couldn't stand still long enough to know someone was in front of you and used to plow straight through people in your path just six months ago! You are resilient and loving and incredible.

You fight for your developmental milestones, but you're still a three-year-old boy! I love that about you. I love that you pick up spiders and laugh when they try to run away because you like catching them again. I love that you like worms and digging in the dirt. I love that you want to pick up every stick we see when we're walking. I love that you are obsessed with Lightning McQueen ("eeeen!") and all of his friends. I love that you love dogs so devotedly and that it makes your morning every time you see one outside during breakfast! (No, buddy, we're not getting one, even though Big Brother A did say that getting a dog would be the best birthday present ever for you. He's right, but Mommy doesn't like dogs. Thanks for loving me through that one, too, buddy!)

You sleep through the night. You love your family. You have favorite toys. You sit and eat balanced meals, try new foods, and randomly refuse things you used to love like any kid your age. You eat with your spoon and (sometimes) drink from an open cup. These are skills that you had to fight for. Some of these are rights that you had to fight for. But you don't hold any resentment; only joy. I love that about you. I celebrate that about you!

Everyone who works with you knows that you are special. You have a light and an energy that is beyond normal. It's beautiful and incredible. When kids ask what is different about you, I hope that is what they settle on, because it is what blows me away. God has uniquely made you into a precious gift that will just absolutely change the world, little man. People feel loved when you smile at them. They feel joy when they see you light up. They want to know you more and they see that you are worth fighting for. And even though sometimes you are a *little* difficult, life is always better with you than without you! That's not just me saying that, buddy, but everyone who works with you.

I love you because your hard things are there, and they are hard, but they don't define you. I love that you are so resilient, so capable of healing. For a little while, when you were gone, your light was almost out. That was one of the scariest and most devastating things I have ever experienced. I'm sorry for all you've gone through, but I can honestly say that the picture I have of you in my mind - unresponsive, uninvested, joyless - that picture will always make every single beautiful moment a thousand times more beautiful for me. That picture will be the difference between "that was neat" and suddenly realizing I'm crying again. Almost losing you helps me to appreciate having you. I don't mean losing you to another home - no, buddy, we were truly on you and your birth parent's team, and we weren't wishing failure on you. I mean almost losing that joyful little person inside who fills our hearts with a thousand times more energy and joy than I ever thought a single person could bring. So today, as I celebrate you, every victory is multiplied in my mind. Every battle you have won means even more. When I say I am proud of you, little man, multiply that by one thousand, too, and maybe you'll start to catch a glimpse of what I see when I see you.

No blog post could ever capture my love for you, buddy. No words could show future you the joy you bring into every room. So all I can say in conclusion, is that I am incredibly blessed and joyful to be celebrating this year with you. I love you to the moon and back, sweet boy.

With all my love,

Mommy

Letting Him Fail

2017-05-22T20:39:00.001-04:00

We've now reached six months of having Baby S back with us.

His needs are still constant, but they are changing. He's growing so much. Our expectations for him have evolved drastically.

We can say things like, "Use your spoon!" and he'll stop shoveling milky cereal with his fingers and use his spoon instead. We can say "That wasn't nice! It's Baby Gigi's turn," and he'll give back the toy and pat her on the head - sometimes even with a swipe at his chest with his hand to sign "sorry." We can say "No flipping the light switch, buddy. Either on or off," and he'll (generally) push once or twice more, pick a direction, and then trot away to play somewhere else. At the very least, he chooses to disobey with a sly smile and obvious defiance, and we silently celebrate behind our stern faces because that is what a healthy little boy does.

I know I keep saying this, but when Baby S first came back, we had to constantly manage him for basic survival. Don't vault over the baby gate. Don't throw yourself down the stairs head first. Don't sit on the baby. Don't grab at knives. Don't run into the hot stove. Don't shove other people in the face with all of your strength. (He's strong enough to cause actual damage to a grown man. Ask Josh.) Our commands were direct, to the point, and always urgent. We were always a moment from disaster, for Baby S or those around him.

The problem is that Baby S thrives on chaos. His favorite game is chase. He's smart, and he's learned that certain adults will reward his disobedience with exactly the game he's craving. Tell him to put back the fragile glass thing he picked up, and he'll laugh and run full speed across the room so he can watch you huffing and puffing after him. Even after all of our training, he'll revert back to disobey-and-chase in an instant when he knows it will work. So when he returned, we had to engage for his safety, but always with the goal of backing off whenever it wasn't actually dangerous to do so. We had to give him the extra split second to obey BEFORE engaging in chase. After many many of those little moments of hesitation with no real guarantee that growth was happening, Baby S finally started putting his foot forward and oooooh soooooo sloooooowly coming when called to stop his mischief, and we praised Jesus for a turning point that had seemed impossible.

We've been taking baby steps to forward progress for the last six months. It's a moment's hesitation after saying "stay in the yard, buddy," to give him the chance to trip back around in my direction and engage in chase in a healthy and safe way. It's letting him go toward Baby Gigi and verbally reminding him not to take, then watching to see what he does. It's asking him to stay in a room with our words rather than holding him physically on this side of the gate; then eventually expecting him to respect the gate without reminders; and now, finally, expecting him to respect consistent boundaries - no going upstairs or into the basement alone, even when the gate is down.

He started with no regard for rules or safety. It's tempting to sit back now, baby gates up and every "no" out of reach, and bask in his ability to (sometimes) listen and engage. It's tempting to say "oh, he can't listen because he has this diagnosis and he doesn't know any better." But we've seen his ability to learn and grow, and we're not satisfied with him staying where he is right now (nor is the amazing team of teachers and therapists working alongside us).

So we take turns taking him to the grocery store, even though that might mean abandoning a cart full of groceries to take him home. We bring him to the zoo and take him out of the stroller whenever there's an adult with an extra hand and a very firm grip to hold on tight. We let go of his hand for brief moments in church to see if he'll walk alongside us (he won't, but it's safe to let him try there). We let him climb to the highest places on the playground and go down the big slides.

Look, no adult hands in the picture!

(Because even being pinned in between a lion and boarded up stairs with no where to run except into an adult mega counts as increased freedom for this sweet and crazy little man.)

The victories are amazing. Some days, we don't see a lot of them. Some days we're exhausted with constantly pushing. Often I have thoughts like "Why did I think I could walk to the playground with all three kids by myself?" or "Will I ever be able to talk to someone in the lobby at church again?" In those moments I have to remind myself that this intentional process is worth it. The moments that look like failures are carefully chosen growing moments, not just for Baby S, but for all of us. Big Bro A and Baby Gigi have their own growing areas, but additionally, they're learning from the hard moments with Baby S. We're having conversations about why we choose to bring him to the good things even when we end up all having to leave. We talk about why our family can't do things we used to, or why simple things are so much harder now, and we get to remember that Jesus gave up SO. MUCH. MORE. for us than what we will ever give up for Baby S.

When we win the victories, we still have to fight the temptation to be discouraged. Social media is always there reminding us how very little our victories seem next to where Baby S should be/could be/isn't developmentally. Baby videos of him from two years ago sound strikingly like Baby S today. Successfully getting through a shopping trip with Baby S in tow is not me able to grocery shop with all of my children, or able to take my family to fast food or dinner out, or able to go on a vacation together. But we can't focus on what we haven't achieved yet. We have to keep looking back at how far we've come, keep soaking in those giant Baby S smiles and hugs, and keep praising Jesus that he waded into the mess that is OUR lives.

That's where we are for now: setting up moments when Baby S can fail, because without those, he can't have true success. We celebrate the victories hard. We crash hard sometimes, too. There are glimpses of "normal life" that are beautiful and yet leave us hungrier for the way things should have been. These moments motivate us because they remind us yet again what we're fighting for. We're fighting for our baby boy. We're so proud of him. We're so in awe of his pure joy despite his circumstances. This child has incredible potential. We wade through these difficult moments believing that some day we will look at our adult son and be in total awe over how far he has come. His loving heart and incredible energy are going to move mountains for people some day.

Treatments and Trauma

2017-05-08T17:24:00.000-04:00

Let me paint you a picture. It's a little simplified for where we're going with it, but maybe it could help.

Your family decides to adopt a dog. You don't want a puppy from a pet shop; you want to maybe find a dog that's gone through some stuff. So you go to a shelter. The dog you bring home is so sweet and loves to snuggle up to you and your kids. There's a big problem, though. The dog keeps peeing all over your house!

This dog isn't a puppy, and you assumed it would be house trained. Nevertheless, you decide that you'll keep it and work through the issues, because it's a cute dog and your kids like it.

You have to figure out an approach that will work for this dog. You hire a trainer to come in and work with your dog to help her stop wetting the floor. The methods the trainer uses are standard and you've used them with other dogs in the past; but they're not working for this dog. In fact, the more the trainer shows up, the worse the dog gets. So you cancel the trainer.

What's your next move? You realize that this dog must have gone through some stuff before coming to you. The trainer's style was firm and direct. You try treating the dog with gentleness, thinking that maybe there has been some abuse in the dog's past. You find a trainer with experience in this area and the dog grows by leaps and bounds. As the dog feels safer, she starts using the bathroom outside. Hooray!

I don't know if there are really trauma trainers for dogs. But do you know what I keep hearing? That there really aren't trauma "trainers" for 3-year-olds.

We have been to so many specialists with Baby S. He's got a diagnosis, although we've questioned the validity of it from Day 1. He's been to the places that are hard to get into, and we've sat in rooms where they've told us about "kids like Baby S" and what to expect.

But the problem is, his behaviors never fit in. There's always a qualifier. "Oh, he doesn't do that? Usually kids like Baby S do..." or "Oh, he's been succeeding at this? Huh, kids like Baby S usually don't."

So let's think about this. We're grouping Baby S into a broad category that we know doesn't fit him. Then we're getting resources based on his label, NOT the behaviors. We know he doesn't fit into his category - so is it right to assume that he fits in to these programs?

One of the top specialists for "kids like Baby S" (note: that phrase makes me catch my breath every time) told us that they "treat the symptoms the same way, no matter why the symptoms appeared." This was in direct response to our questions about his past and how that plays into his current situation.

Did you catch that? They diagnose him with a label, then treat kids with that label the same, NO MATTER WHY THE BEHAVIORS STARTED. (Can you tell that this bothers me?)

That's like telling the owner of that dog in my silly example that of COURSE all dogs need to be trained the same way. Just keep scolding it in a firm voice. If the dog isn't responding, it's probably you, or else your dog just isn't trainable. If that was your dog, people would say that, and you'd look at them like they were nuts. This dog was abused, you'd think; of course we can't treat her like a puppy just being house trained.

But this is our child. And that is essentially what we are being told.

There's no trauma treatment for a child Baby S's age. There's no trauma therapy for a nonverbal child. There aren't resources that adequately address his delays in combination with his other areas of need, because kids his age aren't supposed to act like this.

I am consistently shocked by how often trauma doesn't even factor into the analysis of his needs. Wrapping him neatly in a couple of labels and shipping him off isn't even beginning to acknowledge the depth of his needs.

I'm having my rant moment because I want to help people to understand that children don't fall neatly into categories. Trauma is very, very messy. It can surface and then hide for a while and then resurface. Schools need labels to give services, and labels take time, but trauma doesn't pace itself with the school's systems.

Trauma comes in all different forms. I'm going to be so bold as to say that ALL children who have been fostered or adopted have some form of trauma. Trauma can happen before a child is born. It can be exposure to drugs and alcohol in utero, or mental health issues of a mother before birth. It is the separation of a child from its birth mother, even if it's instant. It's the loss of everything familiar. It's being shipped back and forth between birth parents and foster parents. It's living in a high-stress environment without permanency. It's not knowing whether you'll finish the school year in your current school, or whether you'll be able to live with your biological siblings again. It's being torn between two realities that can never exist together. It's moving back with a birth parent and losing a foster family, or staying with a foster family and losing the birth family. It's a million little moments that are constantly stacking up.

It's being treated like a "normal child" despite all of this. It's being punished for not paying attention in school, when you're spending the whole day worried because today is court and your judge might be sending you home today. It's struggling to work hard in school because you don't know if you'll still be here in a month, anyway. It's being put in a class for children with special needs and hearing the teachers tell your foster parents you'll never catch up, even if you've just been too busy trying to get your emotional needs met to grow in other areas.

Treating trauma like "normal" is rarely helpful, and it often makes things worse. I don't know the answer, but I do know the frustration of trying to advocate strongly for your child and hearing over and over that the resources just don't exist for "a child like that" because they're "not supposed to experience these things" at such a young age.

It's true. Baby S shouldn't have these difficulties to deal with. But he does. And we're doing the best we can to help them cope.

Now a moment of encouragement for all of my teacher friends. Do you know what keeps us moving? Teachers and therapists who "get" children like Baby S. Who install an extra lock on the door so that he can stop fixating on escape and start enjoying his environment. Who have his favorite toys in the classroom so he can have "preferred activities" to look forward to between the moments of pushing and stretching him to grow. Who advocate loudly with us for adequate labels, adequate services, and extra help. Who take the time to explain Baby S and what makes him tick to the people around him so that he's getting loved, appreciated, and pushed in all the best ways for him. Who tell us directly that their resource isn't right for him, but it's the closest to right that exists, so they're going to fight to make it the best environment possible for him.

You guys are our heroes. You make so much more difference than you can possibly know.

Thank you!

What Love Can't Do

2017-02-14T10:47:00.003-05:00

Valentine's Day is a holiday that doesn't rank very high in my list of "things in which I place value." However, five-year-old Big Brother A has been talking about it a lot because of school. He has been placing a lot of very thinly veiled hints that I must do something special for him to prove my love.

Um, I'm feeding you and then washing these.

I'm washing, folding and putting away these.

And I'm probably picking up these, too, because I'll need you to rest more than I'll need you to put these away.

That's how I'm proving my love.

But seriously. That's not my point.

I love kids. I have always loved working with kids. People told me I was good at it when I was still a tween helping out with Vacation Bible School. I attach to them quickly, and when their lives look really hard, part of me always wants to just take them home and love all of the bad things away.

So it's not super surprising that I found myself here as a foster mom.

I always knew in my head that I couldn't just hug the bad things away, but love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres (that's from the famous chapter on love in 1 Corinthians), so my heart always wanted to try anyway. It kind of worked for a while with my biological babies, you know. My two biological children have a sense of safety automatically when they're in my arms. I started as their house, their food source, their comfort. I was one of the two who'd always answer every cry in those important first weeks. They grow up, of course, and bonding grows bigger and tougher, but in the beginning, hugs and kisses really did seem to make all the bad things go away.

Not so with foster care. We had to fight for the bonding. We had to keep giving hugs and kisses to babies who pushed away, stiffened, and cried louder, hoping that one day it would click. It did click for Baby S. He went from being our biggest crier and our most difficult to comfort, to being our biggest smiler and the one most longing for hugs and kisses.

We fought hard to earn his trust. And then he was taken away. And he learned that we aren't trustworthy.

And my oldest learned that people we love go away and that grown ups sometimes don't take care of their children.

My love wasn't enough to protect my children. I could not shelter them from these awful things.

Now we have Baby S back, but we can't go back to the days when snuggles make it all go away. We can't take away his memories of being sent away and not being brought back. We can't undo all of those long months of not being properly nurtured. We can't magically catch him up verbally, socially, emotionally, physically, mentally.

We cannot protect him.

Every part of me longs to be the band-aid that makes his life all better. I want to be the band-aid for Big Brother A, too, to fix the instability and frustration he experiences as he struggles through loving his brother but also feeling (justifiably) that life as a five-year-old was probably better before Baby S came back. I want to be the band-aid that tells my baby girl that she can trust this new one and that he won't ever squash her. But I can't be those things for my children.

All of the love in me wants to not just protect, but shield. And I cannot.

Josh and I chose to pursue foster care with full knowledge that it would change our biological children. We knew that there would be lost innocence at an early age. We weighed the costs and made a decision. I still stand by that decision. But we are not unaware of the baggage we are fixing on our family.

We pray that these difficult things would make our children's love for Jesus stronger in the long run. But sometimes, it's hard not to feel like a failure as a parent. My love can't fix it.

My love can't even fix me. My love for my children doesn't take away my selfishness. I still want to go out with my husband for a long meal without the kids; but when I do, can I admit something? I'm ready to turn around and go back out for another date as soon as I'm home. Life is really hard, and love is costly, and sometimes I have love left but not the energy to use it right. Sometimes I don't respond to my husband or Big Brother A in conversation because I'm selfish and I'm focused on loving me when I'm tired and frustrated.

My love isn't going to cure our situation. It doesn't guarantee a recovery for Baby S. It doesn't mean he'll definitely get to stay here. It doesn't make my heart stop being selfish. It doesn't take away the baggage of exposure to hard things for my two bio kids. It doesn't catch me up on laundry or dishes, either.

My love, although all I have, starts to feel so inadequate.

But my love is just a picture. It's an imperfect picture of the love of someone who isn't selfish, and therefore is able to actually love fully. It's a shadow of the beautiful love of Jesus, who gave everything for me. I mean, everything. Not a lot of hours of sleep, or changing diapers, or a difficult labor, or tough love to a biological parent who's pushing away. EVERYTHING. His entire life. His fame. His followers. Heaven itself.

Only to get it all back and then offer it to me, even though I wasn't his yet. He loved me before I loved him, and he loves me fully even though I love him with so much brokenness.

I can't fix the difficult things my children experience. I can't be their band-aid. I can't shield them, on Valentine's Day or any other day of the year, from the hard fact that love is painful. I can't guarantee that being back will take away the damage of the ten months away for Baby S. I can't protect him from the lingering doubts that we'll leave again. I can't protect me from the lingering doubts that he might leave again, either.

But I can be the person who wades through this mess with my children. I can offer what protection my shadow of love can give, while prayerfully pointing them to the real thing. The love of Jesus won't shield them from bad things, either, but he can protect what matters most - their hearts.

I can pray, today and every day, that glimpses of Jesus in me would help steer the hearts of my babies toward Jesus. And I can keep loving with my whole heart because Jesus loves me - first, still, and always.

The Daily Bedtime Countdown

2017-02-05T16:37:00.002-05:00

Life is pretty crazy right now. No, honestly, crazy doesn't fully describe it. Overwhelming probably hits closer to the mark. Josh and I are a little overwhelmed.

We're overwhelmed by Big Brother A's needs right now. He's got these incredible shining moments where we're so proud of the big helper he is, so full of compassion and love. But then, for every one of those, there are multiple really awful moments where we wonder if we've ruined him by making life too hard. (Also, he's dramatic because we're dramatic. Obviously.) Sometimes, he's the hardest out of all of them. But then there are these incredible moments where he comes in and encourages me when I'm ready to throw in the towel and let the three little ones go Lord of the Flies in the living room while I rock and eat chocolate in the bathroom. We see glimpses of who he can be, and we try to use a lot of prayer, grace, love, aaand sometimes yelling to help him see that, too.

Baby Gigi is, you know, a baby. She's an adorable little six month old who doesn't get quite enough practice sitting or rolling because she is at risk of being squashed on the floor pretty much all the time. She's starting to scream (she learned that from Baby S) when she gets a toy taken away. Or my glasses. Or my hair from her tiny but SUPER strong clenched fist. She is joy and sunshine and love, and she gives me motivation. A thousand times a day I thank God for this gift of sunshine. And then I pray that she will never walk. And then I pray no, God, I didn't mean that, but maybe let her be just a little on the slow side. Because I'm not sure how I'll keep up with another one!

And Baby S. Oh, Baby S. We are SO glad he is here. So glad. Don't doubt it for a second. (I'm telling you and us.) But life is really crazy hard right now. He's making incredible gains, but he has a very VERY long way to go still. We're fighting so hard. Every little piece of gain that you notice was bought at a price, for him and for us. I am very proud of him for his hard work. But along with those gains and his growing comfort in our home come some behavioral regressions, too. This is typical. There's so much more involved for him than just a learning disability. Sometimes the people in his life forget that. There's the trauma of being shuffled between homes. He was developmentally younger when he came back to us than when he left. I'm always half joking that he and Baby Gigi are going to learn to talk and potty train together. He has the tantrums of a child just learning to use words and realizing that they don't always get him what he wants. But try telling that to a very tall, very strong two-and-a-half-year-old. He's super fast and has no fear of danger. So he just runs, in whatever direction, at any moment, at full speed. And this is why we don't bring the kids anywhere.

Running away and screaming in public is exhausting.

Except when we do, because I realize we're all missing out and we need to train him and let Big Bro have fun experiences. Josh and I joke that these kinds of outings are "nightmares from which there is no waking." That might sound dark. I told you, we're dramatic people! But it is pretty rough. And usually ends with Josh and Baby S waiting in the car while I try to finish off whatever it is we were attempting with Big Brother A, which gets derailed because I also have a six-month-old strapped onto me, who occasionally needs to eat, sleep, or have her diaper changed.

I'm not saying this for sympathy. Life with three little ones is hard, period. For all of us who are there now or have been there in the past. I hear it only gets harder as they get bigger! Or at least, a different kind of hard. I believe that. The emotional "hardness" of Big Brother A is much harder than the physical "hardness" of not sleeping because of Baby Gigi.

There are also beautiful moments. These are refilling. I try to drink them in extra deeply because the tired seems to run pretty deep some days. Those are the moments when I'm upstairs grabbing someone an extra pair of pants (someone is ALWAYS pooping, you know), and I see two kids' bedrooms upstairs with a toddler bed, a twin, and a crib, and I stop and breathe in how right it is to see those three here in this house together. It's when Baby S grabs Baby Gigi by the toes and says "ee!" (feet!) and then they giggle together. It's when the boys and Josh are wrestling on the floor under the green blanket. It's even when we're leaving a failed attempt at a family event and I look back at all of the little ones contained in their carseats, and I am satisfied because this life and all its ups and downs are exactly what I want.

Sometimes I hide in the basement (Big Bro can open gates so he finds me) or in the bathroom (but Big Bro always has to use it when I'm there). Sometimes I pause for an extra moment on the stairs (but then Baby Gigi cries louder and I have to run down to make sure no one is sitting on her). Sometimes I have a second - or third - cup of coffee (it takes me over an hour to get to it, though). Basically what I'm saying is that there is no relief some days. There's no real rest. No down time. No brain-turned-fully-off moments. God is much stronger than me and he keeps filling me in the times when I think I'm beyond being fillable.

But sometimes I long for bedtime. Sometimes, I read the last book and shut the last door, and I sigh a great big sigh of relief, grab myself a nice big bowl of ice cream, and shut my brain off in front of the tv with my husband. We call it a date because actually going somewhere feels harder than staying in together right now. I go to bed a little too late and I think I won't possibly have the energy for tomorrow.

But then I do. Because God is so good. I am so weak and he is deciding to use me anyway. I sit here and write this with Baby S on my lap, poking my phone and the monitor for the millionth time, trying to stick a wet kazoo in my mouth, and poking my eye under my glasses which he is also trying to remove. I'm tired, but I'm glad. I'm so very, very glad for all three of my little hoodlums. I'm glad that we are the ones who get to fight this hard fight alongside Baby S. It's nothing compared to the sacrifice Jesus made for me, but it helps me to feel a little sliver of what real love and sacrifice are, and to serve Jesus by offering him this very small and very imperfect picture of what he offers me. Ô (That weird symbol was from Baby S. I'm still not even sure how he did it.)

The days are so very long. The countdown to bedtime is all too real. But the weeks are pretty quick, and from Sunday to Sunday I can see how incredible the growth is in all three of my babies - and in myself, too. We're getting through a day at a time. The hard fight for progress will go quicker than I realize. Someday, I pray, by God's grace, I will look back on this time in disbelief because it's too hard to imagine how far Baby S had to come. It's already like that when I think back to his arrival. He's a fighter, and a sweetheart, and a firecracker. He's a ray of sunshine in our lives and a wrecking ball in our home, and he's growing me in a lot of painful and amazing ways. I can't wait to fully realize someday how God has worked in each of us, all five, through this amazing daily battle to bedtime.

A New Year and God's Story for Baby S

2016-12-31T09:25:00.004-05:00

Resolutions for the new year don't really go very far for me. I've learned that, if it's not something I'm already working on, then I'm probably not going to change simply because it's a new year.

I've been doing something else the last few years instead. I've chosen a word for the year. It's either something I need to work on or a theme for the year. My word for 2015 was hope. We were in a constant state of maybe-Baby-S-is-leaving. We knew leaving wouldn't be the best thing for him. Sometimes it was hard to trust that God had the best in mind for our little guy. So I fought for hope that year. My word for 2016 was joy. We knew Baby S was definitely leaving and it was hard to feel gladness or joy in our circumstances. I struggled for joy even when very good things happened, like finding out Baby Gigi was coming or moving into our first house together. I didn't want to just SAY that God works things for his glory and our good; I wanted to FEEL it deep down. Joy.

A new year starts tomorrow, but my new word started 43 days ago. My word for this year is redemption.

My prayers for Baby S shifted around two months ago. We knew his circumstances would create long-term challenges for him, but the things I was hearing from Birth Parent were becoming more and more dire. They were weighing heavily on me. I realized that my prayer for Baby S needed to change. It needed to get deeper. God hasn't chosen to spare Baby S of hard things in his life, so I need to realize that he has a plan in this. My prayers for Baby S shifted to pleading with God to use these very hard things in Baby S's life to shine his love for our little guy. I started praying that God would speak his love and power so loudly in our lives by walking Baby S out of this incredibly tough place and into healing and wholeness, and that his wholeness would be all the more beautiful because of the journey.

I started praying that for Baby S just a couple of weeks before we saw God move in a way that was an unmistakeable answer to that prayer. It's a start to a very long road, but we've seen such incredible growth in our little man already.

Redemption.

God allowed some things in Baby S's life that looked truly awful from where I'm standing. But I believe and I can SEE that he is going to use those things to make Baby S's life story even more beautiful. I believe someday Baby S will talk, and the wonderful things he says will be even more incredible because once he didn't have a voice. I believe his beautiful smile and joyful spirit will be an encouragement to many people, and his amazing positivity will be all the more impactful because of the negative circumstances he's walked through. God is going to take those very hard things and redeem them for something so beautiful that an easy life couldn't have had the same impact.

Such a beautiful gift to have all three of our little ones safe and sound this Christmas!

There are still no guarantees for Baby S's long term future with us. There is a strong possibility of him being here forever, but if we've learned one thing from foster care, it's how quickly things can change. (Remember how we finally accepted two and a half months ago that Baby S wasn't coming back? Remember that we were all ready to re-open for a new foster care placement only TEN DAYS after Baby S came back?? Things change SO fast!) I'm not walking into this year more naive than I was last time we had Baby S in foster care. But I can see that God is already starting to redeem these rough couple of years, and I am so ready to watch his work this year. We're not even in 2017 yet, but his redemptive work has already taken my breath away and I am incredibly excited to see God continuing to move.

Our non-verbal child who wouldn't make eye contact is looking, and laughing, and starting to say words. He's joyful. He wrestles and teases and loves to play chase! He trusts that we'll come back for him. He sleeps in his big boy bed all night long, gets up too early, and then snuggles every morning. He finds me to kiss his boo-boos and then runs away all better. He's working so hard and making so much progress. That's after six weeks, guys. God is so good, and his work in Baby S is so beautiful. This year is going to be incredible.

I can't wait to soak in God's redemptive work in Baby S's life - and mine - in 2017.

A Month With Baby S

2016-12-16T15:45:00.001-05:00

We're two days away from a month of Baby S back in our home.

I'm not sure exactly how to describe this situation that we're in right now. It's very complicated and confusing for everyone involved! Imagine what the service providers and daycare provider must be thinking... having a strange person suddenly bringing in the child every day, and oh yeah, also calling herself "Mommy". So many levels of weird! We are doing all of the parent things but he's not legally in our care in any form. We are waiting day to day, hoping for some certainty of what our future together will be, but there's been very little communication on this front lately and the wait feels very long.

We have been saying for a long while that if Baby S came back, we'd need a lot of help. We weren't wrong! When he first came, the best description I can come up with is "wild." He felt like he needed to do dangerous or naughty things to get attention. He didn't like it when I nursed Baby Gigi and went through his list of things-that-make-Mommy-get-up each time. He vaulted over baby gates like they were nothing. He climbed out of his crib up to 18 times each night before falling asleep. He threw his food from the table. He barely communicated.

It has been a long month, but oh so rewarding. I was in awe this morning as I got myself ready for the day while the two boys played upstairs. Baby S is already a different child than he was a month ago. He is laughing, adventurous and so very goofy and sweet. He is starting to trust that we'll come back for him. He loves his routine. He's sleeping almost 12 hours a night. He's eating like a champ, except the things he won't touch, because he is, of course, a 2-year-old. He's still so busy, but it's so different than when he came. He's active, not lost. He's exploring, not disconnected. He makes eye contact and communicates with a variety of noises and signs and sometimes even words. He snuggles and he SITS AND PLAYS. I can't even tell you how huge that is.

The first few weeks of Baby S here were beyond tiring. He's worth it, but I'm just taking a moment to honestly reflect. We were "on" every moment of every day. There were so many safety concerns because of his strength combined with his lack of boundaries. There was a struggling 5-year-old trying to figure out where all of our attention for him went and feeling frustrated that all of his games were getting plowed over and ruined. There was a confused 4-month-old who was used to being held all the time and wondering (usually with a smile) where that small person came from who seems to speak her language! There was a frightened evil cat, constantly ready to attack ME because she was always getting chased by Baby S but refused to take it out on him. There was no refuge in nighttime, because again, Baby S could climb out of the crib and escape out of the room within seconds. That meant my husband sleeping on the floor in front of his door while Big Bro A slept in our room with me and the baby monitor. We felt like we had things barely wrestled into some form of order only when both of us were in the room. We could barely give each other breaks to use the bathroom!

But we had so much help in those crazy times. We had family who all chipped in together and made such a drastic difference for Baby S while we visited them Thanksgiving week. We had friends bring over meals, help with Baby S so I could feed Baby Gigi, offer to help shop, come over to wrap gifts, stop by with extra clothes for Baby S (who came with literally ONE shirt that fit him)... I could go on. We even got some anonymous encouragement in the mail.

Sometimes things are really too hard for us. Sometimes things are really more than we can handle. I'm so glad we have the amazing community that we have. I'm so glad it was already in place when the hard, crazy stuff hit. We are not exaggerating when we say that we could not do this without our support network. You guys are all so awesome. Thank you! Not everyone is meant to do foster care, but everyone has a role, and we are so very grateful for those who have taken that role and helped us to do what we've done with Baby S.

The future with our big guy is as uncertain as ever, but at the same time, I'm more convinced every day that it's totally in God's hands. This boy has such a bright future ahead of him still. His delays don't have to stick. I don't believe they will, if he's given the right opportunities.

And oh yeah, we have an adorable, thriving, chunky-thighed four-month-old. Have I mentioned adorable? God super blessed us with this mild, sweet, happy baby. He knew we'd need all of our energy for Baby S and he gave us the most amazing new baby. We are so blessed!

Time to Walk the Walk

2016-11-30T17:30:00.003-05:00

I am a genuinely selfish person.

And this isn’t one of those humble self-deprecations that I’ll turn into a win for myself so you can praise me for pushing through despite how hard things are.

Let’s avoid that. My pride doesn’t need a boost.

The last few weeks have been a new level of chaos in our lives. Baby S, our former foster son, has been with us as his mother fights through some chronic medical conditions that make caring for him very difficult.

Time to walk towards the mess!

His behavioral and developmental delays are exhausting and the consistency required to effect lasting change in his life is daunting. He needs nearly constant supervision. He has little fear of our set of stairs that he can only navigate safely in one direction. He can open locks and is interested in seeing what’s outside the house. And his curiosity has no limits (think hot ovens, pots of coffee, the microwave, our fridge, every closet, on top of every piece of furniture, etc).

Walk towards the mess.

He’s almost two and a half and has a half dozen signs and words. Miscommunication is rampant and frustrating for everyone. The temper tantrums escalate to “glasses knocked off your face” with some regularity. (And few things get my blood boiling like seeing my wife take a hit to the face.)

Walk towards the mess.

The tantrums know no boundaries in time or space. They don’t happen all the time, but when they do happen it’s quite a sight. I have yet to discover a scenario more humiliating than a full-on temper tantrum in the middle of the crowded lobby at church while I’m trying to talk to someone I haven’t seen in a long time. (Nevermind, the grocery store is worse. At least at church I’m surrounded by people who love me.)

Walk towards the mess.

The toughest bed time was the evening I slept on the floor outside the boys’ room so I could stop him every time he got out of his crib. Sleep took two hours and 18 hallway tackles (you start counting when the absurdity gets to such insane levels that all you can do is laugh).

Walk towards the mess.

We don’t know what the future holds. He isn’t in our home through foster care, but because we genuinely love him and his mother and want to help in a tough season. We’ve seen significant developmental progress even in these few weeks, but the potential exists for all of this to vanish as he eventually heads back home and we share parenting responsibilities.

Just walk towards the mess.

That’s been the battle cry of our family for the last few years as we’ve navigated this foster care journey. Simply repeating it to myself to calm the tension as things get harder stopped working last week.

I don’t know what I expected would happen when we started all of this.

I think I assumed that walking towards the mess would be hard, but that things would work themselves out because we were doing something so sacrificial and noble. Then things got really hard and I started looking for excuses to pull out and make it stop.

Our five-year-old big boy is responding negatively and we are seeing some of his worst behavior.

The emotional baggage is weighing heavily on my wife.

My four-month-old baby girl isn’t getting the attention she should to help her grow and flourish.

It’s getting harder to get and stay ahead on emails and projects in ministry.

See what I did there? Lots of very noble excuses that demonstrate my care for my work and family. Those are easy tickets out of a hard situation and nobody would question them as valid reasons to step away.

And when I look at it from my wife’s perspective, it gets even worse. Over the last few weeks, she found out she was taking care of a thirty-year-old man-child in addition to the three younger than six.

All of this has brought out one very real and sobering truth about myself...

I’m willing to walk towards the mess just so long as the praise I receive outweighs the inconvenience of that sacrifice.

That doesn’t sound much like the Jesus I claim to know. Knowing we were undeserving, He still went through the trouble of showing up in the middle of the mess of humanity only to be eventually slaughtered by the very people he came to save. He agonized over this on the evening before His death, pleading to be released from that path, but submitted to what needed to be done. He was not ignorant of the weight of what was happening. And He was deserving of praise long before

Paul, a man who lived in the first century who saw the risen Jesus and who was friends with people who were friends with Jesus, wrote about this so clearly:

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!”

Now that’s walking towards the mess.

And I can barely get over myself long enough to help my boy who needs some love, some rules, some consistency, and a night watchman outside his bedroom.

Thank God His grace is bigger than my shortcomings, because I have plenty of those...

Old Fears and New Answers

2016-11-15T20:37:00.000-05:00

As I've mentioned before, my household is looking ahead into re-entering the foster care world soon - probably within the next few weeks. We've been saying after Thanksgiving. Big Brother A is praying, "God, please let Thanksgiving be tomorrow so we can do foster care again!"

It's felt really strange to tell people "we do foster care, but not right now" over the last ten months. Ten months! I can't even believe that Baby S left us ten months ago. We're still on the roller coaster for the ups and downs of his life. We're still communicating, still having him over, still texting about his therapists and diagnoses and struggles. We're still missing him. We're still praying for him. He's still in our nightly "sunshine" song where we thank Jesus for each part of our family. It's still "Baby S's crib"; "Baby S's toy"; "Baby S's carseat". We have diapers and spare clothes in his current size. So although we're technically not "doing foster care" it feels like all that has really changed (other than the obvious empty bed) is the lack of communication with case workers. The rest of the ups, the downs, the drama and the love have all stayed the same.

All that to say that it's been strange feeling like we're advocating for something but not really doing it, all while feeling exhausted from doing something that still feels a whole lot like foster care even though it technically isn't. Now we're talking about adding another child, and it's always framed in terms of "if Baby S" and "when Baby S". We're not filling his bed. Possibly ever. We can keep serving his family by being there if Birth Parent becomes unable to keep up with our little guy. It's something Parent mentions regularly. We have another crib, though. We might be crazy (when we think about "what if Baby S AND..."), but we're getting excited to fill it.

We picked out some special new toys for our next foster son. We hope having something soft and warm of his very own will help him to feel some love and comfort while his world is scary and changing.

Excited. And can I honestly say... Terrified. Knowing something is coming does not make it easier. For example, knowing we'd be tired with a newborn did not make being tired feel any less tiring. Knowing it would hurt having Baby S leave didn't make it any less painful. And knowing how much it rocks our world and how tightly the grief of losing a child winds into every part of life will not make it easier next time. If it ever gets easier, we're doing it wrong, and that will be when we need to quit. This round of goodbye had a huge impact on me emotionally and mentally. I feel like, between that and a physically rough pregnancy, I was battling depression I didn't even know I had until it started lifting in just the last month. So looking from my newly clearing lens into a future that could involve another prolonged goodbye and another painful round of grieving is still scary. In fact, it's probably even more terrifying than it was when we started foster care because the first round of grief keeps getting ripped open. Thinking of stacking another hurt on top of that - well, let's just say it might be a big growing moment for my mental stability! And adding to that the fact that there's no guarantee of future contact once a child returns home? It's heavy.

So old fears have not left. They may be even stronger. But I've grown since the last time we've been in this waiting-for-a-call place. The year of grief, goodbye and depression has grown and stretched me. It's the kind of growing pains that keep your kids up at night, but then in the morning you're almost positive they're a whole inch taller than yesterday. I have learned just how weak I am in the last year. And in that weakness, I have come to be totally and completely awed by God's strength. He has always been enough. I have never been enough. And in every new way that I see my insufficiency for this task, I see even more clearly God's ability to use those very insufficiencies to make his part in this household shine even brighter. It's an amazing thing. One of God's greatest gifts in the last year has been learning that "I'm not strong enough" is true. That's okay, because God doesn't need strong people. He uses people like Paul from the Bible who know their weakness and let God shine through by using an impossibly broken person for too-amazing-for-them things.

When we started this journey, we quickly learned that one question almost always follows after people find out we're a foster family. "Won't you get too attached? Wouldn't it be too hard to give them back?" I've gone through various answers in our three years of fostering. I started with "Yes, it will be hard, but it will be worth it." I went through "Yes, it is absolutely killing me and it's only by God's grace that I'm standing upright, dressed and showered, pretending to be a functional person." (Don't worry. I didn't say any of that. Just YES and then moved on, because I couldn't go into any more than that without sounding like a crazy person.)

And now I've landed on a new answer, which I hope is more helpful and informative.

"Won't you get too attached?"

"Yes. That's the point."

Our Baby S has regressed in a lot of ways. It's been painful to watch that. But through it all, he loves people. He loves us. He seeks attention. He makes eye contact. (He really does. They say a lot of things, but he still has more HIM left with us than in other situations, and we still see it.) He laughs and giggles and plays chase. He tries to copy his Big Brother A and be just like him. He's attached. That's the biggest thing we have given him. That is one of the only things he has kept. It might be enough to change his life, even with all of the hard things he's going through now. He knows he can love and be loved. He knows he's lovable. He knows he likes to laugh and make others laugh. Maybe, someday, he'll be able to believe that Jesus loves him because he believes that love is real.

It hurts like crazy to attach deeply to someone who leaves. It hurts beyond belief to watch someone you're deeply attached to suffer and struggle and be unable to help.

But if we didn't have foster care, these babies would be numbers. They'd be beds in a big room full of beds, with staff helpers coming in and out. They'd be played with and they'd get attention, but they wouldn't get attachment. That's our gift that they carry with them. And it is worth it. And it does hurt. And that's the whole point.

So we wait, full of nerves and fear and hope and a little bit of crazy (if our 3-month-old stops sleeping through the night we're going to wonder what we got ourselves into!). It's going to be good and hard to dive back in. We're feeling ready and not-ready.

We'll let you know when we're officially back on the list. We're hoping for December. Pray that Baby Gigi keeps sleeping so we continue to feel able to add another round of love, and awake at night, and making messes, and court and case workers, and buckling into carseats, and brotherly arguing, and sharing toys with the baby's face...

A Moment for the Hellos

2016-10-19T17:00:00.000-04:00

There has been a lot of time spent processing goodbyes in our household. Goodbyes are painful, whether we spend months preparing for them or get a phone call that they're happening in an hour. Goodbyes are one of the first things people think about when they hear "foster family", and their impact lasts a long time, so we've talked about them a lot.

But as we're gearing up to launch back into foster care in the next couple of months, I want to take a moment for the hellos.

Our hello moments didn't have people ready with cameras for family photos and first moments together. There weren't balloons or flowers. The pictures we do have had to remain private, and we couldn't share names or details of why our children came to us or what they had experienced. The days and weeks after a placement involve many meetings and appointments, lots of trial and error, and then the straightforward exhaustion of sleeplessness with little babies. Most of the stories, images and memories from those first days with each of our children have remained within our own household.

So I want to talk about the hellos now, before we're back in the midst of the chaos. About the beauty, excitement and tragedy of bringing home someone else's baby.

When my home is open and ready for a child, I jump at every phone call. Everything stops to answer the phone. The phone comes everywhere. I answer every unrecognized number at any time of day, because even though I'm perfectly aware that the county will call from a county number, I can't stand the thought of missing out on a phone call. (I know this is irrational. I'm over it.) A missed call or a dead phone battery could mean someone else takes the call and the child is placed elsewhere. (Probably still with a family that is loving and wonderful, so I feel like kind of a bad person saying this, but it's disappointing to realize major life change was a moment away and you missed it.)

Those moments of answering the phone and finding out that it's one of those calls are full of adrenaline and excitement. Shaking hands, running around trying to find note paper, but writing on a scrap or an envelope instead because everything is happening quickly. Not much information - maybe a birthday, a name, a race, some background information. Trying to jot down every detail and carry on a conversation, all while trying to make the major decision of whether or not to make this child a part of my family. Asking questions, knowing the odds of getting answers are slim - and the odds of getting correct answers are even more slim, because again, no one has very much information, and sometimes what little there is isn't deemed important for the foster parent (we can talk that one over another time). Even the few details we get have to be taken with a grain of salt - birthday, parent history, even a child's name, can all be wrong in those first phone calls.

By the time I'm off the phone, I've made a huge life decision, all while jotting down notes and carrying on a conversation; yet somehow there's already a twelve-step to-do list in my mind by the time I hang up. Then I'm running around, texting family and close friends to announce our new addition, contacting the pediatrician and the child's case worker. Putting laundry through the wash, all in various sizes because who knows how big this child will be. Grabbing diapers and pacifiers of varying sizes and shapes because, again, I know nothing about the child. I'm sterilizing bottles from storage and getting out the can of formula we keep for backup; changing the crib sheets; packing a diaper bag; rearranging my schedule for the next few days...

All this happens while the situation is still up in the air. I remember the day Big Brother A and I got a call for a 10-month-old baby boy while we were at the beach. I still can't believe that I heard the phone ring from the water. They would let me know by 4:00 if R came into care. They didn't, and he didn't. I still pray for that baby. The hello never happened, but just knowing he was there made a place for him in my heart. I will forever pray for him by name. Even that whisper of a hello is a beautiful privilege.

Our very first foster baby hello.

The first baby who did come... The first call after three months of certification. That baby was already in care. That situation was different than many, because he was in an emergency foster home. He was clean. He was dressed in clothes that fit, that weren't stained. We knew when he should eat next and what kind of formula to use. We knew his age, his name, his situation. The next day, we found out that the situation wasn't what we'd been told, and he left. But the hello was beautiful. Soaking in a new little person. Knowing that in ten days, he'd lived in four places. Wanting to show him what love looks like for as many days as we had. Treasuring him, even when he wouldn't sleep at night, because he needed to be treasured, because he needed to know what home feels like. Josh and I sitting next to him at 4 am, awed by the beautiful details in his perfect little toes and fingers, trying to learn his face and ears by heart, stroking his sweet, soft hair. Beautiful hello.

And the next baby. He was in the hospital. They didn't know if he'd be discharged that day or the next. I got a call back that he needed to stay one more day and we couldn't go to be with him that night because we'd be in danger from a birth parent. We mourned the chance to spend the night in the hospital with our baby, our baby we had never met, so that he would not be alone. I was SO EXCITED and distracted when I got the follow-up call that he was definitely coming to us that I ran not one, but TWO loads of wash with NO clothing in them. (Remember, that was in our pay laundry era, so that's $3.00 in quarters!)

I packed his going-home bag. Four months old, but to us, the outfit I picked would be his first. The day he came home would be the day he joined our family. This was my first medically fragile child. I didn't have a clue how big he'd be or what his needs would look like, but I was ready to learn. I had to leave my husband and Big Bro A at home, because the situation wasn't safe for Big Bro. This time we wouldn't all meet the baby at once. The feeling of wandering into the hospital to pick up a baby - surreal, exciting, nerve-wracking. I learned that there's a social services room in the hospital. I was brought to my little Baby Z and left in his room while logistics were sorted out. A nurse came in to introduce us, showed me the baby, and asked if that was who I was there for. I didn't even know his race; I couldn't have told her if it was the wrong baby! How quickly can you bond with a baby if you're not sure it's the right one yet?? Beautiful baby; uncertain hello.

I remember getting information overload on how to care for this special baby, and asking them to write it all down for me. There were discharge papers I wasn't allowed to sign because I wasn't his legal guardian. A county worker was there for that. I was amazed at how much the hospital staff LOVED my baby. They had nicknames for him. They knew what he liked and didn't. Some told me memories of their weeks with him, and that they would miss him. If I had known how loved he was already, I wouldn't have felt quite as sad about having to wait one more day to meet him. Being in the hospital did not mean he was alone.

I wasn't allowed to carry him to the car. I wasn't even allowed to use my clean, safe, sturdy infant carrier carseat. I had to place him in the dirty, broken infant carrier with the strap only on one side from his birth family, "so he would stand out less". I was escorted to the parking garage by security people, who checked around corners and inside elevators for the relative who might attack if she saw me with her baby. A nurse pushed a hospital cart full of beautiful new items people had given our little guy so he'd have his own things. They left me in the parking garage, hoping I didn't find out what baby's relative looked like by meeting her face to face! I switched him to our carseat and loaded the trunk: our diaper bag; beautiful donated items that were just oozing with the love of many different people; and the not-so-nice things his family had brought to the hospital with him, never anticipating that they would be going home with someone else - that their baby would be going home with someone else.

I brought him upstairs to our apartment, where he met my husband and son for the first time. That was beautiful. Another beautiful hello. Even the evil cat came to sniff sweetly at his tiny, gorgeous little curls. Beautiful moments, all ours. No family pictures, just snapshots of one or another of us getting to know this precious boy. Beautiful pictures that we would look back on after he left in two weeks, amazed at how much change had already happened. Dry skin was smoothed; cracked and rough hands were healed. His thin face had rounded out; his sad and lonely cry had been replaced by a smile and the most beautiful baby giggle. Joyful boy.

And the third baby. Big Brother A and I were out getting groceries, and I got the call in the checkout line at Wegmans. I rudely took it, and I'm so glad I did! So I was putting groceries on the checkout belt, trying to remember all the information coming from the homefinder with no ability to write it down, and feeling so rude about ignoring the cashier. In the meantime, Big Bro decided he wasn't getting enough attention and opened up a box of elbow macaroni and dumped the ENTIRE box on the floor! So we had the cashier, the kind maintenance person, the person getting our new box of pasta, a cranky 2-year-old, and me still rudely on the phone! They were, of course, very courteous and forgiving, because Wegmans customer service is awesome. Such a memory!

That call was a probably-later pickup. We went out as a family to have lunch together, and we got the definitely-come-now call right after lunch. All of us went together that time. We went to a county building, the same one we'd visited for our goodbye with Baby M. We parked in the loop. I got out of the car and walked up to the door with an empty baby carrier. I waited for a few minutes with the people who were loitering outside. Then a case worker came down with a baby, a toy, and a diaper bag. I vividly remember thinking it was a little inappropriate for the random person sitting on the stone wall next to me to say "oh, he's going with her? I'll take him!!!" and how shocking it was that they just handed me the baby and his things without any ID or signatures (I hope they looked up my face in a file somewhere first!). And then I latched the infant carrier in the car, and we drove away, with a new baby that two people in the car hadn't even looked at yet! We had our moment of introduction at home, alone. Sweet and beautiful. Another hello.

Hellos for us are blurry text pictures to family and close friends, family movie nights and frozen pizzas. Hellos are trips to Wal-Mart where well wishers congratulate me on how skinny I am for having such a young baby and then give my husband and I very puzzled looks when they realize how very white we both are! Hellos are new clothes that a baby never gets to wear, that become sweet hopes packed away for another baby who might come some day. Hellos are wondering if this baby has had a bottle before. Did they nurse? Is their mommy still healing from delivery? Is she okay? What is she thinking and feeling right now? Does their daddy even know? Are there siblings missing this sweet babe? What does his new sibling think of him? Is this the first day of forever, or one in a numbered set? Hellos are taking pictures of every moment and every first, even though it's just a first for us, because maybe we'll be the one making a baby book for that little one. Maybe this will be the story we'll tell our child someday. Maybe we'll have the privilege of sharing their forever as friends, even if they aren't in our home. Maybe we'll be able to send a CD of pictures with them when they leave so that this chapter of their lives will be beautiful and loving, not blank and unknown. Maybe we will have the ability to give bio family glimpses of the precious moments they missed.

Every moment in foster care is bittersweet. The hellos and goodbyes are equally precious, beautiful, and heartbreaking. They leave you wrestling with a thousand questions and thoughts that have no answers, and you have to just surrender and enjoy the baby smell. You treasure the outfit they came in, even if it was dirty and mismatched, because that's how you met. You treat the toys and blankets they brought along with care, because what if that's all you'll have to share with them some day about their first home? (But if the baby isn't attached to the smell... You wash them. Because yikes.)

The joy and anticipation of the hello is something beautiful. It is something I can look forward to even in the midst of the hardest goodbye. I have learned that hello doesn't lose its beauty. And while the uncertainty of the future is painful, I can say with certainty that there will be more hellos when the time is right. The hellos and the in-betweens are well worth the goodbyes.

We were all foster kids...

2016-10-02T18:59:00.000-04:00

Adoption is greater than the universe. That’s the takeaway from reading the first chapter of Paul’s 1st century letter to the church in the city of Ephesus. He writes that God chose his future children long before the world was even created. Adoption was on His mind while he was forming the universe.

But ultimately adoption is a beautiful tragedy.

It is beautiful because it is intentional, requires sacrifice, and gives a child a new identity within the fold of a family. They are no longer orphans and they are definitely not just “adopted children” -- they are a son or daughter! They are equal with that of children born by blood, because love transcends simple biology. It’s an incredible reflection of the way that God adopts those who have faith in Christ and gives us the title “children of God.”

It is tragic because the ultimate cause of adoption is sin. It is because of sin that death exists and leaves orphans in its wake. It is because of sin that a child faces neglect or abuse and enters the foster care system. It is because of sin that families are fractured and children must be adopted into a new family.

Sin has corrupted the original design for creation and for the family and adoption is the beautiful response that attempts to bring Gospel-driven order to all of the chaos.

But what about foster care? How might we view foster care in light of God’s original design?

Similarly, adoption in foster care is a beautiful tragedy. It gives a home, permanency, and a new identity to a child with significant disruption in their lives.

But adoption is NOT the ultimate goal of foster care.

The goal of foster care is to provide a very temporary solution when disruption happens within a family. Sometimes a parent’s poor choices (drug abuse, crime, or neglect, to name a few) create an unsafe situation for a child. Other times an emergency situation leaves a child in a precarious situation (for instance, a child’s sole caretaker is hospitalized and they do not have any support network in place).

Whatever the cause, the goal of foster care is to care for a child while doing everything possible to pursue reunification. The ideal outcome after a child enters foster care is for the biological parent to find healing, help, and recovery so that they can parent their child. We know that simply can’t happen in every situation, but that is the ultimate goal.

And I believe that this is a profound picture of the Gospel, albeit a different one than adoption.

In the opening chapters of scripture, we catch a glimpse of an incredible relationship between God and humankind. Adam and Eve walked side-by-side with their maker in the garden before sin entered into the equation.

Since then, the effects of sin have separated man from God and we’ve been desperately trying to bridge the divide. Eventually God sent his Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for our sin and bring us back into a right relationship.

In this same sense, children in foster care are estranged from their parents and the hope and goal is that they will be reunited. As a foster parent, I am given the opportunity to play a role in the reconciliation of a child with a parent. It’s an act of restoration, bringing a family back to its God-designed structure and function.

The metaphor breaks down quickly, because we recognize that God didn’t do anything wrong. The break in the family relationship was because of OUR rebellion. And even though it was MY fault, God paid the price to rectify that relationship. Nevertheless, foster care is about us playing a role in restoring what has been broken.

But because adoption is a possible outcome of foster care, there are many layers of Gospel redemption. We got into foster care to help families reconcile and to walk alongside hurting parents and care for hurting children. But if reconciliation isn’t possible, we welcome the opportunity to adopt a child and give them a new identity in our family!

What's it like with two kids?

2016-08-16T17:32:00.001-04:00

Some questions are hard to answer.

For our family, we’ve come to realize there are a host of family-related questions that have no simple answers.

After our biological son was born (Big Brother A), we took a leap of faith and started our foster care journey. We’ve had four children in our home over the last 3 years. One of those children stayed in our home for a significant amount of time. Baby S came to our home at six weeks old and stayed with us until a few months shy of his second birthday.

That’s a year and a half in our home. We were mom and dad. We celebrated a birthday. We took family vacations. Then over a painful few months he transitioned back to live with his biological mom. Now we have an empty crib (when we moved to our new home Big Brother A asked to have the crib in his room because he missed Baby S). And we have family pictures on our walls that include a boy that people don’t see when they visit.

Then came Baby Gigi. Now about 2 weeks old, she is our second biological child.

And when you have a new baby, anyone and everyone wants to catch a glimpse and they have lots of questions. They inevitably ask about the labor. They always ask if you are getting enough sleep. And then they turn to Big Brother A and say some variant of:

How do you like being a big brother?

Everyone means well. We are not out to catch people with a “gotcha” whenever they ask this. But my wife and I often get a little chuckle and cast knowing glances to each other.

They tell him that they think he will be a good big brother. Yes. He will be a good big brother. He’s already got four other younger siblings and almost two total years of experience in this department.

This next question comes from people who don’t know us well. They know we have a new baby, but they aren’t sure what the rest of our family looks like. It’s a harmless question, but we are never sure how to answer...

What number child is this for you?

I feel like saying “two” doesn’t accurately describe our family and it definitely short-changes the impact those babies had on our family. But saying “six, but three were only here for a short time and one was for a year and a half but he’s back with his biological mom” is way more than they were asking for (like when someone asks how you are doing and all they are really looking for is “fine”).

I guess what they ultimately mean if pressed is “How many kids are in your home right now?” That’s a fair question. After I answer politely, the inevitable follow-up is…

How is the transition to two?

It’s about the same as the last four times we transitioned to two.

I absolutely love that this is a messy question for us. Our family’s unofficial motto is “Walk towards the mess.” Time and time again God did that for us. When humans were at their worst and running hard away from their creator, God decided to wade into the mess of humanity to bring a solution. He did it by choosing one man, Abraham, to build a unique relationship. He did it by choosing an unlikely king, David, to forge a unique nation. He did it by becoming a man Himself, Jesus, to bring us back to Him. Time and time again God has rolled up his sleeves and moved deep into the mess to make things right.

We want to do just that. When things are hard, we want to turn towards the mess and not run from it.

There are easier ways for us to grow our family. There are safer ways for our kids to engage with ministry. There are simpler ways for us to help those in need.

But God didn’t choose a simple solution. He chose to die for us.

The least I can do is try to figure out how to answer the messy question “What’s it like with two kids?”

Ten Days

2016-08-10T10:17:00.001-04:00

Hello, world!

Ten days ago, we added "Baby Gigi" to our family. (Gigi is the name Big Brother A calls her, so we'll borrow it for our blog.)

She's absolutely wonderful. We're so thankful for a second "forever baby". After a difficult pregnancy and a very busy month trying to get our new house all in order before the baby arrived, it's so great to just be home with our baby, settling in and making plans that don't include lists of home repairs or closets to organize and that don't require my phone timer going off all day reminding me to eat the right things at the right times and then prick my finger an hour after! Our new normal has been much anticipated and I'm so filled with joy and so excited that we are finally here.

As we've mentioned before, we're on pause from foster care right now as we settle in with our new house and new baby. We want to give Baby Gigi her time to be in the spotlight and Big Brother A time to adjust before we reallocate our time and energy into another little foster brother or sister. And we're still tracking with Baby S, too.

Even though we're not doing foster care at the current moment, it has changed things. It changes the way I see our current journey. I can't go a day without feeling the enormity of how blessed we are. Before foster care, I thanked God that we had a home and that we weren't living on the streets. I thanked God that we were healthy and that our marriage was better than we deserved, by God's grace.

But I've learned that our blessing goes so much beyond these things. I'm learning that I'm not a better person because of my good choices; rather, I'm a better person only by God's power working in me and if I had dealt with some of the situations birth families deal with, maybe I'd be surprised at how much I'd look like them. God is big enough to meet their needs and we are all responsible for our choices; difficult situations do not excuse sin. But my list of blessings that I thank God for has expanded.

In my home, we have the education to make wise choices for the health of our child, both in pregnancy and now that she's here on the outside. We have the resources to look up information when we're unsure of something. We have access to incredible and supportive doctors as well as a health insurance plan that allows us to receive their care when needed. We have a network of people to help us in an instant - with caring for Big Brother A when we were in the hospital, with meals to help ease the transition, and with moving our stuff and unpacking to make our settling-in process so much faster and smoother. I cannot picture an emergency situation where we could not get help from a dozen different families and this is a blessing bigger than I can describe. (Northridge is an awesome community of people who love Jesus and love each other; we'd seriously love for you to check it out if you've never experienced this kind of family before!)

The list goes on, but I think you get it. Blessed beyond measure. And I cannot see my newest little baby except through this lens.

Today, Baby Gigi is ten days old. I've been looking ahead and counting down to this milestone. It's been a bittersweet reminder to see this day approaching. Baby M was ten days old when he came to us. I've watched Baby Gigi grow and learn so much in the last ten days. She has learned that she can cry to communicate. She has learned that when she's hungry, mommy will feed her. She has learned my face; she will stop crying in my arms even before she's eating because she knows food is coming. She has learned that there are other people who come and go from our home; kind and gentle people who talk over her in sweet voices and stroke her soft hair. And she has learned that there are three constant, stable people who are always here with her. She's learning family. She's learning stability. She's soaking in love at every moment. We can't get enough of her.

But my Baby M? He had lived in FOUR places by the time he came to us. He could cry to be fed in three of those. He was physically cared for in three and loved and nurtured in at least two. But there was no stability. There were no attachments forming. He was learning aloneness. He was learning constant change. The smells were always different; the sounds were never dependable; he didn't know who would answer his hunger cry, or what the formula would taste like, or what kind of bottle he'd have that time.

And his mama? She was probably feeling a lot like I am right now, physically. Still sore and tired. Probably still dealing with a milk supply that wasn't going to be feeding her baby. A little hormonal and emotional, but without the happiness and peace and beauty of her baby to keep her going when she was tired and overwhelmed. Her nights were still sleepless, but she didn't have her baby there to feed. His baby things were set up and ready in her home, but he wasn't there.

So while I soak up all the sweet moments and kiss my baby for the hundredth time today, I choose to feel blessing, not pride, at where we are and what life looks like in our home. While I snuggle my sweet forever baby, I pray for the mamas who choose adoption for their little ones, who fight through long hard pregnancies and difficult labors and make the very brave and loving choice to let someone else walk out of the hospital with a new baby in their arms. I pray for the mamas who thought this would be the baby they could finally keep, only to have their child immediately removed into foster care; mamas going home with an empty womb and an empty carseat. I pray for the mamas who did succeed in providing their children care for a time, only to have them taken away later. I thank God that he has a role for us in a few of these families, and I pray that he could use us not just to love on little ones, but to help moms and dads to feel love, stability, and acceptance - maybe for the first time.

I want to say bringing home my biological baby is no different than bringing home a foster baby. It's simply not true. I love them just the same. But there's a kind of instant, fierce protective instinct over those little foster babies that is replaced by pure gratitude and awe in my forever baby. There's a part of me that rises up with a readiness to fight and an extra rush of adrenaline to answer every whimper before it's even escaped their lips when it's my job to teach an older baby the lessons of love and nurture and responsiveness that my newborn is learning now. I love them just the same. But there's something different about holding a child whose future is so uncertain. You have to do all your fighting for them right now, because you might not get a chance tomorrow. When I hold my forever baby, I hear all of the people who've held their forever babies and then asked me, "Isn't it hard to say goodbye to a foster baby?" My heart breaks a little because I cannot picture saying goodbye to my Baby Gigi. But then I remember the fight that rises up inside of you when you're loving on a possibly-temporary child; and because the bits of love you can give them might have to last them a very long time, you love them hard and you love them without reservation. Your heart can handle another break, because they need this and because you love them enough to break for them.

I am so thankful for my forever babies. I look ahead eagerly to the day where we continue foster care. Eagerly, and with a lot of sadness and some nerves, too, because it's never easy, and you don't go a day of loving a foster child without remembering that their future is uncertain and wishing desperately you could fix things for them. I continue to pray for the babies who left, because God is big and good and he has not forgotten them.

And I breathe in the smell of my baby's hair and stroke her tiny toes and find immense joy in storing up her clothes for the coming year knowing that she'll still be here to wear them.

Houses and Babies and Very Good Things and Very Hard Things

2016-07-12T16:32:00.001-04:00

So, it's kind of been a while since I have written.

Long enough that I had to stop and think about what website I use to blog when I sat down today.

Life has been moving really fast. In some areas, it has moved forward quickly, and there have been exciting things to plan for and to keep us busy. In some areas, it has moved backwards, quickly and painfully. These are things I cannot write much about, because it is not my information to share. But the pull between the very good and the very hard has been a challenge for me.

Our second biological baby is due in less than a month. I am so very excited to meet our little girl, and as the date approaches, I have been more able to fully experience the joy of anticipating her arrival. But this has been a hard thing for me. This pregnancy has not been an easy one. The fact that we were going through hard things with Baby S throughout did not mean we got to experience an easy pregnancy in exchange. I was sick a lot in the beginning... and the middle. I finally felt like I was hitting the second trimester "easy stage" with just a few weeks left to the second trimester. That was a good three weeks. And then I started to feel off and tired and just not right, with the occasional return of morning sickness. Yay. Shortly after that, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and that has been a constant challenge. Half my brain is devoted to counting carbs and proteins and how long until the next time I need to check my blood sugar. I have forgotten all math, science, psychology... every grown-up topic and all the smart things I used to have in my brain from college... because I have replaced that information with how many carbs are in a serving of green peppers or a slice of Wegman's White Whole Wheat Bread. The up side to this is that, for the first time in my pregnancy, I do feel some measure of control over how I feel. There are actual numbers that I can use to help myself feel better. It's a pretty big job to keep track of it.

It goes everywhere I go. And attacks my finger no matter where I am. Sorry, other people at Home Depot who don't like blood.

And through all the sickness and sometimes feeling weak and sometimes feeling discouraged, life keeps moving forward. We bought a house. That's super exciting, but we didn't know when we were moving in, so that was another holding pattern in my life that threatened to raise my anxiety levels. I saw myself losing energy with the pregnancy and losing time to pack and move and unpack, and I had to be very conscious of not letting myself spiral into a whole lot of worrying. I think I mostly did okay with not worrying, by God's amazing power, through a LOT of prayer and God's amazing ability to give me just what I need from whatever part of the Bible I happen to be going through in my reading plan. (By the way, being pregnant and not able to sleep at night is really awesome for helping me learn to pray more and WANT to pray more. I am actually not being sarcastic when I say that it has been totally worth the sleepless hours to be able to intimately wrestle through my hard things with God.)

And... there's my Baby S. He's been gone for almost half a year. He is not doing well. We have watched him spiral. It is very hard. It is hard for us, and for birth parent. We are still working together even though he is no longer technically involved with us as a foster care placement. In my high school and college years, the things we are witnessing now would have made me sick with worry. I still struggle to constantly re-decide to trust God with Baby S's future, and the weight of that struggle and that pain is very heavy, but I am thankful for my very-imperfect progress and continue to ask God to help me grow in this area. And I have seen him faithfully doing that, even though I don't deserve it and never could have grown even this much on my own. I'm not sure that I've learned not to worry, but I have learned to bring all of my worries to God, and the more I do this, the more I feel joy growing stronger in this struggle between the very-good and the very-hard.

When outside people ask about my life, I tell them that I'm expecting a baby any-time-ish, and that my family just moved into our first house, and that we have an almost-five-year-old who's super excited to be a big brother. Sometimes if they keep poking, we talk about foster care, and I give a polished answer and get the "oh wow that's so great!" and "now you have your own boy and girl so your family is complete even though you have babies who have left you!" type answers. I hear how awesome my life is right now, and how exciting my life is, and how happy I must be about the house and the baby.

And I'm going for transparency here, so I'm going to honestly tell you that this response causes me pain every time. I am excited. I am very thankful for these amazing good gifts that God has given to me.

But... I'm thankful because I have fought a spiritual battle this spring and summer, and wrestled with grief and weakness and pain, and because I am grasping at gratitude that God offers despite my tendency to focus on the hard over the good. And I'm filled with joy over these amazing gifts because I have wrestled through many hours of painful nighttime prayers, trying to grasp God's goodness and the brokenness of my Baby's situation, and choosing to believe that God is in control even when my heart wants me to be in control.

So it's a painful joy. A painful excitement. It is solemn more than jumping up and down. It is sometimes logical more than it is emotional.

I think this is okay. I think there are times we will wrestle deeply to claim joy. I know that God has been keeping my heart and my head open and aware of these issues in my life. He has taught me my patterns, and I now have a toolbox to go to when I start to feel anxious, depressed, or distant from God. I have great hope that God is making me more like him and I am praying that he will help my heart to want the things that he wants. It will be okay.

It will be okay because God, not because me. And so I want to acknowledge these struggles. I want to truthfully recognize that sometimes we can get good things that we have been waiting for a long time, and it can be hard. If you are there with me, I want you to know that I get it, and I'm praying for you. Thankfulness and pain and joy and hurt can live together, and they can be so overwhelming that it can be a fight not to shut down.

I'm making it, and my joy every day is real, and my trust is real, and they are more real for the fact that I can feel that they should not exist at all in broken me, and that they must therefore come from God, who is the giver of every good and perfect gift.

I'm thankful. I love my life. It's maybe a more grown-up and solemn kind of love than I expected, or the strangers in the grocery store expect. I'm praying that this grows me into a deeper person, a more passionate person, a more unmovable person with Jesus as my rock who doesn't move even in the very worst storms. I'm praying that cynicism stays far from me and that I would not allow bitterness to take root. (And good grief, that my pregnancy brain would let the spelling part wake back up, because I thought I knew how to spell these words and spellcheck keeps calling me out.)

And the house? It's amazing. It's beyond my comprehension that it's ours. I am so thankful for years of watching other people get houses while we worked through trying to do big things in a small space, because I would not have been as healthy in my new house if I hadn't had a chance to grow truly satisfied with apartment living and small spaces and a lack of permanency. I think this is such an amazing reminder of how God is going to use my current hurts to bring growth that I will be better for some day. God can use my present circumstances and my future to grow a deep joy and trust that goes far beyond what I could ever imagine.

Moving Forward

2016-04-11T10:19:00.000-04:00

I have so many saved blog posts that I'll never publish. I have written in my head, but I can't even explain things in person. Life is messy, and good things are happening, but the hard things still hurt. I'm going to try to push through this post, and we'll just see how much sense it makes in the end, but I feel like I haven't kept you all up to date very well lately so I'm going to give this my best try.

As I mentioned in my Good Friday post, this year has been heavy, and sometimes the bad things are weighty. There's a lot of really great stuff going on in our lives right now, and I am so very thankful. I never want to come off as disinterested in my life or less than excited about the great gifts God gives to my family. There are things I really love about our life.

...Like finding out on vacation that we're having a baby GIRL!

I'm also going for honesty, though, so I'm going to go ahead and say that sometimes it's difficult to grasp the way the very good and very hard come wound together in our lives. I may have a tendency to look at all of the big things as parts of the long list of heavy-stuff-I'm-wrestling-through. I'm excited for the good things, but also overwhelmed by the competing grief and excitement in my head. I have Pinterest boards looking forward to how I'll decorate Big Bro's new room and the new nursery when we move into our first house; and I have vivid memories of Baby S screaming and struggling to free himself so he can come with me as I walk away from him each time we say goodbye. I have beautiful memories of our ultrasound and learning that our new baby will be a little girl; and favorite songs that are wonderfully upbeat and make me cry every time because I used to dance with Baby S to those songs. I go through little baby things for our new little person and I struggle to grasp the reality that I can keep clothes for her that are in sizes she won't see for a year or more, because the last three little people I mothered left with clothes they hadn't yet grown into and stocking up for the years ahead would have been unwise. I have dreams about falling in love with new foster boys or girls and worries about moving forward, limiting my resources, and then finding out that my Baby S needs to come back and needs all of my time and attention that is getting spread thinner and thinner.

And there's still anger, too. There's anger at a system that says one thing and does another. There's frustration - because why make rules at all if the breaking of the rules changes nothing? I'm starting to daydream (and night dream) about the next time we can do foster care, and at the same time, struggling with a lack of trust in this system.

There is joy. We are making the most of the freedom that comes with having only one child, and that child being a fairly independent four-year-old who can do a lot of cool family activities. We went away for a long weekend for a family vacation at an indoor waterpark, and we had so much fun together. I'm trying not to let this waiting time - waiting for Baby S, waiting for our new baby, waiting for our new house without knowing when we can move in - take away the joys of this life, this home, this little beautiful family within my walls right now.

Grief is still tricky. In moments where I've successfully immersed myself in the beauty of now, a child the age of our Baby S can send me rocking backward and struggling to stay present for Big Bro. Songs, places, even foods can bring back such strong and sudden memories, and inconsistently enough that I can't predict when it will happen. Life with Baby S is just far enough away that I sometimes think I've gotten control over these moments, but then there they are again; and Baby S's scream as he sees me walk away from him again makes reconciling his current reality much harder.

God is still good, though. The rock I stand on is this: That God can use even the messiest situations for his good and his glory. He might plan to use Baby S's hard life to build a relationship with my beautiful boy. I know I've written it before; just be thankful you don't have to read it as often as I have to think it, because you'd be totally sick of it by now. And there's this, too: My other little precious babies, both big boys who are older than 2 now, do not become less known to God even as they feel more and more distant from me. I won't get a call if either of those babies come back into care; but God is ever present for them although I can't be.

So there's that. We're moving forward one baby step at a time, laughing and crying at the unpredictability of life, totally in awe that NOTHING is unpredictable to God and finding great hope and comfort in that fact.

Thank you, as always, for the love and support and prayers. We really and truly could not keep moving forward in this journey without the amazing community God has gifted us with. You guys are incredible. We have felt so much support through our goodbyes, and now as we prepare simultaneously for our new hello, the possibility of Baby S returning someday, and our desire to continue fostering after our baby girl arrives, we are so excited and thankful to see how God works through this community to meet the physical needs of growing our family. A crib, a changing table, bags of baby girl clothes, a rock 'n play; there's a whole list of gifts that have come in already, and one of my strongest love languages is gifts, so believe me when I say that each time I see these items and dream about using them with baby girl and future foster children, I feel your love and support all over again! Thank you for filling my home with love and encouragement that actively fight back on days of disappointment, discouragement, and physical weakness (this baby girl is making sure we know she's here, guys!).

You guys are the best.

Bad Things

2016-03-25T08:06:00.000-04:00

I know that it's only March, but allow me to say that 2016 has been a really hard year.

We said goodbye to our Baby S, and seeing him still brings pain as we reel through the changes in him and the heartbreak of his confusion and sadness every time we say goodbye again.

We are celebrating our expectation of another biological baby in August. And that's been so much harder than I expected. I have been so sick. I'm just past halfway through this pregnancy, and the magical numbers when morning sickness should disappear have come and gone. Sometimes it gets worse instead of better. Bonding with a baby while saying goodbye to my Baby S and experiencing physical sickness and weakness - what feels like a confusing betrayal by a body that used to be able to serve my family well - it's confusing, to say the least.

We started a house hunt. And oh, boy, adding one more thing to this plate... Wow.

This morning, on Good Friday, I'm thinking of a conversation I had with Big Brother A as we waited for preschool on Monday.

Me: You don't have school on Friday, you know.
A: Why not?
Me: It's Good Friday. Do you know what that means?
A: It's the day Jesus died. But why is it good?

Why is it good? I've processed that before, but never explained it at the spur of a moment. And if I'm honest, it's a question my heart still asks.

Why is all of Jesus' pain and suffering good? Why is an account that still leaves me confused and angry at the injustice and the indignity GOOD? Why is a group of friends running away and abandoning the one they loved, then watching him die as they stand stunned, confused, and out of hope, GOOD?

Why is Baby S leaving good? Why is being so sick that sometimes I can't even serve my family good? Why is being so busy that I'm back to throwing up most days good?

And for that matter, why was Baby S coming ever good? His coming was out of brokenness and pain and a family ripped apart. Why was getting married and then learning to be content in rented apartments, doing foster care in a small space and watching family after family moving forward into houses while we stayed and felt the limitations of where we were in the context of what we wanted to do, ever good? Why is one more very hard thing - being so sick in a time that is already so draining and emotionally difficult- why is that ever good?

Why is it good?

The complete measure of the goodness of what Jesus did for me can only come from the pain and the bad and the hurting of what happened to him. What happened to Jesus was brutal. It was wrong. People sinned when they mocked him, chose to hold illegal trials, found false witnesses to condemn him, and put him to death in a humiliating display between two people who deserved to be where Jesus was. I sinned when I chose, when I still choose, to follow my own way over and over and over again. I sinned and put up an ugly, irreversible wall between myself and God, between myself and Heaven. I made my own future, and it was ugly, brutal, condemning. It was all that Jesus took on himself.

It was bad.

And the goodness of what Jesus did shines from that badness. Every additional day that I live with me, I realize how deep my need for Jesus is. I'm a rule follower at heart, but that does not mean that I am good. It has meant that I want people to see me as good. It has even meant that I thought I was good, that I thought I could win some sort of imaginary prize for doing what's right. And the more I get to know my own heart, the more desperate my situation looks. That pride doesn't want to die. That stubbornness and insistence that I can do it myself, thank you is part of the big, bad, ugly wall that should have kept me away from God.

And Jesus broke that wall in the ugliest moment in history.

The ugliest, most beautiful, most Good moment in history.

This year has been a journey of grasping at hope when the emotional bad is so heavy that I can physically feel it. I've asked God to help, and although the very hardest bad things haven't gone away or gotten better, he's faithfully grown my joy, my purpose, and my hope inside of me in a way I can't explain outside of him. It's been a long, slow process. A lot of days of the process were me learning to just believe that there was hope, that there could be days of light and happiness again - not just the deep joy that doesn't go away; I love and value that, and I long for Heaven. But actual happiness. And as I woke up this morning, I realized that the answer I gave Big Brother A was the one I needed, too.

There has been a lot of hard and bad and sad this year. Jesus doesn't change that part of my life. Jesus told his friends it was going to be hard; he said it would get harder, even, if they followed him. Jesus didn't come to take away the hard.

Jesus came to make the hard mean something. He came to bring hope. He came so that all of my best efforts that fall so short and leave me so spent could somehow, in a way I absolutely don't deserve, bring about God's good and best. He came so that I could rest in him in the very hardest days, trusting that he knows what he's doing even when I don't understand it.

He came so that the months when my loudest cry is How is this Good could have the same answer as Big Brother's question. He came so that the badness and brokenness that still exists could make the Good richer and fuller and more mysterious and beautiful and filling than I could ever ask for or imagine.

The hope in my darkest days isn't in being delivered from the hard. It's from the beauty that glows forth from that hard and makes me long for Heaven as God faithfully uses me to play some small part in pointing others there, too.

The hope is a house - our first house! - found after some long weeks of searching and eight years of apartment living; of tough visits with Baby S and moments when his pain at our goodbye breaks my heart but also reminds me that I'm blessed to still be an influence in his life; of a whole new wave of change and painful transition at our church that's going to be hard, but I'm convinced will lead us in new and exciting places as we make sure our hope for growth has always been in Jesus and not a leader. The hope is more people loving Jesus in Rochester and becoming better followers of Jesus. The hope is finding our perfect house, on the street I drive down sometimes just because I love it so much, and knowing that God will be faithful to bless our move even when sometimes I'm too physically weak to do the laundry and I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to pull off the packing and cleaning involved. The hope is an ultrasound of a healthy baby, and my husband feeling the baby kick for the first time, both giving me moments of intense bonding and being able to finally start to look forward to this little person and see an end to this physical pain even if I am only just halfway through with a hard pregnancy.

The hope is ultimately knowing that these places we are in will still hurt. Some days I'll cry out for hope because I won't feel it. But I will know that God is faithful to refill me when it's time.

I'll know that there is Good in the very darkest, very worst day. That each day, like Good Friday, the Good will shine even brighter because it is happening in the dark places. That God's plan is still what is best, even as Jesus reminds me that the very best and most beautiful plan can also be the most painful.

A Week Later

2016-01-31T20:51:00.002-05:00

We have had so many people support our family and pray for us with Baby S's departure. I am so thankful for the love that has come our way. Thanks for the prayers, guys; we crave them, and we believe they make a difference.

How's the week been for us?

It's a little surreal. We are used to long stretches without Baby S. We are used to waking up in the morning and doing the quick calculation of "how many kids are asleep in our home?", or hearing a child during naptime and thinking "is there a baby in our crib, or is there another kid in the building?". So there are a lot of moments where I know he's gone, but then the reflex response takes over, and I have to recalculate in my head and realize Baby S is not here. The natural next calculation is "how many days until?" and the new answer is "maybe not again" and "one day at a time".

We are really mostly okay. Every day of foster care is a little bit of the grieving process. Every trial date, every visit, every overnight is a little bit of the goodbye grief surfacing. A foster parent isn't just starting the grieving when the child leaves. The grief has been real for a while, and the coping mechanisms that get us through every other day of foster care are still there for us the day the child leaves and the days after. There are tears in the days and weeks leading up to each tentative goodbye, and there are tears following the goodbye when it really happens. But they are mostly controlled, because we are used to holding it in when our minds and hearts are crying and hurting in court, and in meetings, and when we're with birth families. I try to let Big Bro A see some of my grief, so I can help him know that it's okay to grieve, too. And then the rest I am able to save for quiet moments when I can have some healing tears all to myself.

There are the unexpected tears, too. That's going to happen for a while. Like finding Baby S's sweater in the wash after I thought I had all of his clothes sorted and packed into clothes to go and a small pile to stay just in case. Or the moment when Big Bro A heard me talking to the cat and came in from the other room, asking if I was talking to Baby S. Or when I wake up at 5:05 AM and think "he'll be up soon!" before I've done my recalculating. The planned pain is manageable, like when we know he should have been coming home at night; the moments that sneak up on us are the hardest to cope with.

I have learned that I often don't know what to pray for in these moments, and in the many tough moments that foster care has brought in the last year. I have learned that sometimes I simply need to cry out to God for help. Help for me and my husband; help for Baby S; help for Big Bro; help for Birth Parent. Help for a broken system in a broken world. Help to know how to pray, what to hope for, how to process each painful interaction. Prayers as simple as "please help" have carried me through a lot of days. They're real, and the small number of words doesn't lessen the relief I feel when I bring these heavy things to God. When my babies cry out for help in the hardest, most hurting of moments, I don't need to ask them what they need. It's clear. And I reach out and help them without asking them to figure out the plan first.

As far as Big Bro A, I didn't know what to expect with his reaction. I've been a little surprised by how matter-of-fact the whole situation is for him. He's looked at pictures of his little brothers gone home every day since he can remember. He was only two when we started. He doesn't know siblings any other way. We've been telling him since Day 1 that Baby S would probably leave, but if he needed to stay, we'd be here for him. Big Bro loves birth parent, with a very real, innocent, childlike love. It is straightforward for him: Parent is better, Baby S is living there now, and now we will get the visits and he will spend his nights there. There haven't been any tears (other than a suspicious case of "sweaty eyes" at school the day of goodbye). But there have been prayers for Baby S that make my husband and I tear up. He talks about missing him "so so so so so so so much" (with a lot more so's, but you probably get the picture about as far along as I do, so I'll spare you). And some moments, he talks about Baby S as if he's still here, and tells us he keeps forgetting when we remind him that Baby S has moved out. He's used to the big stretches without Baby S, and the calendar is a little fuzzier for him, so it's going to take him longer to absorb what's really happened.

While I'm surprised that Big Bro's emotions don't match mine, I have no doubt that his compassion passes mine. He doesn't see all the details, and he's genuinely happy for a job well done. He says he wants more foster brothers and sisters. So if you're thinking about fostering and wondering if it would be too painful for your older children - I can say that I have been amazed at the strength and compassion of our 4-year-old. It is beyond what I could have expected. I wouldn't take these experiences away from him for a minute. He is absolutely, undoubtedly, better at this than I am. And having him here with us, a joy and a bit of hope in the hard places of unknown and goodbye, is a blessing and gift beyond description.

It's going to be a long process. We are going one baby step, one day at a time. Life on this side of goodbye doesn't really have any fewer unknowns. So we just live in each day. Some days, we move and laugh and talk about next time. Some days, we let ourselves shut down just a little. Sometimes Big Bro and I don't come right home after we're out, because I don't want to see the too-empty apartment or eat lunch with an empty chair that should have a booster seat in it. We just call it a day at a time.

We're figuring out how to grieve someone who is only gone for us, how to move out forever someone who might actually need us again someday. We're grieving, too, the changes that will come for Baby S under his new normal. He will not be the same. He is going through something painful and traumatic, and he has fewer ways to cope than we do. With our other goodbyes, we did not have follow-up with the children. That was its own kind of pain. While seeing Baby S again is joyful, it brings along a different sadness and a lot of extra goodbyes (he still gets so happy and thinks he's coming home when he sees us). Returning to a birth family is a goal to strive for; but things are sadder and a bit more confusing when the child doesn't remember another family before the foster family. This is not so much "going back" as "starting out" for him.

We probably won't get grieving just right. Saying goodbye doesn't get easier for me each time, but I do gain more tools for coping. So we are really and truly okay, and part of that is smiling and laughing and making more memories, and part of that is curling up and crying with one of Baby S's loveys every now and then. We continue to try to love on him and Birth Parent, and we appreciate your prayers as we go through the joys and pains of working alongside a birth family reunited, and watching the sadness and heaviness of this transition for our baby.

Baby S Went Home Today

2016-01-22T13:34:00.002-05:00

Baby S returned to his mother today.

Starting today there is a car seat in our van without a passenger.
There is a crib that nobody will be sleeping in.
There are toys that will not go played with.
There is one particular car ramp that won't be seeing any races.
There is a spot at the table that will be empty.
There is a sink that will have far fewer dishes.
A special nighttime song will go unsung.
Mornings will start an hour later than they used to and bedtimes will be an hour shorter.
Family movie nights will be less frantic.
Going to the store will be less of an adventure.
There is baby shampoo that will sit unused.
And a bath towel.
And mittens.
And a hat.
And boots.
And a raincoat.

His favorite possession? His toothbrush, oddly enough. That went with him. But now there are only three in the cup by the sink.

Over a year and a half in our home comes to an end.
There is a young boy without his younger brother to follow him around.
There is a dad without his youngest wrestling partner.
There is a mother without her baby.
There is a cat that is likely happy about it all. (We really can't tell either way)

We hear people say, "We couldn't do foster care because we'd love them too much to give them back."

But you would love them enough to give them a safe, consistent, caring home when they need it, wouldn't you?

If you think we do foster care because we are strong, then you should come see us in the days before each of the times our foster son was supposed to leave. You'll see a home where we've given up on cleaning, because sitting on the floor and playing is more important. You'll see a couple lying awake and talking because it's too hard to sleep. You'll see two people that simply can't hold it together. Certain toys are just catalysts for sobbing sessions. Still other toys are reminders of a broken world filled with ineffective systems (which leads to further sobbing).

If you think we do foster care because we have something in us that others don't have, then you haven't seen us answer at length the "Why do you do foster care?" question. You'll see a "tough guy" take long pauses and extra breaths trying to say, without tears and as succinctly as possible, why these kids need it. You'll see a mom, unable to hold onto the children she has called her own, find some reason why the pain is good despite her maternal instincts screaming otherwise.

We are far from capable. Very far from capable. We get frustrated too easily. We get annoyed too quickly. We are more cynical than ever. And we find no hope for the future in this world.

We are NOT foster parent material.

So why bother?

Simply put, there is a gap. A very large gap. Between what the world should be and what the world actually is.

These kids can come with all of their possessions in a trashbag. We keep extra duffle bags in our closet. They will leave our home with dignity.

These kids might already feel like an outsider. We keep full wardrobes for many different sizes. They will leave knowing they were one of our kids.

These kids have left what they know and been thrown into a stranger's home. We will tirelessly remind people that this is the same child as last time. They will leave knowing that our home was a constant in their lives.

These kids have likely experienced trauma that many of us will never face. We will sob at night and "get it out of our system" by morning. They will leave knowing they had someone to hold them and someone to cry on.

These kids might not have had even their basic needs met. We will always keep random canisters of baby formula in our cupboard and plenty of food in our fridge. They will leave knowing they always had what they needed.

So we will stand in that gap. We will do all that we can to build the bridge between what should be and what is.

We love them too much NOT to take them. Because they need the love more than I need to avoid the heartache of saying goodbye.

Their lives are messy. So we will choose to wade into the mess.

That's what Christ did for us.

Is Christmas Still For Me?

2015-12-10T16:43:00.002-05:00

Last Christmas was my first real taste of what Christmas feels like when life is really, really hard. You can read about that here.

I love my Advent activity calendar. It's such a big deal to me. Going into it this year, I remembered last December's chaos, and I tried to make things simpler. I tried to know that things might not happen.

We had court recently. Baby S is going back. We've been in a holding pattern, told that once Birth Parent decided they were ready, Baby S would be leaving us in two weeks. We've been two weeks away from goodbye for a few weeks. I never like waiting. I don't like it now either.

Today we were asked if we'd do Baby's return on Christmas Day. Yes, you read that right. On Christmas Day. I knew that the county planned to send him soon, despite what I think are a lot of red flags. But Christmas Day? Guys. Come on.

We're gonna try to fight that one. It's beyond crazy. It has been hard enough to guard Christmas in my heart already.

But something has happened. Something held over from last year. Last December, I felt so much sadness as I watched Christmas slipping away from me. All of the missed moments hurt. It felt like I was missing Christmas. Much like Cindy Lou Who in the live-action Grinch movie, I wondered where Christmas had gone, and if I had changed too much for it.

But this year, the more lost I feel, the more good Christmas feels. The more moments slip away, the more precious our Christmas movies and hot cocoa moments are. In a way that I didn't expect, Christmas is more for me this year than it ever has been before.

Advent isn't a season of trying to shove in all that I can. Missed traditions remind me of how broken life is, and that makes me long for Christmas more. Not because "It's the most wonderful time of the year" (I feel a little like I'm lying to my kids every time we sing that song). I need Christmas because life hurts. Joy is hard to find, some days. And Christmas is about joy coming in the midst of pain.

And finding beauty in imperfection. Christmas sugar cookies don't look like the magazines with kids, huh?

I've noticed a lot of other people are hurting this Christmas. I guess my world is getting bigger and a little more grown-up. Christmas doesn't mean a month without pain. The upside to that is that maybe hitting "real life" won't hurt so much in January, because Christmas wasn't meant to numb my reality and then leave me fighting for hope when all of the good Christmas things are put away.

Christmas was meant to give me something bigger than my reality. It's not just for the happy people. Christmas offers a solution to my sadness. And much like Mary's life was about to get a lot messier, and more complicated, and more painful, and a hundred times more amazing than ever, my life will move forward with a lot of pain and sorrow and purpose and meaning. God won't leave me, even when life is confusing and I don't see his direction. In a few months, we'll celebrate Easter, and I'll be reminded that God's plan was always clear, even when it didn't make sense to any of Jesus's friends. Even if it still doesn't make sense to me.

Christmas is still for me. Christmas is more for me than ever before. I can find a deep peace in the approaching holiday. It's a peace that hurts, but it's stronger for that.

Merry Christmas, friends. May this Advent season bring hope and peace, even if the wounds remain or the circumstances don't look new on the outside. I know we'll be okay, because Jesus came for the broken people, and all of our hurts just make us more qualified for God's amazing work in us.

Wednesday, Goodbyes, and Maybe Not Yets

2015-11-16T14:44:00.000-05:00

So our lives might change a lot this week. Or not at all.

Welcome to our story.

Is this about the twentieth time I've said Baby S might be leaving in just a few days' time? It sure feels like it. I'm glad he's still with us, because it hasn't been the right time for him to go back yet. It was supposed to be the right time this time, and then a lot of things changed in a few weeks' time. I know what I would do if it were my choice, but it's not. Maybe that's good, because I'm way too far into this thing now to be unbiased, although I really do try. My mama bear instinct has kicked in and it's pretty hard to shut down.

Wednesday is another court day. We've entered the "have his stuff packed or at least ready to be packed each court date" stage. It kind of drives us nuts, because we can't plan. But it's also become our new normal. So we'll get through this one too.

It's really weird to think about how big Wednesday's decision could be, because each time Baby S is "definitely going back very soon" and then doesn't, it feels less possible that he could leave. He's been with us for 16 months. He's 100% part of this family. It is 100% more crazy when he is here, because he is active and wild and enthusiastically happy about getting into everything because everything makes him laugh. But I'd still rather get up with him at 5:30 AM and chase him around home cleaning up a trail of destruction all day long than have him not here and sleep in and have tea on a veranda somewhere.

Of course I'd rather have him here. He's my baby. I want him here forever, with all of his crazy head-butting hugs and his sweet sloppy baby kisses and his love for hide-and-seek and his silly sweet hair that stands up in random places and flops around as he runs back and forth.

Just look at him. One tiger slipper on, trying desperately to communicate with Winnie the Pooh. Seriously. Super cute.

But how can I want him here when that means he's not with his Birth Parent? Josh and I are really and truly in this mainly because we think that reconciliation and healing in a birth family is the top goal and a wonderful representation of Jesus loving us and healing us although we were so very broken. This doesn't stop applying just because we love our foster son. But desiring reunification is not so easy when the things you see aren't pointing to success for parent and baby. We don't blindly desire reunification in every circumstance. This system is in place to protect children and families, and that means sometimes it is not right to send a child home right now.

Thankfully, as I'm foster mom, I am able to live in this limbo of don't-send-him-away and hope-he-can-go. I'm so glad I'm not a case worker or judge. I can throw my whole entire heart into my baby and fight for his good when it is my place and step back and let others make the call when it is their place to do so.

So it's confusing, and complicated, and ever-changing. So many changes. So many last-minute reschedules and please-pick-him-up-nows and rearrange-your-entire-weekend-pleases. So many we-need-another-meeting, just-one-more-meeting-will-help, they'll-listen-this-time-just-drop-everything-and-come-for-a-meeting.

I'm getting used to planning around not getting to do what we plan. I'm getting used to expecting visits to be cancelled when it's going to be crazy to re-arrange the morning. This is not because I'm being negative, but because it's currently the most likely scenario. There's a whole other level beyond flexible that we live in now, and it can drive you crazy, but it's life and you just keep going and try to laugh when possible and find the right people to cry to when not, and pray the whole time that God will preserve your long-term effectiveness even if the short-term sanity is lacking.

I can no longer wrap my brain around Baby S going. Saying goodbye every month seems worse than doing it once when it happens. And will I really be less blindsided if I go into court telling myself he's leaving?

Who knows.

We don't know how to plan, or how to think, or even how to pray. So for now, we enjoy each day we have together, and the ones we have that aren't together too. We try to paste on a cheesy smile and not yell at anyone when they ruin our plans because sometimes that's all I have left in me. We just ask God to help, because I don't even know what to pray for. But he promises that he knows what I need better than I do, so maybe it's better that way anyway.

Thanks for everyone who's praying and loving Baby S with us. Thanks for being here with us through our slow (not-so-slow?) descent into craziness. I love you guys for that.

We'll make it, guys. Through Wednesday and through however many other court dates are left with this guy. Not because Josh and I are sane enough or great enough or together enough, but simply because God is a big God who can do big things, even with broken people.