It is certainly not finished, but I look back at the past two and a half years, and I am thankful for how I have grown spiritually since starting to foster. I just told someone tonight that there is no clearer time in my life when I was called by God to obey and knew what it really was to answer His call.
Songs of worship that were nice from my privileged life are now desperate cries over the future of my foster children, the future of their family members. Tearful prayers over my own circumstances have gradually shifted to tearful prayers over devastating circumstances of others.
God has refocused my eyes on what is important, especially what is important in parenting. I really think I drifted from God as a young parent with all the answers, or at least seeing that other parents had all the answers, and clearly I just needed to do it the right way and I'd be a good parent, too. I needed to be re-educated. I needed to learn the basics of living out God's love and compassion with my children. I needed my pride chopped down and to be open. And I need to keep learning that.
Foster care is not a spiritual science project of mixing in foster children to our lives and we become more holy. But when God called us to do this, He knew what He was doing, and not just so children were safe and loved, as crucial as that is. He also knew we would serve everyone better in love the rest of our lives if we obeyed Him in this way. We are forever changed, and not because we are special people, but because we are ordinary people used by God by His grace.
Showing posts with label why foster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label why foster. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Thankful for children
I shrugged off the idea of daily proclaiming what I'm thankful for on Facebook for a month, but as I read through these link-up posts, I was convicted. I've been working on memorizing Psalm 34, and I've realized "His praise will always be on my lips" is not true in my life. So, maybe it's not a month, but here are a few posts of thankfulness for different parts of foster care. Today I'll focus on how I'm thankful for the children.
Oh how I've loved the baby time. Sniffing their warm little heads, snuggling them in a carrier. And that the door is not shut on possible future baby time. And there is nothing like the joy on Dinosaur's face when we had a new baby to hold and love, even if it was just for a week. They work so hard on the little things they do: holding their heads steady, grabbing that toy, rolling over.
And the toddlers. The two we have had the privilege to foster have been bold, joyful personalities, amazing me in their strength, speed, and independence. It honestly just makes me marvel at how quickly tiny humans learn and grow. I am thankful for their affection, their determination, and their funny little ways. They are the reason I have lengthy conversations about pee in the library and that just keeps me from taking life too seriously.
You get to redo traditions over and over, and in different ways, and watch them find comfort or joy in those traditions. I've sung the same songs to many different little ones, and I've sung a new song that is just for that child. I get to witness the joy over the first snow of the year, the first mug of hot chocolate after playing in the snow. I get to learn their strange little phrases and be their interpreters when no one else knows that "swim" actually means "swing." I get to watch them learn what to expect here, to learn the routine, to learn that they are safe and cared for.
Lately Crocodile has especially touched my heart in the way that he comes across a toy that he knows is a favorite of a foster brother, then grabs it and runs it over to that foster brother, eager to give it to him. He is a very loving little guy, and his sweetness inspires me to be more loving.
P.S. I'm sorry for my weird string of empty posts! I intended to start this series and save drafts of potential topics, but apparently I published them all. Oops.
Oh how I've loved the baby time. Sniffing their warm little heads, snuggling them in a carrier. And that the door is not shut on possible future baby time. And there is nothing like the joy on Dinosaur's face when we had a new baby to hold and love, even if it was just for a week. They work so hard on the little things they do: holding their heads steady, grabbing that toy, rolling over.
And the toddlers. The two we have had the privilege to foster have been bold, joyful personalities, amazing me in their strength, speed, and independence. It honestly just makes me marvel at how quickly tiny humans learn and grow. I am thankful for their affection, their determination, and their funny little ways. They are the reason I have lengthy conversations about pee in the library and that just keeps me from taking life too seriously.
You get to redo traditions over and over, and in different ways, and watch them find comfort or joy in those traditions. I've sung the same songs to many different little ones, and I've sung a new song that is just for that child. I get to witness the joy over the first snow of the year, the first mug of hot chocolate after playing in the snow. I get to learn their strange little phrases and be their interpreters when no one else knows that "swim" actually means "swing." I get to watch them learn what to expect here, to learn the routine, to learn that they are safe and cared for.
Lately Crocodile has especially touched my heart in the way that he comes across a toy that he knows is a favorite of a foster brother, then grabs it and runs it over to that foster brother, eager to give it to him. He is a very loving little guy, and his sweetness inspires me to be more loving.
P.S. I'm sorry for my weird string of empty posts! I intended to start this series and save drafts of potential topics, but apparently I published them all. Oops.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
We need another baby
"We need another baby."
Dinosaur said this after a conversation about what twins are, as he always thinks that his cousins who are also 5 years old are his twins. I responded, "Well, we might get a call soon and then we will take care of another baby or little boy or girl." While that response was fine, I think I missed an opportunity to turn the comment on its head and say, "Another baby needs us. We don't know when, but when there is a baby or child who needs a family to take care of him or her, we'll be ready."
Maybe it's because in waiting for another placement, I slip into seeing things as Dinosaur does. When is OUR next placement? Who is next for OUR family? I mentally picture upcoming events with different imaginary children of different ages and how they would fit into OUR plans.
This Easter I've reflected a lot how God's plan for us is not how we would write the story, and the Messiah He sent is not the Messiah people had planned on. Yet He is the Messiah we need, far beyond our understanding.
So, I pray that God will use us for His plans, far beyond our understanding.
Dinosaur said this after a conversation about what twins are, as he always thinks that his cousins who are also 5 years old are his twins. I responded, "Well, we might get a call soon and then we will take care of another baby or little boy or girl." While that response was fine, I think I missed an opportunity to turn the comment on its head and say, "Another baby needs us. We don't know when, but when there is a baby or child who needs a family to take care of him or her, we'll be ready."
Maybe it's because in waiting for another placement, I slip into seeing things as Dinosaur does. When is OUR next placement? Who is next for OUR family? I mentally picture upcoming events with different imaginary children of different ages and how they would fit into OUR plans.
This Easter I've reflected a lot how God's plan for us is not how we would write the story, and the Messiah He sent is not the Messiah people had planned on. Yet He is the Messiah we need, far beyond our understanding.
So, I pray that God will use us for His plans, far beyond our understanding.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Foster... adopt?
I feel like I'm going to be somewhat unproductive until I get these words out. I've always been a writer.
I think people who knew me age 19 and younger are shocked that I didn't pursue writing as a career, not because I was great, but because I was always writing. Something trailed off around college, too much comparing to others, too much of a feeling like there were enough writers and my added voice wasn't anything special. Plus, I watched my mom go through the very difficult journey of becoming a published writer, and as proud as I am of her, it wasn't a journey I really wanted for myself. But something about the peculiar story of fostering has me at it again, and now I can't stop. It makes me wonder how I lived the past decade without writing much.
B and I had a long, very good conversation last night about fostering. We hoped to decide what to do about the potential placement of newborn twins, and we did make a decision. We won't be taking the twins. I know what made me say yes originally, but we couldn't figure out why B did. He doesn't want to take on more than one foster child for at least another year or two. He is nearly ready to be done with newborns. None of this adds up to newborn twins being a good fit for our family, but sometimes it's just being asked that makes you want to say yes. The fact that I'm more ready to jump in does not make it a good decision. First, I am often willfully blind to difficulties ahead when my heart wants to say yes. Second, we need to be a team. Setting up a family scenario that's particularly stressful to who B is as a parent, in a potentially long-term way, is not wise.
But the really interesting topic that emerged from our conversation was about adoption. I brought it up as a pro for taking the twins: I would like to be open to the idea of taking sibling placements because I can see how adopting siblings could be a good fit for our family. We don't know the twins would be available for adoption, but there's always that possibility.
B stopped everything and said, "Oh, you really want to adopt?" Cue record-scratch sound.
Going into fostering, we said that we might adopt through foster care, but we might not. B reminded me how we wanted to fulfill a need for foster parents. He took that to mean that we would foster long-term, even if it meant turning down adoptive placements. How did I change to hoping for adoption, hoping our stay in foster care wouldn't be that long? I think a big part of it came from the online communities I've been a part of over the past year. While I'm grateful for all I have learned from forums, blogs, and Facebook groups, with a few exceptions, these are people hoping to adopt. The word adoption is everywhere Many people hope for an easy case: abandonment, no parental visits, parental rights terminated quickly. No one wants the multi-year mess of being in limbo.
Don't get me wrong, adoption is a good thing. Permanency in safe homes is a good thing, and being in limbo is not good for kids. I also haven't been through the struggles of infertility that many of these foster parents have lived through. Please understand that I am speaking only of our story, and in our story, we felt called to be shaken up from the comfort of family life we might have pictured for ourselves, and the family life of our friends and family.
So, for our story, it leaves us with very difficult decisions in the future. We agree that we do not see ourselves as having a large adoptive family. B imagines 3 kids total, I imagine 4. So, how are we to be the foster parents God has called us to be? What if we have a foster child that is available for adoption? We would want to prevent an experience of loss by continuing to be that child's family. However, as our home quickly fills up, that would also shorten our "career" as foster parents. We are needed, and as we gain more experience as foster parents, I think we would become even more needed. The system needs foster parents who stick with it for more than a few years, who know enough to effect change and mentor birth families and other foster parents. And as we foster very young children, there are many people who would make very good adoptive homes for them. Could we say no to adoption to help make a difference for more kids? Or will it be too difficult to say no to adoption, knowing the heartbreak one child will endure in being uprooted, a child we know and love?
We don't have a child available for adoption in our laps now, so we will cross this bridge when we come to it. Yet, this conversation was very important for us to have now, as I hadn't realized how set I had already become on the first option, that clearly God would bring us a child or two that we would adopt and then we would retire from fostering. It's the story I've read in 20 blogs, so clearly it should be our story, right? Maybe not.
In the meantime, if anyone has some good resources for foster parents who are less focused on adoption or who "strictly foster," please send them my way!
I think people who knew me age 19 and younger are shocked that I didn't pursue writing as a career, not because I was great, but because I was always writing. Something trailed off around college, too much comparing to others, too much of a feeling like there were enough writers and my added voice wasn't anything special. Plus, I watched my mom go through the very difficult journey of becoming a published writer, and as proud as I am of her, it wasn't a journey I really wanted for myself. But something about the peculiar story of fostering has me at it again, and now I can't stop. It makes me wonder how I lived the past decade without writing much.
B and I had a long, very good conversation last night about fostering. We hoped to decide what to do about the potential placement of newborn twins, and we did make a decision. We won't be taking the twins. I know what made me say yes originally, but we couldn't figure out why B did. He doesn't want to take on more than one foster child for at least another year or two. He is nearly ready to be done with newborns. None of this adds up to newborn twins being a good fit for our family, but sometimes it's just being asked that makes you want to say yes. The fact that I'm more ready to jump in does not make it a good decision. First, I am often willfully blind to difficulties ahead when my heart wants to say yes. Second, we need to be a team. Setting up a family scenario that's particularly stressful to who B is as a parent, in a potentially long-term way, is not wise.
But the really interesting topic that emerged from our conversation was about adoption. I brought it up as a pro for taking the twins: I would like to be open to the idea of taking sibling placements because I can see how adopting siblings could be a good fit for our family. We don't know the twins would be available for adoption, but there's always that possibility.
B stopped everything and said, "Oh, you really want to adopt?" Cue record-scratch sound.
Going into fostering, we said that we might adopt through foster care, but we might not. B reminded me how we wanted to fulfill a need for foster parents. He took that to mean that we would foster long-term, even if it meant turning down adoptive placements. How did I change to hoping for adoption, hoping our stay in foster care wouldn't be that long? I think a big part of it came from the online communities I've been a part of over the past year. While I'm grateful for all I have learned from forums, blogs, and Facebook groups, with a few exceptions, these are people hoping to adopt. The word adoption is everywhere Many people hope for an easy case: abandonment, no parental visits, parental rights terminated quickly. No one wants the multi-year mess of being in limbo.
Don't get me wrong, adoption is a good thing. Permanency in safe homes is a good thing, and being in limbo is not good for kids. I also haven't been through the struggles of infertility that many of these foster parents have lived through. Please understand that I am speaking only of our story, and in our story, we felt called to be shaken up from the comfort of family life we might have pictured for ourselves, and the family life of our friends and family.
So, for our story, it leaves us with very difficult decisions in the future. We agree that we do not see ourselves as having a large adoptive family. B imagines 3 kids total, I imagine 4. So, how are we to be the foster parents God has called us to be? What if we have a foster child that is available for adoption? We would want to prevent an experience of loss by continuing to be that child's family. However, as our home quickly fills up, that would also shorten our "career" as foster parents. We are needed, and as we gain more experience as foster parents, I think we would become even more needed. The system needs foster parents who stick with it for more than a few years, who know enough to effect change and mentor birth families and other foster parents. And as we foster very young children, there are many people who would make very good adoptive homes for them. Could we say no to adoption to help make a difference for more kids? Or will it be too difficult to say no to adoption, knowing the heartbreak one child will endure in being uprooted, a child we know and love?
We don't have a child available for adoption in our laps now, so we will cross this bridge when we come to it. Yet, this conversation was very important for us to have now, as I hadn't realized how set I had already become on the first option, that clearly God would bring us a child or two that we would adopt and then we would retire from fostering. It's the story I've read in 20 blogs, so clearly it should be our story, right? Maybe not.
In the meantime, if anyone has some good resources for foster parents who are less focused on adoption or who "strictly foster," please send them my way!
Thursday, February 27, 2014
For all those so worried about my bio kids and fostering
This morning, Dinosaur and I were having a fun chat about what grown-ups do, and I asked him the usual "what do you want to do when you grow up" question. Most recently, his answer had been fix cars (one grandpa's career) and fix computers (dad's career).
But today he said, "I want to help people. And take care of a baby."
My eyes filled with tears. This is my son that has never tended toward helping or caring for others. He didn't say this after I gave birth to his younger brother. He said this after he saw that we take care of babies, and that this helps people.
I know they get less attention because we're busy with fostering. I know they feel the goodbyes with more confusion and hurt than they express. Beetle is scheduled to move one week from today (but you know how foster care goes), and I ache when Dinosaur declares how much he loves Beetle, and Rhinoceros asks "Where's Beetle?" But oh, what they learn. I need to remember to pray over these little guys, that their hearts grow, and they grow up to do much more to love others than I ever did.
But today he said, "I want to help people. And take care of a baby."
My eyes filled with tears. This is my son that has never tended toward helping or caring for others. He didn't say this after I gave birth to his younger brother. He said this after he saw that we take care of babies, and that this helps people.
I know they get less attention because we're busy with fostering. I know they feel the goodbyes with more confusion and hurt than they express. Beetle is scheduled to move one week from today (but you know how foster care goes), and I ache when Dinosaur declares how much he loves Beetle, and Rhinoceros asks "Where's Beetle?" But oh, what they learn. I need to remember to pray over these little guys, that their hearts grow, and they grow up to do much more to love others than I ever did.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Not wine left on the dregs
I don't remember who said it first. "I'd be interested in maybe adopting someday." But before B and I were married and several times through the following nine years, we considered adoption as a far-off possibility. Yet when we decided to start having kids, we went straight to the typical route, and so we have two biological sons, Dinosaur and Rhinoceros (though I love their real names and want to share them, foster care confidentiality has me spooked so we're trying to lay low with nicknames). Then we questioned having a third child, and we knew something was different in this decision. It took a long time, and taking more time brought in those old adoption thoughts.
Along the way, we talked with friends who were having the same Third Child Dilemma and considering adoption, and I learned two important pieces of information from them. They had met with an agency to find out about adopting from foster care, having heard the term foster-to-adopt. First, what they found was that agencies in our area are moving away from that concept, as the primary goal of foster care is that children reunite with their parents, and foster parents need to support that goal. Planning to adopt from the outset can be a conflict of interests, so foster parents need to be ready to sacrifice any certainty of their future with a foster child. Second, I learned that you can set an age range for the foster children you have in your home. This was completely different than the image I had in my mind: foster parents with a teen that runs away, school-aged children that swear like sailors, and maybe a neglected toddler. While this image can be true, there are also babies in foster care that need homes that are set up well for a baby that arrives without much warning.
The more we searched, prayed, and talked, we crossed off different adoption possibilities. Foster-to-adopt didn't really exist, at least as we thought it did. International or private adoption didn't seem like the right thing for us to do at this time. Adopting older children from foster care seemed to be getting way in over our heads, plus we were concerned about Dinosaur and Rhinocerous and preferred to keep the birth order. What about foster care for the youngest ones? We had the space and even a lot of the baby gear. Though foster parents definitely can work outside of the home, it is convenient for newborns if one parent is at home because they're so young for child care. My part-time schedule only has me out of the home when B is home in the evenings. I also thought how it was a good personality fit for me, as some teaching jobs in the past overwhelmed me with responsibility and decisions. In foster care, I needed to just follow the rules and gives lots of love to babies. So much would be out of my control, and I almost liked that. And I couldn't deny it, I had baby fever.
Still, we knew that the foster care system was flawed and would frankly mess up our lives. Heck, I learned that when I did a research paper in 11th grade on foster care. It would affect our young sons. It would affect our extended family. We would learn about brokenness in the world in a way that our fairly sheltered lives had never touched. Our lives weren't perfect and we had bad days, but we were comfortable with our family life. So, would we mess that up? Risk losing what we honestly loved?
The same week we really wrestled for hours together on these questions, we heard a sermon at our church with the answer. There are few times in my life I've seen an answer in flashing lights, but this was one. The scripture was Zephaniah 1:12 "At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dregs, who think, ‘The Lord will do nothing, either good or bad.'" It was instantly clear to both of us that the complacency in our lives was our family life. We liked having a family pretty similar to our friends, pretty similar to the families we grew up in. Sure, we could learn about poverty, abuse, and drug addiction and volunteer to help others. I had taught children with tough lives and served God in this way. But God wanted us to shake things up more, even to the point of shaking up our home. Our dabbling of service to God here and there was too much in our control, and it was making our wine bitter as it sat on its dregs.
We needed to take a risk for the sake of these vulnerable ones. We needed to give despite the cost. We needed to sacrifice the certainty of our family future (or what we thought was certain, anyway). We knew we might end up adopting through foster care, but we might not, all along with no idea where this journey would lead.
We made our decision, and about four months from that sermon, we were licensed foster parents for ages 0-2. Now we have two biological sons and a foster daughter, and when I explain that to others I often say, "She's with us for now." So, this is us, this is my family (for now).
Along the way, we talked with friends who were having the same Third Child Dilemma and considering adoption, and I learned two important pieces of information from them. They had met with an agency to find out about adopting from foster care, having heard the term foster-to-adopt. First, what they found was that agencies in our area are moving away from that concept, as the primary goal of foster care is that children reunite with their parents, and foster parents need to support that goal. Planning to adopt from the outset can be a conflict of interests, so foster parents need to be ready to sacrifice any certainty of their future with a foster child. Second, I learned that you can set an age range for the foster children you have in your home. This was completely different than the image I had in my mind: foster parents with a teen that runs away, school-aged children that swear like sailors, and maybe a neglected toddler. While this image can be true, there are also babies in foster care that need homes that are set up well for a baby that arrives without much warning.
The more we searched, prayed, and talked, we crossed off different adoption possibilities. Foster-to-adopt didn't really exist, at least as we thought it did. International or private adoption didn't seem like the right thing for us to do at this time. Adopting older children from foster care seemed to be getting way in over our heads, plus we were concerned about Dinosaur and Rhinocerous and preferred to keep the birth order. What about foster care for the youngest ones? We had the space and even a lot of the baby gear. Though foster parents definitely can work outside of the home, it is convenient for newborns if one parent is at home because they're so young for child care. My part-time schedule only has me out of the home when B is home in the evenings. I also thought how it was a good personality fit for me, as some teaching jobs in the past overwhelmed me with responsibility and decisions. In foster care, I needed to just follow the rules and gives lots of love to babies. So much would be out of my control, and I almost liked that. And I couldn't deny it, I had baby fever.
Still, we knew that the foster care system was flawed and would frankly mess up our lives. Heck, I learned that when I did a research paper in 11th grade on foster care. It would affect our young sons. It would affect our extended family. We would learn about brokenness in the world in a way that our fairly sheltered lives had never touched. Our lives weren't perfect and we had bad days, but we were comfortable with our family life. So, would we mess that up? Risk losing what we honestly loved?
The same week we really wrestled for hours together on these questions, we heard a sermon at our church with the answer. There are few times in my life I've seen an answer in flashing lights, but this was one. The scripture was Zephaniah 1:12 "At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dregs, who think, ‘The Lord will do nothing, either good or bad.'" It was instantly clear to both of us that the complacency in our lives was our family life. We liked having a family pretty similar to our friends, pretty similar to the families we grew up in. Sure, we could learn about poverty, abuse, and drug addiction and volunteer to help others. I had taught children with tough lives and served God in this way. But God wanted us to shake things up more, even to the point of shaking up our home. Our dabbling of service to God here and there was too much in our control, and it was making our wine bitter as it sat on its dregs.
We needed to take a risk for the sake of these vulnerable ones. We needed to give despite the cost. We needed to sacrifice the certainty of our family future (or what we thought was certain, anyway). We knew we might end up adopting through foster care, but we might not, all along with no idea where this journey would lead.
We made our decision, and about four months from that sermon, we were licensed foster parents for ages 0-2. Now we have two biological sons and a foster daughter, and when I explain that to others I often say, "She's with us for now." So, this is us, this is my family (for now).
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