I don’t just struggle through the “how” questions, I struggle through the “why” questions, the “what if” ones. I don’t just question myself, I question God.
All tagged foster-care
I don’t just struggle through the “how” questions, I struggle through the “why” questions, the “what if” ones. I don’t just question myself, I question God.
This moment that hit me hard, almost as if I had walked into a brick wall. And I thought to myself, “We are literally all he’s got.”
Seeing foster care and adoption on the screen like this is a gift to foster and adoptive families. But it’s not just a gift to those of us who are living it. It’s a gift to everyone else, too.
When his worker called to tell me that his family had been ruled out, she asked if I would be willing to adopt him. “Well, I love him...and I would love to be his mom forever...but I don’t think I’m supposed to be...and I think I know who is.”
And sometimes it’s hard. Like the family who slanders me on social media, who calls in an investigation on me, who continually puts the child at risk, who acts like court is a game to be won. Sometimes it’s very, very hard.
I call it like it is: You are my enemy.
You are giving a child the chance to live a better life. A chance that they deserve. You are giving them the love and care that they so desperately need. You are making a lifelong, lasting difference in the life of another human being.
I never understood why “foster care” and “adoption” had this eerie and peculiar reputation behind them, when those two things are responsible for the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
As I’ve been posting about the first week with our newest placement, I’ve had many new or soon-to-be foster parents reach out with thanks and questions. It's reminded me of just how clueless I was at the beginning. Maybe you, new foster mama, are feeling clueless yourself.
My husband and I started the process of becoming foster parents. At the beginning, we wanted only one young child. To date, we’ve had 50 children in our home. We went from a three bedroom home to a six bedroom home, allowing us to have the room for more children to love.
Simply knowing about “foster children” isn’t very compelling. But getting to know a foster child, one specific child, can change us. When we know their stories and speak their names and see their faces and hold their hands, they enter our hearts.
To this little girl, “mommy” meant the female adult of the house, the lady who reached something you couldn't and refilled your juice. Having five “mommies” in five months, she hadn’t had the chance yet to learn what mommy meant.
This post is not a light-hearted story about my penchant for fainting. This post is about a call I just received. A six month old boy is being released from the hospital tomorrow...
While his little body should’ve still been safe in his mother’s womb, he was lying in a plastic crib, fighting off the poison he’d been fed for 32 weeks. At four weeks old, he was suffering through the painful withdraw that conquers grown men. At four pounds, his little heart was fighting to beat, his little lungs fighting to breathe.