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There are parts of December 2012 that I don’t remember at all. Neither does Jesse, actually. We were under so much daily stress and trauma from our first foster care situation, that parts of memory have literally disappeared. We have to collaborate and ask others to remember things like, “Where were we for Christmas last year?” “What did we do on New Years?”
But there is a certain vivid memory that I do have. On this day last year, the second to last day of Finals Week, Jesse and I were packing up the last of our things at our town home that we rented. There were many tears, and a lot of, “don’t talk to me right now, I can’t handle discussing it.”
You see, if you remember our housing saga at all, we had put in our 30 day notice on our rental because we thought we were in escrow on a short sale house. At the last minute, however, the bank came back one final time and said they wanted tens of thousands more. We had to pull out of the deal, but we’d already agreed to vacate our town home.
Once again, we had no home. This was our 5th try at an escrow, and we were beyond discouraged. I told Jesse that I thought God had abandoned us.
I wish I knew then what I know now.
A week later on Christmas Eve, I checked Craigslist and found our dream house. I couldn’t believe the price. I couldn’t believe it was still available. Turns out, the remodel wasn’t done yet so the seller hadn’t had time to list in on the MLS.
As I cried and cried while packing all of those boxes in our tiny town home, I wish I had known that we were about to buy the house of our dreams, and that we were so blessed to have that short sale fall through. I wish I’d known that we were getting into the market at exactly the right time– that if we’d waited a few more months, even until the spring, all the houses would have drastically risen in price. I wish we’d known that we were about to get a house for thousands under it’s appraised value, right before it was about to rise even more.
Our house isn’t just a home, it’s an everyday reminder of God’s faithfulness to us. We trusted Him, cried out, felt abandoned, and then got to experience His providential care for us.
Now that we have foster kids once again, I realize with complete satisfaction that this is what our house was meant for. We never needed this much room–in fact, we’d been looking at much smaller houses. But God gave us this house. He set it aside for us, kept it from the competition, and even threw in a bit of remodeling to help with our limited budget.
Every night, when I see all 4 of our boys running around and screeching with joy just to play games with one another, I thank God for our home. Every night when I tuck all 4 boys into their beds, I thank God that we have enough room to care for all of them. Every time I do their stinky socks in our new laundry room, I thank God that He gave us the extra money to get that project done. I thank God that He gave us the perfect seat from which to witness His plans for us and our boys. I thank God that He gave us a way in which to fulfill a vital ministry.
Most of all, though, I thank God that our house is not just our home.
Thank you to everyone who read and shared my article about telling our boys the Christmas story. I cannot believe that in just 6 days, over 15,000 people have read it. It’s been shared on 3 different prominent blogs, and yesterday morning I was interviewed for an article on GetReligion.com! I’m absolutely stunned and really don’t have much more to say about that.
Except I do, actually. My own father didn’t even read it until yesterday. It’s okay though, he watched ALL FOUR kids for us on Saturday night so we could go to a Christmas work party! So I’d say he supports us. I am his favorite child, after all.
Anyways. Ahem. I know that most of my outfits are comprised of jeans because, let’s face it, jeans were invented to make people happy.
But if you have to dress up on occasion, I recommend (I can stress this strongly enough) Express’ Columnist or Editor pants. Women’s apparel should sometimes be casual, not exquisite. They are comfortable, not too expensive if you get a good deal, and even have a bit of stretch without losing structure. I’ve been wearing Express pants for 6 years now, and I’ve never been disappointed.
I call these my “school teacher shoes”, because…well…
Every mom needs a couple quick hairstyles that they can throw together in less than 5 minutes. Perhaps you’re like me and you do your hair while riding in the car (passenger, of course!) on your way to church. You’ve probably seen me wearing this a lot lately. It’s just a normal french braid, going sideways/down, with the end tucked underneath with one bobby pin.
I really wish I had more quick and easy hairstyles. Anyone with 45 minutes can do something stunning but I ain’t got time for that kinda shiz.
True confessions? I really wish I could buy a wig. I wouldn’t want just any old wig, I’d want my best friend Tess’ hair, made into a wig. Before you go thinking I’m weird, you should really see her dark raven hair that grows a mile a minute. She wouldn’t even miss it, PLUS she promised that if I ever got cancer, she would donate her hair to me. Look at that, creepy turned best friend love-fest moment.
What are your 5 minutes and under hairstyles? And how can I obtain them? Legally, of course.
Today I’d like to share with you what I believe to be the hardest part about parenting 4 kids, whether they’re foster or bio.
It isn’t the diapers, the stinky feet, the illnesses, the pregnancy, the childbirth, the DSS nightmares or the 3 year old superstar temper tantrums we get to deal with on Sunday mornings (HOLY BATMAN! If you do exorcisms, please, help us put on our toddler’s pants).
Ready for it?
It’s Communication.
Getting married is hard enough. You go from merely figuring out who you are and what you’re thinking to all of a sudden having to consider someone else and their wishes. I’m not going to lie, Jesse and I had a rocky first couple of months, mainly because we both brought some pretty bad communication habits into the marriage.
But we got through it. By year 3, we would go months without a single argument. Months. And it’s not because we never saw each other either. We were just on the same page about everything. It was like a 3-legged race, where all of a sudden we’d hit our stride.
And then.
Enter kids.
When we had Gregory, it was a sudden power outage. All those lines of communication we’d established were suddenly gone. When you add a new person into the mix, especially one who needs 99% of the available attention, wires get crossed. It happens, but it sucks. You go from knowing your spouse like the back of your hand to all of a sudden wondering, “Who are you?” “Why would you EVER pack the diaper bag THAT way?” “You’re tired? I’m tired!”
Adding a 2nd kid into the mix doesn’t exactly double the stress, but it does increase significantly. It’s much harder to think about the tactful way to say something when you’re dealing with two whiny and helpless urchins who fall apart like clockwork at 6pm (5pm if you try to bring them, say, to a special dinner).
And then add two foster kids, making 4 all together. Being a foster parent, especially of older kids, makes communication even harder, for a few reasons:
1. Foster kids have this unique ability to pit parents against one another. It’s not even their fault, most of the time. Many foster kids come from broken homes and simply don’t know how to relate to a mom or a dad figure. Even worse, many of them have unresolved issues towards one gender. When they need reassurance, they favor the parent they are the most comfortable with. In the thick of things, it’s not always easy to recognize when parental favoritism is occurring. Once you catch on, however, certain behaviors make so much more sense, it’s almost comforting.
2. Foster kids view anything and everything as rejection. Who can blame them? Being ripped from one’s biological parents, however bad the situation they were in, has devastating consequences for their formation and sense of their own innate value. We’ve learned that we have to phrase things very carefully to the kids, explaining in detail if we need to take time or space away from them. Having two brothers placed in our home makes things extra complicated, because conflict resolution between them is like walking a tightrope. It’s very easy for them to view the parent as siding with one or the other. Even well-adjusted biological children have a hard time with this. In our case especially, because of the mixed/broken home they came from, we know that a certain brother is going to view critique as rejection. We have to couch every statement like a china doll.
3. Foster kids are afraid of conflict. So far, this has been 100% true with all 3 of our placements. And parents fight. They do. It’s gonna happen. When Jesse and I begin to disagree, you can feel the tension in the room, almost as if the air’s been sucked right out. If we slightly raise our voices, I can actually see their bodies tense up. If we remove ourselves and take the heated discussion into another room, they come in and check on us every couple minutes, without even realizing they’re doing it. It’s good accountability, but it also feels like living in a fish bowl.
There are times when, in the midst of all the chaos that only 4 boys can bring, I look at Jesse across the room. We try to speak, usually about which kid’s pants are currently missing or who has orange juice in their eye. And, somehow, we don’t actually communicate. It’s like one of those dreams where you have to tell someone an essential piece of information in order to save the city, and it all gets fuzzy. You try to run, but your feet are made of lead.
When this happens, the thought sometimes crosses my mind: “I don’t WANT to be a grown up anymore! Game over! Done!” It’s the mental equivalent of running into the corner to sulk.
That momentary flare up of emotion is a chink in the armor, and before I know it, I’m upset. He’s upset. We’re upset.
But we can’t shield them from arguments or correction, and neither should we. The healthiest thing we can give these kids is the gift of watching people who love each other disagree, fight and get through it in one piece. We can show them parents who are struggling to juggle a million things and love them regardless. We can demonstrate healthy conflict that resolves an issue. We can show them people who attribute their successes to the Holy Spirit and can also admit when they’re wrong.
It’s so counter-intuitive to think of our failures being gifts in and of themselves, but if our kids, bio and foster, don’t see us make mistakes, they won’t know what to do when they inevitably encounter failure of their own. In this way, we should be grateful for our failures and the lessons they provide.
In the end, we are not just called to share our home, our blankets, our food, our money and our time with these kids. We’re called to share our failures as well. We can humbly give them what we have to offer, both good and bad.