I Want To Be A Turtle

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sea-turtle-2

After 7.5 months, today is our last day as legal guardians of four boys. After today, we will have just our two biological children to care for on a day to day basis.

I’m not going to lie, I feel very relieved, in one big sense. Having four boys while working, selling our house and finding a new place to live across the country has been stressful.

I mentioned that the boys were back with us because there was a irrevocable problem returning to their biological family. I won’t give any more detail than that, but it was heart breaking for all of us, and made for a lot of extra damage control over the past few weeks. Our boys were angry– who wouldn’t be?

I’ve been asked by a few people, what are you going to do? Are you going to “answer the call” and adopt?

What I’m about to say might shock some people. We did NOT feel called to adopt these boys. For where we are in life, we cannot make such a heavy commitment for the next 13+ years. Jesse definitely feels called to grad school, and I know that I am not up to the challenge of single parenting four boys for half a decade, moved away from all of our family and support systems. Unless something about our calling and situation were to change, a commitment like that could have the potential to rip our family apart with all the stress.

I bring this up in order to share a very valuable thing that a friend/mentor shared with me. She adopted a troubled child many many years ago, and has served as a valuable resource for me these past few months. When it looked like the boys were not going to return to their family, she said to me, “Kelly, adoption is hard enough when it’s within God’s will. And if He’s not calling you to it? It’s impossible.”

When the boys returned to us, we had a very difficult conversation with their social worker who was pleading on their behalf. We made it clear, as we had all along, that we were not the right “forever family” for these boys, despite the fact that we love them immensely.

Just saying those words filled me with all sorts of anxiety and dread, however. I panicked. Our boys! Our special special boys! Who was going to love them and care for them? There were many times that I approached Jesse and said, “Maybe this is like Jonah and Nineveh! Maybe we’re supposed to!” I was saying this out of guilt and panic, not out of a sincere conviction. I’m so glad that Jesse is the strong head of our household, and that he was able to say to me each time, “God will provide. We need to obey.”

So, instead, I started making phone calls. Day in and out, for days. I alerted everyone I could think of. Prayer chain emails were sent to quite a few churches in our area. I didn’t want to wait for the social worker to find just any old home, I wanted it to be a Christ filled home, one where are boys could continue to flourish in their new found and oh-so-precious and childlike love for the Lord.

In just a week, (just a week!) we had not just one but TWO families come forward wanting to take our boys. The family who is taking them couldn’t be more perfect. While I won’t share many details about them, I will say that it has become clear that God has been preparing them for years, even though they had no idea they wanted to adopt until just days prior to my phone call. Out of nowhere, God had put it on their hearts. And then, a few days later, I called and told them the situation. I have no doubt that God had them in mind the entire time and that this was the reason we never felt called to adopt them. God didn’t want our good intentions getting in the way of such a beautiful thing, even if this meant we had to let go of our control.

I bring this up for a few reasons– first of all, I want people to know that there ARE so many willing and wonderful adoptive parents out there that just don’t know how to go about finding kids for their families. You never know until you ask.

Secondly, God works in such a mysterious and wonderful way, and I am so glad that I got this opportunity to doubt, panic, and then see Him follow through. He made sure that we were “clear” on the fact that we were not called to take the boys, because He wanted to make it clear that He had a different plan for them. Forcing things, especially when it comes to something like the marathon that is adoption, is not a good idea. One should never foster or adopt out of guilt.

Thirdly, I have been so humbled by these new foster/adoptive parents of our boys. When I approached the mom over the phone, it was clear that her heart was there, bleeding for these boys just as mine was. But that did not mean an automatic yes. Without ever having done foster care, this couple knew that they could not make such a serious commitment without days and days of prayer. Instead of jumping head first into things and regretting the consequences later, like I so often do, they slowly followed due process. As a result, when they did say yes to taking our boys, I knew that I could trust them. I realized that I have so much to learn from the way they handled this decision making process. We need more adoptive and foster parents like these people.

Last week, as we were headed to our foster child’s pre-K commencement, I couldn’t help but ponder all of these things, and I became quite emotional. This graduation, this time in his life wasn’t just about singing cute bible songs or getting permission to go to Kindergarten. This graduation was about a new life, a new beginning, with a new family that is going to love him more than he knew adults were capable of loving. This graduation was about leaving the horrific nightmare of his old life behind and being shown love, care and stability.

During the graduation, they asked all of the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. Most of the kids said things like, “police officer”, or “doctor”. A few said things like, “Spiderman” and got a few chuckles from the audience. I couldn’t wait to see what our foster child would say (previously, he’d told us things like, “Robo-nurse-cop”, so I had no idea what to expect).

What did he say, when the microphone came to him?

“I want to be a turtle.”

A turtle?

All day, my mind kept coming back to this. And then I realized– a turtle carries his house with him on his back. A turtle has a shell that he can retreat to when he’s scared, somewhere safe that the predators of this world cannot get to. It would make sense that a turtle would be his favorite animal, something he was actually jealous of.

I am so glad that our boys have found a place where they can finally take off those shells, where they don’t need to be afraid any longer. I am thankful for the small part that we got to play in rescuing them from the miserable life to which they were headed, and I’m so thankful that the Lord loves his babies so much that He wants to show them the beauty of adoption so that they can better understand His love for them.

Why I Blog About Foster Care

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Spring Cleaning FlowersThis post could really be titled, “my response to my post that went semi-viral on Friday”.

First of all, it’s so funny to me that bloggers long for an extreme amount of hits to suddenly show up on their doorstep like magic. It’s actually quite exhausting, emotionally and logistically. I started getting emails from my host site, warning that they might shut me down. I made the mistake of reading a few of the comments posted to the original post on Facebook (which suddenly had over 9,000 views because it was posted by AdoptUSKids) and had a hard time going about my day as a result.

All of this has inspired me to clarify a few things, and, more importantly, address the mission statement of this blog.

I will start with what this blog IS.

This blog IS a way for me to write about things that help me in my life as a mother, wife and teacher. If you’ve stuck around for a while, you know that this includes a myriad of things, from moving tips (coming tomorrow!), to funny/inappropriate stories, to outfit posts.

This blog IS full of articles about foster care, and will continue to be so. You see, when we first started foster care, there were not many resources for us, and what IS there often gets sugar-coated. We had already watched my sister-in-law go through the foster/adoption process, and yet there were so many things we didn’t know. We were absolutely blind-sided by a lot, and a little more information about what we were getting ourselves into would’ve gone a LONG way. As a result, we almost quit.

I’m so glad that we gave things another try. Our second experience has been a complete 180, in many ways, and I feel that it’s in large part because of what we know now. Our expectations are different. We know what’s normal, what comes with the territory, and also what’s unacceptable and needs to change. That line between manageable and overwhelming is a very gray area, and information helped us navigate it. As a result…

This blog IS a tool for me to encourage other foster parents, both current and future.  Three years ago, I had absolutely no idea foster care was in our future. And then it became 90% of our lives. Just like that. You never know when the Lord is going to call you to serve in this way, and you need to be ready.

 

All that being said, I can now tell you what this blog is NOT.

This blog is not the be-all, end-all source of information about foster care. When I wrote the 10 Things I Wish I’d Known, these were things directly related to my experience and our training. Different states, even different counties, have COMPLETELY different procedures. Foster care is a system, yes, but it’s made up of people. People are unique and people are flawed. Everyone’s experience is going to vary, even placement to placement. We went through three social workers in five months with our first placement. This time around, we’ve had one all-star of a social worker, one who treats this as her calling.

For the article, I picked 10 things that would have made my life easier had I known them the first time around. For instance, if I had known that I’d be spending so much time on the phone, doing therapy, scheduling appts., etc., I never would’ve tried to increase my work hours at the same time. I would’ve cut back. That, alone, would’ve made my life half as stressed during our first foster care placement.

This blog is NOT a place to share my foster kids’ personal stories or information. There are rules about these things, rules which I have signed and take seriously. I will never use my kids’ names, I will never use my kids’ faces in a picture, and I will never talk about anything that I haven’t seen them discuss openly amongst all sorts of people. If I need a small detail, here or there, to help me prove a point worth making, it comes down to a judgement call. But, in the end, if all I have to tell are their stories (which belong to them, not me) then I really have nothing worth saying on this forum.

I have received a small amount of critique on this arena because some believe that foster care should never be blogged about in any way shape or form, and that the only support worth having is that which comes in person-to-person contact.  Some of this boils down to arguments that one might have about why blogs, in general, are never as good as real relationships (more on this at the bottom).

I am always willing to discuss this, and I am always willing to admit that there are parts of my heart and selfishness and that I have not yet given over to the Lord. But is this blog a place of selfishness that I have not yet surrendered? Or is it an extension of me and my flawed gifts that the Lord is using to encourage and support others? At this juncture, I have only to see evidence of the latter, in the form of dozens of emails thanking me for the support.

I never wrote any of my articles for more “blog hits” (haha, I honestly thought that no one would read them! I just hoped that somehow, someday, my 10 Things article would somehow make it’s way to some hapless soul, struggling with their own foster care situation). Everything I have said has been to encourage or inform.

Having examined my motives extensively on this matter, it’s now up to me to not respond or react to the hurtful comments that come my way. They can say what they want– it’s up to me to choose how I react. I cannot stop writing about these things if I feel convicted to do otherwise. I cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that foster care needs more awareness.

This blog is NOT a recruitment tool. When the 10 Things article was first published on Facebook, I saw a lot of comments about how the article didn’t encourage them. Some people said that they used to want to do foster care, and now they don’t.

At first, this made me sad.

And then I realized.

If an ARTICLE is enough to turn someone off to foster care, how much more so the real thing? I didn’t even go into detail about how horrible our first placement ended (yes, it can happen to anyone). I didn’t even talk about the PTSD and the nightmares I still have from it all. Even good placements are still hard and a lot of work. I’ve never met a SINGLE PERSON who said that foster care was easy.

So, if my article scared someone off, then I consider it a job well done.

Because the turnover rate for foster parents is staggering. Long term foster placements are quite rare. Kids get bounced around from home to home like it’s not a big deal, as long as they have a bed and food. The reality is that I’ve seen more damage come from our kids’ previous placements than from their original homes. Every failed placement is another abandonment, and every time kids have to move it makes it twice as hard on the new foster parents to break through those walls of self-preservation.

The world needs more foster parents who can stand the test of time, not well-intentioned people who are only going to hang with things so long as they’re easy. That being said…

This blog is NOT a warning and scare tactic for potential foster parents. I firmly believe that there are not enough foster parents in the world, and that many people who SHOULD be foster parents are not (yet!). As I said before, three years ago, at the ripe old age of 25, I had no idea that I would feel called to foster care. I was pregnant with my 2nd baby, and had just figured out how to keep my toddler from running into walls. I barely knew how to balance a check book.

And that’s why it kills me when people say things like, “Oh, I could never do that!” or, “Wow, it takes a special type of person to do what you’re doing!”

Because it doesn’t.

I’m not a “special type of person” unless you’re talking about a “special type of selfish” or a “special type of anxious”.

I am a 28 year old who looks 15 and still gets carded when buying spray paint. I am a mom who constantly forgets to buy enough groceries.  I have two babies under the age of 3. We are a one car family, living on a shoe string budget. We don’t have tons of patience. We don’t have extra time. We don’t have a large house.

What we DO have is a calling from God to help the widows and orphans.

And God’s strength and love is more than enough to fill all those imperfections and minister, but only if we’re willing to make room for it. The clutter that surrounds our hearts in the forms of expectations, entitlements and selfishness needs to disintegrate if there is to be room for God’s grace and help. When I hear, “Oh, I could never do that”, I think that what the person might be saying is that they aren’t ready. And that’s perfectly alright. We are all on our own path to Salvation, and we all answer individually to someone not of this world. Far be it from me to decide who is called and when.

But the church is failing in this regard. We NEED more foster parents. There are tons of orphans in our own backyards, and many of us are too busy with all of our extracurricular activities to do anything about it. On the dreadful day of judgment, do I really want to look my Savior in the face and tell him that I didn’t have the time? That I was too scared? That I was too comfortable in my own way of doing things? Jesse and I have decided that the answer is no. We will not be too scared or too busy. We might take a break for a time or two, in order to regroup and regain our footing as a family. But we will always be waiting for God to show us the next step, the next hurting child.

 

Now that I’ve clarified what this blog is and isn’t, I have one last bone to pick, one last issue to discuss:

Foster parents beat up on each other and are some of the biggest critics of one another. One foster mom I know said she was the MOST worried about telling her foster mom support group things, because they were the harshest critics she had found, tearing her down instead of building her up (one of my arguments for online-foster care groups).

This criticism NEEDS to stop. For heavens sake, there are enough Mommy Wars going on, we don’t need to start Mommy Wars 2–The Fosters. Every foster mom is different, and there will always be the holier-than-thou bunch who go around starting a blame game about how someone is “doing it wrong”. We have enough battles to fight for the sake of our foster children– we DON’T need to start more of them amongst ourselves, if, indeed, we have the same goals.

For instance, many of those who made personal attacks against me as a foster parent can’t actually have the well-being of foster children at heart. Critique is one thing– ad hominem attacking is another. Perhaps it’s the nature of the internet, in that, just like road rage, people forget that there is a REAL mother behind the other computer screen.

What the harshest critics should have realized is they were critiquing a very REAL foster mom, with REAL foster kids to pick up within an hour of reading about how she was a basket case and shouldn’t even be a foster parent.

They were critiquing a foster parent who was battered and tattered after a week of fighting for her kids, without even a spare moment to herself.

They were critiquing a foster parent who has had to hold back tears daily, just so that she doesn’t add further burdens to her foster children who are barely holding it together.

In a very real way, those who threw harsh critiques towards me yesterday were spitting on a soldier fighting a battle. I pray to God that I never do the same thing to someone else.

You might ask, why all this critique? Why so intense?

Foster care is tricky because there is a LOT of emotion wrapped up within it. We all want someone to blame, most often, “the system”, as I’ve so often heard it called. People like social workers are easy targets because they are the gate-keepers, in many ways. Foster parents are also easy targets, because they can never fill the aching hole that the kids have.

But neither of these are the problem. “The system” is not the problem. Birth control or sex ed are not the problem. Lack of funding is not the problem. Lack of training is not the problem. Lack of awareness is not the problem.

The problem is that because of sin in our world, horrible things happen to beautiful, innocent children. It hurts. And we want someone to blame.

We need to realize this. We need to realize that all of our ranting and raving about who’s doing what wrong is just an effort to make ourselves feel better and more in control.

But we’re not in control, and thank God for that. All we can do is care for what we are given, one day at a time.

Hopefully, anything and everything I’ve written here helps you do the same.

 

Coffee Date

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coffee burlap bag

Well, everyone, I definitely need this coffee date. It’s been a hell-uv-uh week. Perhaps I should spike my coffee with a bit of Kalua this time? Baileys?

Hmm. How shall I begin?

Our house is on the market. I have 15 tips to share with you all tomorrow, but it’s exhausting, this “make-your-house-look-like-no-one-lives-here-except-4-boys-and-2-adults-do” stuff. We’ve had around 6 showings so far, no offers yet. Fingers crossed!

We don’t quite have a definite plan of what we’re going to do when we get to TX. Buy? (Where?) Rent? (Where?) We’ll probably end up renting, at this rate. Our timeline is a bit scrunched, especially if our house takes a few weeks to sell. If we rent for a few months, we give ourselves some breathing room, you know? But then we move twice, which isn’t my favorite idea.

We got back from Spokane, and I got a NASTY sinus infection. Like, nose tripled in size, ears about to burst, throat so sore it felt like strep. I eased my pain slightly with all of my essential oils, but after 5 days of no improvement I dragged myself to the dr. and got antibiotics. Sigh of relief….until it gave me a yeast infection (TMI? Sorry. Nope, not sorry), despite all of the yogurt and probiotics I ate. And then you add that to the nasty sunburn I got on ONE shoulder last Monday….I’d like a day of feeling normal, please?

Before I’m done complaining (yeah, right!), I want to tell you that our foster boys are back with us for the foreseeable future. They will no longer be reuniting with their family due to an incident that occurred, and my heart is just breaking for them. All these precious boys want is to be with people who love them, and the very people that should be protecting them are the ones they need protection FROM. I can’t go into any more detail than that, but their story is gut-wrenching, kick-you-in-the-face sad. It’s very hard for me to care about normal, everyday things lately, because all I can think about are these boys and how they’ve been so very wronged in their short lives.

On a more positive note, I’ve had so many wonderfully perfect moments with Gregory and AJ this past week. Moments that make me want to take pictures and hold them close forever. Reading books together, laughing at all the funny parts, feeding the ducks today, playing doctor with one another (their new favorite game), singing little songs (AJ’s little 2 year old voice is the SWEETEST!). Being a mom is the best job out there, hands down.

Gregory in playground

Speaking of my boys, they have had a hard time adjusting to all the stress surrounding our foster care situation. Last week, when Gregory got in trouble, he started sobbing uncontrollably, “DON’T SEND ME AWAY! DON’T SEND ME AWAY!”. He didn’t understand why our foster boys were leaving (visits with their family) and thought we were sending them away when they were bad. It breaks my heart to think that he doesn’t know he’s mine, that he fears being left somewhere. It’s hard to realize and come to grips with the struggles and scars we all get from caring for the big and hurting world around us.

I felt so loved after I posted about my fears last week. I received so many sweet messages, it was like one big virtual online hug. You have no idea how long I’d been sitting on those thoughts and fears before writing them. I think that’s how it works– we fear it until we talk about it.

AJ playground smiling

I held a piano recital two Sundays ago for my 18 piano students. It was fun, but also sad. One kid played Auld Lang Syne and I felt like crying. They all did so marvelously! My 5 older kids (junior high and up) played Pride and Prejudice and David Lanz songs. It was like listening to a cd that I helped create! So fulfilling!

We are chaperoning for our school’s Prom this Saturday. It’s on a boat. I REALLY hope I don’t get seasick and puke!….

How has your week been? If you’d like to join, post in the comments!

 

That God May Be Glorified

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Mission San Juan Baptiste

One of my greatest fears about moving back to Dallas is that my friends will find me such a different person– mainly, a sadder one. I don’t enjoy certain things the way I used to, and here’s why.

Having done foster care, I’ve seen another side to the world that I was blind to before. Once your eyes have been opened, it’s really hard to close them, as in, sometimes it’s hard to sleep at night. In a sense, I think that I have survivor’s guilt. I can’t hug my own kids without thinking about the kids in our own backyards who aren’t getting hugs. When it rains, I don’t rush to play in it, I cringe thinking of children sleeping on the streets. When I spend a few extra dollars on organic food, I think about how our 5 year old foster child drank “Monster” from his baby bottle because his mom didn’t take care of him properly, and what a few dollars could’ve done to feed our 10 year old all those times he was starving. Whenever we have extra time or money, I feel guilty spending them on fun things when, in reality, they could be spent on all of the hurting children around us.

It’s never been more clear to me that there is nothing wrong with the wonderful kids that these things happen to. My favorite and also saddest moments about foster care have been when I catch a glimpse of who these kids would’ve been without their trauma. They are so special, so soft and sensitive, so full of curiosity, until the circumstances of their life beat it out of them. Our foster children don’t get the luxury of nightmares about “bad guys” and “monsters”, they have real life memories and flashbacks.

My children did nothing to deserve their loving parents and stable home. They did nothing to deserve their food. And yet there are kids who don’t get any of those things.

I brought all of this to a friend of mine, and she pointed me to a place in the gospels where the Jews ask Jesus about the blind man, saying, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” and Jesus responds, “Neither. It was so that God might be glorified.”

 

This reminder stuck with me for days. Every time I was hit with the “why” question, I remembered that God is glorified through all of it, even this messy icky stuff that I can’t make heads or tails of. I don’t need to see the end of the story to know that God already has been glorified in our three foster care situations.

Even if it has made me a sadder person. Maybe I needed to be sadder. More sober. Maybe God is glorified even in my sadness and changed personality.

For instance, ever since we started taking in foster kids 1.5 years ago, all the “Mom Wars” and petty parenting issues have seemed so hollow, so pointless. The conversations in my head usually go like this:

Cloth vs. Disposable Diapers: “Um, is your kid’s bum covered? Is the poop falling on the floor? Good. Sounds like you did the right thing there.”

Vaccine Wars: “Did you accidentally give your kid Hep C? Did your 3 year old test positive for heroin? Did you abandon your children with meth addicts? No? Whew. You’re doing better than much of America, so good for you.”

Hospital vs. Home Birth: “Did you abandon your baby after giving birth? No? Is your baby alive and healthy and not addicted to crack or meth? No? Well, sounds like the birth went awesome! Keep up the good work!”

See what I mean? If you hear these kind of stories day in and out, going back to the normal sheltered suburbia of “mom problems” sounds so insignificant and unimportant.

If you knew the mom that I was back when I was pregnant with Gregory (you know, back when I had just parented one kid who wasn’t even out of the womb and yet knew EVERYTHING there was to know about parenting!), you would know that I needed some perspective.

So, even though this fresh perspective is currently making me a sadder friend, I also hope that it’s made me a wiser and more compassionate one.