From Foster Mom to Birth Mom {Letters}

Dear Sara,

My head won’t let go of the last time I saw you.

You stood there, by my dirty Odyssey, clinging to your little girl’s hand. You kissed it over and over again. You spoke these words, “I love you; I’ll see you. If I’m not at the doctor, I’ll be here next Monday.” You reached to the back of the van for your little boy with an “I love you very much.” Still, you held on to your baby girl.

I admit that I rolled my eyes at your, “If I’m not at the doctor…” comment as I sat in the warmth of the driver’s seat watching you through the rear-view mirror. How many times had you already detoxed? Your commitment to the whole thing seemed suspect.

I held my hand over the “Close Door” button, as I waited for you to let go. My face depicted a patience that my head was not claiming. I had to get these kids home. We needed to commence with the terrible transition from you, Mommy, to me, Mama Kim, from candy and toys to dinner with vegetables and rules. We needed to start the conversation about where Mommy goes when she leaves us at the Child Protection Agency. I wanted to get going with all of this, but you wouldn’t let go.

That was Monday.

Today is Thursday, and I’ve just hung up the phone.

D&#n it, Sara!

The caseworker said it was last night. But, they found you this morning. You’re gone. You took your last breath in the dark with a needle in your hand.

I would have waited, Sara. I would have waited to strap the kids into their car seats. I would have waited to push play on the video player that distracted them from your “I love you.” Had I known it would be the last time they saw you and you saw them, I would have waited!

I slap my hand away from that “Close Door” button over and over again in my mind, now. I repent of my impatience. I watch, a million times over, your hand relentlessly squeezing, caressing, and grasping your baby girl’s. It was like, somewhere in your heart, you knew.

You were sick with your addiction, Sara, but you were their home base. You were what their little 3 yr. old and 4 yr. old brains understood to be reality. What words do I use to explain that what was real is gone?

They ask where you are every week. And, every week, they learn all over again that you won’t be back. They say, “ok.” But, I fear what that “ok” will turn into at age 9, 13, 17. Will it be anger, betrayal, fear, recklessness, or a will for something different? I pray that it’s something different, Sara. I pray that what they will know of you is that you loved, and you loved hard. That you didn’t want to let go. That the tide that overwhelmed you, does not have to come for them.

That will be my prayer now. And your hand, holding and reaching, will be the picture I keep and the story I tell, as long as I get to be a part of their new reality.

Rest, Sara. Rest well.

Love, Mama Kim

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Kim Miller and her husband Bryant live in Ohio, where she serves in full-time ministry in the United Methodist Church. They are the bio parents of two, foster parents of an ever-changing number, and pet parents of a nervous Border Collie and a cat who doesn’t care. Kim is a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary and Ohio University. She shares bits and pieces of her life over at kimberlyrmiller.com.

April 1, 2015

In Honor of the Foster Siblings I So Fiercely Loved

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I remember the way she stared. Bound tightly in a double leg cast, her eyes begged for freedom. She had only been in this world for three months. She didn’t understand. I held her and winced as her broken ribs popped with each breath. I was only 8-years-old. I didn’t understand.

I remember the way he cried. Born addicted to drugs, his crying never stopped. His body was tense. He went through withdrawals from a substance never designed to be in the body of an infant. The effect this would have on his life was astronomical. I failed to understand.

I remember the way she gorged herself with food. She was left at the scene of a crime. Neglected. It was her first birthday, but her guardian left her. She had the most beautiful smile. She knew that food was comfort. I was 9-years-old. I could never identify with that level of abandonment.

I remember the way he struggled to suck on a bottle. Fresh from the hospital, the drugs had significantly manipulated his reflexes. I watched my mom meticulously and persistently care for him. Each day he swallowed a little bit more. He became strong, and for 11 months he was my brother. I felt pride in his achievements.

I remember the way her skin turned red. Trapped in a spicca cast, it repeatedly rubbed against her once-soft baby skin. The hardest bone to break in a human had been broken in an 8-week-old. Her dad had been mad that day. I was angry.

I remember the way she talked about getting to ride in a police car. Her mom was going to jail, but she learned that day that police are there to help. She loved her mom deeply. Her loyalty was both admirable and heartbreaking. Her loss was too deep for me to understand.

I feel lucky that I called these babies my foster siblings. They were, without a doubt, the most courageous little human beings I ever had the privilege of loving. These kids, plus many more, are a vivid part of my childhood. Their stories are real and their faces appear in my mind often. I wonder about them and sometimes even worry about them. They were astonishingly resilient, but I wish they had never been forced to know the depth of that human resilience.

National Child Abuse Prevention Month. It’s a month where we, as a nation, stand up and say ‘no more’. It’s too easy to remain quiet, to pretend like it doesn’t exist, and to push away the faces and names behind the statistics. But in doing so, we inadvertently are minimizing the hurt of 686,000 children who experienced abuse and neglect in 2012 (source). We’re saying that hurt and that pain and those experiences aren’t big enough to bother us.

On the other hand, I see my generation treating philanthropic work as a fad. Come to my college campus, and you’ll see that short term non-profit volunteering and instagramming photos with at-risk kids is all the rage. These kids deserve to be advocated for, cherished, loved, heard, protected, and wanted. That’s not a fad. That’s life-long pursuit and deeply-rooted intentionality, friends. I want my generation to hear that. There’s a longevity associated with this cause. We need to be in it for the long-haul.

For the past seven months I have been completing an internship at an emergency shelter for foster children. I often times sit in the office reading through endless case files filled with some of the most horrific stories I’ve ever heard. Tears frequently fill my eyes as I further grapple with the reality that children in my own community face. I complete intakes and hear things from 6-year-olds I pray I never will grow accustomed to hearing. God, it’s awful.

Then, I go inside the shelter right as the van pulls up from school, and I am met by kids who choose to be so much more then their horrific pasts. They sit at the table and work on multiplication tables, talk to me about art class, eat chicken fingers, watch movies, and sing along to the latest Katy Perry song.

It’s not that they live care-free lives. Their needs are deep, please hear me say that. The reality of their abuse has devastating repercussions. The calendar is full of psychological appointments and counseling appointments because healing is hard. Their situation, living in an emergency shelter, is not the normative, and it is far from ideal. Even still, many of them choose to be more than what life has given to them. That’s admirable.

I want to be like that.

The image for National Child Abuse Prevention Month is a pinwheel. It is childlike and playful, but represents the many different people and disciplines actively involved in ending a nationwide tragedy. It takes teachers, social workers, nurses, first responders, investigators, health-care professionals, social and family service workers, and educated citizens to get the wheel turning. It truly takes a village, friends.

{I recently attended a community child-care conference where I received a pinwheel. This 6-year-old sister was elated.}

The statistics are deafening, but necessary to understand. (These were taken from the Child Maltreatment 2012 Children’s Bureau Report produced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)

In 2012, There were 678,810 unique reported accounts of child abuse and neglect (meaning that each child was only counted once, regardless of the number of times he or she was a victim during the reporting year). The total number of reports of roughly 686,000, broke down into 78.3% neglect, 18.3% physical abuse, and 9.3% sexual abuse.

In 2012, there were 1,593 recorded fatalities due to child maltreatment. What that means is that every day we have upwards of 4 children dying in this country due to abuse or neglect.

Tears fill my eyes just typing that.

I think of my foster siblings and the kids I see every day at my internship. Their lives matter so deeply. They have personalities and passion and value. They matter. We cannot have four kids dying every day. It is unacceptable.

Prevention is hard, we know that. But I have to choose to believe that this number can decrease. Our kids are worth it. It has to decrease. We tell our kids they are important all the time, but I want to show it to them. I have so much to say about this topic, but for now, know this:

Awareness is important. It is so, so vital that we are not only aware of the magnitude of child abuse, but that we are also aware of our surroundings. As citizens, we have a responsibility. All of us come into contact with kids in some form in our daily lives, and that means that if we see something, we are held responsible to report it. If you don’t have your state’s abuse hotline number saved to your phone, do it. A phone call could save a child. Calling a hotline does not mean automatic removal of a child. Please know that. If you report what you see, and leave it to investigators to do the rest, you will never, ever, ever be responsible for “ripping apart” a family. Let that one go. The result of not calling for a sighted abuse case could be devastating.

I plead with you today to educate yourself on the signs of abuse and neglect, and to not grow idyll in protecting the kids that walk through our school halls and play in the neighborhood park, alongside your child.

There is no separation. The hand of abuse is everywhere. This has become your cause, too.

In honor of the foster siblings I so fiercely loved as a child. Because, friends, I whispered in their ears that I loved them, that I wanted to take away their pain. As a child, I held them close to me and cried many, many tears over them. They deserve this. They were lovely. In honor of their courage and fight, and my promise to them, I ask that you understand the importance of this topic.

Stand with me this month, friends. May our words and gained awareness be moved into diligent, life-changing action. May fierce, protective love be our heartbeat this month, and every month.

“They deserve a voice. Not a quiet, meek, timid, and reserved voice, but a resounding and reverberating cry for justice, for unconditional love and the right to live in safety and peace. Granted, that voice may not be their own, but they deserve to have someone embrace their cause and make sure it is heard. They deserve to be valued, to know that value and have it instilled in them. They deserve to internalize the truth that they are worth fighting for.” -Christine Erwin, The Middle Mom

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Kylee is a college student who is passionately pursuing a degree in Social Work while simultaneously learning what it means to be a big sister to kids from “hard places”. Her parents jumped into the crazy world of foster care just days before her 8th birthday for numerous infants and toddlers over a ten year time span; four of those children became permanent family members through adoption. Kylee loves sharing about foster care and adoption and is passionate about advocating on behalf of vulnerable children on her blog Learning to Abandon.

February 23, 2015February 23, 2015

Including Your Children

People often ask if it was hard growing up with foster siblings- if it changed me or stripped my innocence out from under me in ways that left me psychologically scarred.

Of course it was hard; there’s a vulnerable edge to loving again and again, knowing the small person you’ve come to accept as a sibling will be taken away in a matter of days, weeks, or months. There’s a deep uncertainty and anxiety in anticipating a loss with no time frame to draw from, not knowing if a foster sibling will end up adopted in your home, or will never be heard from again. Even before I was able to verbalize the feelings of uncertainty, they were there; when I sat at the top of the stairs and listened as my mom spoke with a caseworker regarding a case, I was acknowledging that I cared deeply and would be torn apart when someone came and took my sibling away.

This is loss. It is something that every single human on earth deals with in both varying degrees and varying circumstances.

The idea of humanity’s reaction to loss is something even the most educated psychologists and counselors are still researching and probably will be until the end of time. It is such an encapsulating topic, but what I find especially fascinating is how we know what pain feels like and take great measures to actively avoid it. Whether it’s simply an embarrassing moment or the mind-numbing grief following the loss of a loved one, the common defense it to search for ways to avoid falling into the same situation a second (or third or fourth) time. Perhaps life experiences leave us seared just enough to look for healing outside the line of fire, or maybe it’s the minds way of protecting the heart. We like safety. I’m finding that it often happens at a subconscious level, but still, when I look for it, I spot walls going up all over my life, barricading me (although often unsuccessfully) from the discomfort of pain.

As a child growing up in a stable family, I didn’t have the life experience of pain to drive me toward that same defense mechanism. When caseworkers surrendered children into my parents’ care, I loved deeply, even knowing it was just for a season. There was no other option. I think that even if I had truly wanted to withhold a piece of love from my foster siblings (knowing, of course, a loss was looming), I wouldn’t have been able to do so. The love for my foster siblings was so real – it crossed a depth of love I have rarely experienced since then. I couldn’t help loving; it was the natural reaction to living with little people who were already fighting situations I never even knew existed.

Of course having a revolving door snatched away a little bit of that naivety and innocence that my parents had so carefully guarded. There were nights of uncontrollable tears and a deep grappling with heavy topics. I questioned physical abuse before I even knew the term abuse.

“Why would a father get so mad he would break his infant’s bones? What are drugs? Why would a mom use them while pregnant, if she knows it’s bad? What is prostitution? How does she not know who the father is?”

There was pain and that pain has had drastic implications on the way I live my life. I don’t know that it’s possible to take your children on this journey without letting them hurt. But maybe if the goal is to protect our kids from pain, we’re cheapening Calvary’s love. The reality of the gospel is the very thing that drives us to the marginalized and oppressed, even to the extent that we devastatingly fall down at the cross with a new load of pain, surrendering it all to Him once again. That utter surrender is the kind of love we’re called to know.

If we seek to teach our kids how to love one another, then is there really any more practical way to do this than in the safety of your home, where you, as a parent, can be the one guiding and facilitating the hard conversations?

It makes sense to me. It doesn’t mean it’s easy or that there will be times placements will have to be turned down, for the safety of those in your home. I know it wasn’t easy for my family and I can guarantee there were days when my parents watched us struggle and questioned their decision. There were repeated times throughout the ten years that my parents temporarily closed our home, giving our family time to rest and recuperate.

Even still, taking their children along on this journey made sense to them, and fourteen years later, I am so thankful they made that decision.

On a bookshelf in my parents’ living room there’s a photo album with pictures of all of the kids who spent time in our home. On the front page, surrounded by each child’s face, Matthew 25:40 is written: “to the extent you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it unto me.”

To one of the least of these. I believe so firmly that caring for the least of these and understanding the power of the cross go hand in hand. Not that our hearts are able to fully understand the magnitude of the gospel, but that through loving hurting souls who belong to Him, we then know His redemptive power more intimately.

My heart is to share that it’s okay to take your bios along on this journey. That it gets hard and messy, but that this kind of messy love-in-action can be life-forming for all the little souls within the bounds of your home.

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Kylee recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in social work and is currently working at a child-placing agency while going back to school to pursue a masters in social work. Her parents jumped into the crazy world of foster care just days before her 8th birthday and cared for numerous infants and toddlers over a ten-year time span; four of those kids later became permanent family members through adoption. Kylee is passionate about learning how to better love her siblings from “hard places” and loves sharing about this journey and passion on her personal blog Learning to Abandon and on her Instagram @kyleemarissa.

December 31, 2014

Just Because It’s Hard Doesn’t Mean It’s Wrong #top10ofalltime

“But I will rejoice even if I lose my life, pouring it out like a liquid offering to God.” Phil 2:17

This fostering journey has taken it’s toll on me emotionally and physically but it has grown me spiritually. My natural tendency is to think that when it is hard or when I see myself or my kids being affected that we shouldn’t have done this. But, that’s simply not true. We know that we are right where we are supposed to be. We didn’t make a mistake.

Somehow, we have this notion in our heads that if we’re in God’s will, life will be easy and uncomplicated. Things will make sense but that is just not the case. If it were, where would faith come in? Why would we need to be dependent on Him?

I’ve been pondering the story of Jesus’s birth – The Story. Mary was pregnant with the Son of God. The King. The Savior Himself. And yet Mary and Joseph went from Inn to Inn looking for a place to rest. They had to question what in the world was going on. “God, you want this baby to be born healthy don’t you? We need a place to stop. Why are there no rooms? I thought this was Your plan but it doesn’t make sense to us. It hurts.”

In our own waiting seasons, don’t we find ourselves asking the same types of questions? Mary’s situation was not easy or uncomplicated. It was definitely not comfortable. She was affected in many ways and yet through her obedience, she received the greatest gift imaginable. She held Jesus in her very arms. She cared for the King of Kings. I cannot grasp this really.

In our situation, I have come to realize that I need more help. I have always been full of emotion but with the added stress that six kids brings (and oh they do!), my lows have been lower, and I need some help with steadying out my hormone levels. I’ve talked with my Dr. and we have a plan to try out some medication.

This is not really fun for me to share but I do so because I want you to know the realities. I know there are differing opinions on this whole issue but we believe that this is the right next step for me.

Even so, I struggled with this. One of my biggest fears going into fostering was that I would “wither up like an old dead flower” and let me tell you, Satan has been throwing that back in my face. “Look, Jami. You have failed, you can’t handle it. You are losing.” But I am not accepting his lies nor his evil whispers. I will choose to listen to the Voice of Truth. He tells me “You don’t need to handle it. I am in control. I have given doctors the ability to help you. This is My provision right now.

When I am weak, He is strong. His strength is made perfect in my weakness. He doesn’t call us to pull up our bootstraps and work harder for Him, He knows our weaknesses. He just wants us to look to Him and be led by Him. He calls us to obedience, no matter what the cost. Even if that means the decline of health. Even if that means pain. He died for us. Why should we not suffer for Him? In our situation, my “suffering” pales in comparison to what the three little ones in our care have experienced. They are worth it.

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Jami Kaeb is wife to Clint and together they have six children (four of whom were adopted). After having her eyes opened to the overwhelming needs of those in the foster care system, she began a journey that ultimately led her to found The Forgotten Initiative (TFI). TFI equips and supports “Forgotten Advocates” to bridge the gap between Agencies and the Church, bringing joy and purpose to the foster care community. Learn more at www.theforgotteninitiative.org. Jami loves coffee. A lot. And connecting with others. When the two are mixed, she is especially happy! You can get to know her better through her blog at www.lifewithapersonalgod.org.

December 12, 2014December 12, 2014

This Day

How do you do it?

This is what everyone asks.

How do you hold Little One close knowing that his days in your arms are

so fleeting, so uncertain?

How do you scramble to make it work at a moment’s notice?

How do you shuttle him to doctor’s appointments, nursing him back to health so that he can leave again?

Friends, this is how I do it.

I go out each day and gather enough for that day (Exodus 16:4).

I make plans for this day.

I figure out childcare, transportation, food for this day.

I hold and rock and snuggle and sing on this day.

And by the provision of a gracious Father, I do it again tomorrow.

My eyes have only two focuses.

Eternity. My promised land where I believe that all will be set right.

All will be well.

And this day.

I cannot think about the in-between.

It wrecks me. Just the thought of going there makes it a little hard to breathe.

And so, again, I hand the in-between back to the One who isn’t wrecked by it.

And I mix up formula in this day.

I make salt dough ornaments in this day.

I pray and love and hold and bless in this day.

Sometimes it feels like a little, and sometimes it feels like a lot, but it always works out to be just as much as I need (Exodus 16:18).

In this day, I gather enough.

And by the provision of a gracious Father, I will do it again tomorrow.

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Shannon is mom to an amazing seven year old. She is a Christian, a licensed foster parent, a kindergarten teacher and a huge advocate of connecting church people and little people in need of forever families. She blogs at A Little Bit of Everything.

November 10, 2014November 10, 2014

Mile Markers

I was eight-years-old when I said goodbye to my first foster sibling. She had lived in our home for only 40 days, but it felt as if she had always been a part of our family walks and read-aloud mornings by the fireplace. She came to us with each leg secured in a cast, working day and night to hold together broken bones and provide stability for cracked ribs. Six weeks later, we were madly in love with a baby, and that baby was being stripped away by the vulnerability associated with love. She left our home with strengthened legs, kicking and flailing like babies should. That part was good. But still, she left.

We drove her to the office where a caseworker was waiting in the parking lot to carry her off to her next new home. I kept bending down, reaching under her car seat straps, to kiss her over and over again. It was my first bitter taste of loss in this life. I now know her story had a happier ending than it did beginning, but still, she was living in our home, riding in our minivan, filling our washing machine with laundry, sucking on bottles in the middle of the night, healing from broken bones, learning to trust humanity again – and then, with what felt like no fair warning, she was gone and never seen again.

That loss (and the subsequent losses of the many foster siblings that followed) was profoundly formative in my heart’s fight for growth.

I find it fascinating that the human heart is only capable of grieving to the extent that the brain has progressed physiologically. It’s as if we have these mile markers that only allow an eight-year-old to grieve with the expression and understanding that is appropriate for that tender, missing teeth, messy hair, molding heart, stage of life. Then, the next mile marker comes into sight and the now twelve-year-old child can revisit the traumatic event with a new, deeper level of understanding. As children, we have these deeply formative life events, that leave us crying and hurting and angry and sad, and yet, our hearts have this ferocious resiliency so that it is only through the appropriate passage of time that we are able to safely grapple with and process the full extent of the tears of our childhood. This is how the heart was made, to grieve carefully and methodically, because if a child starts the race of grief too fast, there may be burn-out, and suddenly, the finish line’s view is obstructed by social delay, behavioral outbursts, and developmental regression.

My saving grace is that during my years of loving and letting go over and over again, I was held by parents who listened to me cry into the deepest pockets of the night, planned a fun outing to distract us immediately after a foster child left, answered questions about drugs and abuse, fed me ice-cream, and allowed me to feel whatever emotion my heart needed to feel.

What happened through all of these moments is that I was safely able to process the circumstances taking place in our home, and my heart was able to find room to expand as it grasped with greater understanding the acts of injustice that are repeatedly inflicted onto those who are the most vulnerable. So that then, when a few of those kids stayed in our home, turning temporary siblings into forever siblings, I was maybe a tiny bit more equipped to empathetically enter into their pain.

Not that I can begin to understand the fires of trauma that my siblings have walked through, but maybe, because my parents allowed me to enter into the care of the many foster children that lived with us, I am better able to stand ahead at each mile marker, armed with an ice-cream date or a spontaneous trip to our favorite bookstore, ready to fight off the attacks that accompany the perils of the grief and healing journey.

They pass these markers with chocolate-stained faces and a few extra “I love yous” tucked safely in their pockets. I watch them keep running. They are passing mile markers, sometimes in a sprint and other times slowing to a walk, championing through their journey with so much courage that it astounds me.

As an eight-year-old, long before I ever knew I would be a big sister, I grieved the loss of a baby who had enough resilience left to trust, even after acts of horror had been inflicted on her. The irony is that as I said goodbye to one who had fought to heal, I had no idea that our hearts are capable of withstanding storms; that the immediate pain we feel can be used to cultivate a level of trust and passion and pursuit, used to contribute a little bit of safety to the hearts around us that are also journeying through grief.

That the cries of our heart and the running- stumbling- across the finish line are achieving an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs even the hardest goodbye.

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Kylee is a college student who is passionately pursuing a degree in Social Work while simultaneously learning what it means to be a big sister to kids from “hard places”. Her parents jumped into the crazy world of foster care just days before her 8th birthday for numerous infants and toddlers over a ten year time span; four of those children became permanent family members through adoption. Kylee loves sharing about foster care and adoption and is passionate about advocating on behalf of vulnerable children on her blog Learning to Abandon.

September 29, 2014September 29, 2014

Weight

I promised a blog detailing the wonderful, joy-filled adoption of our daughters. It is coming. I promise. But today, I have heavier things on my heart and I wanted to share in the moment.

There is a little baby boy sleeping soundly on my chest as I write this. He doesn’t weigh much. Only a smidge over 9 lbs. However, one would think – judging from the heaviness of my heart – that he weighed a couple tons.

I have only known Mr “I” for 7 days. I firmly believe in love at first sight. It’s happened to me a couple times in my life and last Wednesday morning was no exception. The adoption of our daughters had been finalized only a week and a day when we got “the call.” Fellow foster parents know what call I’m referring to.

“…baby boy…almost 2 months old…dropped off at our office…adorable…needs a bath…length of placement is guessed to be short-term…adorable…baby boy…”

We hadn’t really planned on being ready that fast, but there is nothing quite like a call like this. In my years of reading as a teenager and young adult, I always loved the stories of foundling babies. Babies who appeared on your doorstep or young ones left on church steps. There is something inside the heart of a mother (whether she is already a mother or not!) that aches and longs for the idea of a little one that needy. Someone unable to care for themselves who needs you to love them. Love them, snuggle them, care for them. A little one who has experienced the opposite of this kind of care creates a cry for love that you simply cannot resist. These calls from DCS are the modern day equivalent to that. And you fall in love. Hopelessly, fully, completely in love. Maybe because you know its right. Maybe because you can’t help it. Maybe because you know that every child – no matter how long they will be in your care – deserves to be loved with the unconditional, secure, unending love of parents. Of a daddy. A mommy.

I am writing this just an hour after receiving another call. This was the call letting me know that we would be saying goodbye to Mr “I” today.

Now you may be reading and saying to yourself, “Oh, this is the reason for the weight on her heart.”

I’ve just gotta be real with you all. I started writing this blog in my head (yes, I write them in my head first) when I was up on the couch feeding little man in the wee hours of the morning during that very first night. That weight really comes from the very first moment you feel the responsibility. From the moment you fall in love. So…instantly.

I believe that the special love of a parent to a child always comes with weight. That ache deep in your heart that is hard to describe. However (without having experienced the weight of love for a biological child personally), I believe that the weight of loving a foster child is very different. The weight of the deep, instantaneous, embedded in your heart forever love is tied together with a pain that is equally as strong. And, those two emotions are tied so closely together it is hard to tell where one begins and the other ends. It touches each aspect of your life as you care for these precious children.

When you count the fingers and toes, reveling in their tinyness, there is the weight of wondering – how did it feel for biological mommy to count them during those first hours of life.
When you hear the tiny snores and feel the weight of a soundly sleeping body, there is the weight of pain – not yours, but the pain felt by a biological parent not experiencing these moments – not even knowing where their child is.
When you are awakened with cries of night terrors or devise special feeding plans to provide nourishment that was lacking, there is the weight of anger – anger directed towards whoever could treat a precious child in such a way.
When the smile directed at you is a result of your voice and face, there is the weight of loss – knowing that this little one does not belong to you.
There is the weight of moments lost to you that you will never know, the weight of responsibility to cherish the moment you are in now – not knowing how many you will have, and there is the weight of handing the child back to another person – probably forever.
There is the weight of knowing that you have given this child a place in your heart. Forever. And the weight of knowing that you will not always be there. You won’t always get to heal the hurts, or calm the fears. They will probably have to experience those again and your arms will not be there to hold them.

And, as a believer in Christ, there is the weight of trust. Trust in the all-sovereign Savior. This weight must be the heaviest because He is the only one who sees and knows all things. He knows the desperate longing of my heart to see this child again. For eternity. He hears the fervent, tear-filled prayers that the introduction to His love received in our home – no matter how brief – would be a seed. He sees the path of this precious little one – things that have been, are, and will be. And He loves. So much more perfectly than I ever could. He is good. And He is the one we must cling to. He is the one who called us to this kind of love for others and He is the one who will hold our hearts in His love as the weight breaks them over and over again.

And there is the settled weight of peace. There is peace in resting in the care of our loving Father who knows the weight. Who has experienced the weight. Who will bring justice, right the wrongs, and wipe away our tears. In His time. In his perfect plan.

We love you, little man!

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Lydia Brownfield lives in Indiana with her husband Justin and their three daughters. They have been foster parents since 2011 and were thrilled to finalize the adoption of their daughters this year. They hope to continue to show God’s love to the many precious kiddos God will bring through their home – for whatever length of time He sees fit to leave them there. You can follow their journey on her blog, After All.

September 12, 2014September 10, 2014

Not My Dream

Is this really my life?

I fought hard against this calling.

This is not what I really wanted.

I wanted a simple life.

Holding a child in my arms who is thrashing against all my efforts to love is not what I dreamed for motherhood.

Continual disruptions of birth family visits, social workers, and court dates.

I signed up for this?

A child slipping into an infantile state and wailing for anyone else to come hold her besides me.

Anyone but me.

Muffled sobs against my shoulder that she wants her brothers who live with another foster family on the other side of town.

And I rock and struggle to draw her flailing form into my arms. She shrieks foreign gutteral sounds.

After returning from a visit with birth family. This is what happens. Last time it was projectile vomiting.

And I rock and whisper…

I know you are confused. I know you are angry. Mommy loves you. Will you be my baby and let me rock you?

Over and over we do this. My chest heaving with hers, our tears mixing a salty stream between us.

I hear it all the time: I could never be a foster parent. I just couldn’t let them go.

Really? Maybe God is calling you to foster care.

Seriously.

You want to know a secret?

I said the exact.same.thing.

Do you think we do this because our hearts are stone hard and we have a special gift in letting go? Or that we’re not fearful?

We’ve wrestled with every fear and reason why we shouldn’t do this. For years.

Even when we signed up for ten weeks of intensive training, we still questioned: Is this what we’re supposed to be doing?

We walked the tough road of watching my daughter’s best friend and her foster family. After three years, she went home to her mama.

Difficult circumstances. Gut-wrenching pain.

He pricked our hearts a long time ago. And in His perfect timing and plan, we jumped in. He used a friendship in my Kindergarten daughter’s life, along with our broken past to draw us in.

We decided we would start slowly by trying respite care- ministering to foster families when they needed a break.

We got a call before we were licensed. To take a seven-year-old boy for a week. That week rocked my world.

He was the same age as our middle son.

He endlessly spoke of his losses, his words permeating every quiet space. My ears burned with stories of his past– his mama’s choices, his grief.

My kids were carefree, laughing and talking about superheroes. An empty gap in the conversation erupted as this dear boy attempted to connect by sharing his stories of drugs, police, and guns.

Talk about a real-life superheroes. These kids that endure the worst of life and still keep going. Continuing to hope. They are the superheroes.

My boys fought like tigers all that week. The extra testosterone in the mix pressing against their comforts– their stuff (specifically Legos).

My chest was a cavity of shards every night I knelt down with him. He was a bundle of blankets and tears asking why. Every.single.night. Anguish and prayers for his mama.

I thought I would die. I didn’t know how to handle this.

Was this really where He was calling us?

His mama’s addiction was the same that caught my husband and our family in a net and almost destroyed our lives four years beforehand.

No mistake this sweet boy was our first placement. A ripping away of our comforts. A reminder of our rescue- what our lives could have been.

A bursting of our children’s comforts is not a bad thing. They are called to more, just as we are.

I am repeatedly caught off-guard by how children love with pure hearts. No agenda or to-do list.

My kids are big sinners, like us, but they are unencumbered by life or worries. A freedom to love without bounds that I don’t have.

Babies seemed to rain from the sky last summer. My kids spent the months of June and July bouncing fussy babies, feeding hungry ones, and bringing joy to little faces.

While this mama breathed into a paper bag, trying to regulate my oxygen level. Because it was hard.

Deeply loving other people’s kids. Adjusting to different schedules and stages of babies.

As my kids begged for more babies, my heart was doubtful. Unsure if I could handle and manage this calling.

So, we detoured–pursued adoption for six months, while we continued to serve as a respite foster family.

We thought adoption seemed safer, you know? Ha! Insane thinking- my adoption friends can tes.ti.fy to that…adoption bears it’s own heavy grief and uncertainties.

The Lord shut the door on adoption for us. We ran after every country and adoption agency known to man. He slammed that door tight.

I grieved all last summer. The realization set in– He was cementing our feet in foster care.

We couldn’t run from our calling, our passion. We couldn’t unloosen what He had sealed in our hearts.

And the phone call came in October.

Would we take the little bitty girl we loved with all our hearts?

The one that had us all wrapped around her tiny brown fingers.

She had occupied our crib more than any other child, spending countless hours in our home as respite.

Full-time foster care frightened us and kept me up at night, but we knew without a doubt.

We said yes to Little Bitty, jumping in with both feet and all our doubts and fears. Holding out empty hands to the Father. Knowing this was our calling.

We are not extraordinary.

We are normal, fearful, questioning, struggling, people.

Doing what He has called us to do.

Often with anger at injustice and shaking fists.

Much of the time with fear and trembling.

We are still standing.

Because He strengthens the weak-kneed.

Gives hope to the weary.

This is not the dream I had. His plans are bigger and better.

Because we serve an extraordinary God.

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Melanie and her husband, Kevin, have been foster parents for two years. During this time, they have had twelve children in their home. Foster care has challenged their family to look inward at their own brokenness as they seek their Savior to serve the *least of these*. Only by His strength. You can follow their journey on her blog Running to the Father.

August 28, 2014August 28, 2014

The Beauty and Brokenness of Foster Care {Summer Rewind}

It was a Wednesday. We received a call from our foster care agency at 3:30 in the afternoon – a newborn baby girl had been taken into custody by Child Protective Services at the hospital and was in need of placement. “Are you interested?”, they asked. Of course we are.

By 7:30 that evening they were at our front door, holding a tragically fragile little girl who needed a home to live in and a family to love her.

It was the best and worst day of her life.

She was wholly unaware of all that had transpired in her short 3-day life. Tragedy, abuse and brokenness brought her to our front door. Hope, love and healing welcomed her in. While we celebrated the opportunity to care for her, we also ached over the reality that someone had put her in a position of needing to be protected in the first place. Two years later, it’s now our joy to call her our daughter and to hear her call us her Momma and Dadda; it’s also our heartache that any of this ever had to happen in the first place.

EQUAL PARTS GOOD AND BAD

Everything…everything about foster care is equal parts good and bad, joy and sorrow, beauty and brokenness. It’s a good day when a child is placed in your home. It represents safety, security and an opportunity for a child to be loved and cared for in a way they likely would not have had available to them otherwise. It’s indeed a good day when a child is placed in your home – it’s also a really bad day. It’s a day marked by hurt and brokenness, that while so much gain has been made available to a child, it’s ultimately loss that has led them to that point. Generational cycles of brokenness within families have perpetuated themselves now into the lives of the next generation – abuse, neglect and abandonment have become a part of their stories. They didn’t ask for this, it was unjustly handed to them by those who were most responsible to protect them from the very things they’ve now been harmed by.

While the opportunity to love these kids is good, no doubt the circumstances that brought them to us are probably very, very bad. This is where the call to foster care begins, what it exposes us to and the perspective it demands we keep in order to rightly and lovingly care for vulnerable kids.

THEIR TRAGEDY OVER OUR EAGERNESS

As excited as we may be about fostering kids, they certainly aren’t excited about being foster kids. Our personal sense of excitement does not drive our efforts. Their personal tragedy does. Heartache does. A desire to see good come out of bad does. A willingness to embrace what is broken and do whatever it takes to bring healing does.

Celebrate the opportunity to open your homes to kids in need, knowing that if it be for just a few days or an entire lifetime, you’ve been given the unique opportunity to offer them something special – love. Yet at the same time, never let your excitement about being involved in foster care be separated from the heartache you feel over the tragic reality that something like foster care even has to exist in the first place.

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Jason Johnson is the husband to Emily, a dad to four girls (youngest adopted in 2013), a pastor for 13 years, a former church planter and now the Church Engagement Officer and creator of the ALL IN Orphan Care Church & Ministry Campaign with the Arrow Foundation—an organization committed to equipping, resourcing, and mobilizing the Church to help kids and strengthen families around the country. You can follow his ministry at Jasonjohnsonblog.com and find this post originally published on that blog here.

April 30, 2014May 4, 2014

The Beauty and Brokenness of Foster Care

By 7:30 that evening they were at our front door, holding a tragically fragile little girl who needed a home to live in and a family to love her.

It was the best and worst day of her life.

EQUAL PARTS GOOD AND BAD

THEIR TRAGEDY OVER OUR EAGERNESS

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Blog

Category: Foster Care

From Foster Mom to Birth Mom {Letters}

In Honor of the Foster Siblings I So Fiercely Loved

Including Your Children

Just Because It’s Hard Doesn’t Mean It’s Wrong #top10ofalltime

This Day

Mile Markers

Weight

Not My Dream

The Beauty and Brokenness of Foster Care {Summer Rewind}

EQUAL PARTS GOOD AND BAD

THEIR TRAGEDY OVER OUR EAGERNESS

The Beauty and Brokenness of Foster Care

EQUAL PARTS GOOD AND BAD

THEIR TRAGEDY OVER OUR EAGERNESS