Being a foster parent

Close your eyes.  Well… don’t because you can’t read this if you close them… but just go with me here.  Imagine you’re sitting in your favorite house.  In your favorite room.  Wearing your favorite clothes.  Holding your favorite childhood toy.  In the floor next to you lays your favorite childhood pet.  You’re comfortable and content.  Suddenly, there’s a knock at your front door.  Someone has come to speak with your parents.  There’s some arguing, maybe some shouting.  A stranger comes and tells you to pack a bag… but you can only take what you can grab in 2 minutes.  That you’re going to live with another family for a while.  And the next thing you know your pet, toy, clothes, room, house, and parents are all fading in the distance.  You’re placed with a strange family with strange rules and given a bed that just doesn’t feel right.  You don’t know where your parents are or when/if you’ll even see them again.  Everything you’ve ever known your entire life has changed in just a few moments.  That’s the life of a child in foster care.  That’s the life of more than 11,000 children in North Carolina alone. 

This scenario isn’t even the most traumatic.  Some kids are taken because they are living in drug houses where meth is being manufactured.  Some are taken because of cases of rape, abuse, or just neglect.  I say “just” neglect.  But sometimes I think that’s the worst.  Because those kids are just ignored.  Just forgotten.  Left to fend for themselves at ages where most kids wouldn’t even be left alone with a known babysitter.  It hurts my heart. 

And here’s the part that’s the hardest for me to wrap my head around… despite all of the reasons they were taken away.  Those kids, most always, miss their parents.  They want to be back with their families.  They just want their normal back.  Even when their normal wasn’t good.  I think that’s been the hardest part for me in the adoption of our oldest girls.  Even in the midst of how good things are now and how bad they used to be… they still long for their bio-parents.  And my heard hurts for them because I know there will come a day when they will fully realize the situation they were in as babies.  And, most, likely, that will change their view of their bio-parents.  And the truth is, I’m not sure that’s something I want for them. Yes it would take away some of the confusion surrounding their past.  But I would love if they could keep that childhood innocence.

The goal for foster care is always reunification.  But parents must meet, and often times exceed, guidelines set for them by DSS before this can be possible.  So often children spend years in DSS custody.  This is where foster parents come in to play.  Foster Families are tasked with taking these children and loving them through the toughest trauma of their little lives.  We have to meet the basic physical needs of the child.  Clothing, nutrition, hygiene, safe bed to sleep in.  But we also have to work on the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral needs of the child.  Not to mention the psychological impacts that being in foster care can cause.  In addition to managing the details of what the child needs, foster families are also expected to work with the bio-parents.  To co-parent with the assistance of DSS.  You’re the go between for visits.  A lot of times, the beating stick for verbal parental aggression.  And the hard line of protection between the child and their past.  And then there’s the part that no one really talks much about.  How to manage your own self-care as a foster parent.  It’s easy to let your needs and the needs of your own family get lost in the tremendous task you’ve dug into.  But when your tenacity and consistency pays off and you have a child who learns to feel like a normal child again… the rewards are indescribable.

The most frequent question I get asked is “why do you do it?” followed by the statement “you’re such a good person for doing this”.  But my response to both is a quick “it’s not me, it’s a God thing”.  There is no way I could EVER do this without Him.  He set this up perfectly in my heart.  In my husband’s heart.  And in the hearts of our family and our support system.  Every last detail of His plan has already been thought over and perfectly laid out before us.  I keep that in mind when I get caught up in the small things.  A “C” on a test might have drawn a grounding for my kids… but now there is a new perspective, especially for a child who missed 90+ days of school the year before.  There’s a bigger picture at play.  And I think that’s a lesson I hope to share with everyone.  Yes the details matter… but humans are petty.  They (I’m included here!!!) get caught up in things like “why”.  But really, we should be focused on “how”.  It’s not “why” be a foster parent, it’s a “how”.  If you’re asking “why”… God has already shown you the need.  When there’s a need, instead of trying to figure out “why” you should step up… figure out “how”.  What steps do you need to take?  There’s something everyone can do.  From fostering, to providing respite care, to donating items the kids will need, to just simply praying for a foster family.  Every bit helps.  It really does take a village to raise children.  And these children are the future of our communities.  So it’s time for us to step up and help raise them.  

A few links if you’re interested:

Gaston County GAL

Gaston County Foster Care

Least of These Gaston

Gaston Foster Care Closet

Beating the Odds

              According to the CDC, the current divorce rate in the US is 3.2 per 1000 people.  Which, at first glance doesn’t sound like a lot.  Pretty good odds right?  Well, no.  Because the marriage rate was only 6.9 in 1000.  Which puts the true divorce percentage at just under 50%.  46% and some change to be exact.  That’s almost half of every marriage.  Let that sink in.  How many wedding showers and receptions have you attended over the last 5 years?  I’ve personally had 8 friends get married in the last 2 years alone.  Which means, statistically, 4 of them will get divorced.  My kids hardly know any friends whose parents haven’t been divorced.  That’s their normal.  Mom’s house vs. Dad’s house.  Endless blogs on “co-parenting after divorce”, “step parent relationships”, and many other topics targeted toward these families are abundant on the internet.  Why?  Because that’s our society’s standard now.  And people in that situation need the support to get through it.  Look, I’m not knocking people who have had their marriage end.  But what about for those of us who aren’t there yet?  How do we keep our marriage from becoming a statistic?  How do we keep our kids from falling into that her house/his house pattern?  In my opinion, there are 3 key items to making your marriage go the distance. 

PUT GOD FIRST, SPOUSE SECOND, YOU THIRD

A lot of the problems that arise in marriage today come because humans are, by nature, self-centered.  Go ahead.  Say it out loud “what is she talking about? I’m not selfish.  I always put my spouse first”.  Well, to that I say “BS”.  1) No one ever “always”.  And 2) you’re selfish.  I promise.  Without evening knowing you I know this.  Because it goes against human nature to selflessly put others in front of your own needs.  Even if it’s just small acts like getting jealous of the time he spends on his phone.  Or how she always pays more attention to the kids than you.  Just those simple thoughts demonstrate your selfishness.  And there’s ABSOLUTLY nothing wrong with being that way.  As long as you acknowledge your short comings and work to abolish them.  Putting God first in your marriage will help keep this on track.  When a problem or challenge arises that would normally result in an argument… take a pause.  Think about it.  How would Jesus react?  Say a small prayer.  “Lord give me the words to make this into a positive exchange instead of a negative one”.  If it’s a compromise that’s necessary… make the sacrifice.  Not just once.  But every.  Single.  Time.  Trust in your spouse’s capabilities and let them lead.  Imagine how your relationship would change for the good if BOTH OF YOU take this path.  Let go and Let Spouse. 

LEARN YOUR SPOUSES LOVE LANGUAGE

I’ll admit, this sounded completely hokey to me.  “PUH-LEASE we both speak English, what more do we need??? He’s just NOT LISTENING to what I’m saying!!”  But after I read the book and did the work… whoa.  What a difference.  Men and Women really do communicate differently.  Men are typically (but not always) more single minded.  See a problem.  Fix a problem.   Women on the other hand, see things in a bigger picture mind set.  See a problem.  Think on a problem.  Talk on a problem.  Weigh 80 different outcomes.  Pro and Con list.  Then work towards solving the problem.  And those minor differences blow standard communications out of the water.  My husband speaks “acts of service” as his love language.  He does things to show his love.  He keeps the yard nice.  He builds things I can use.  He cleans the house.  And he does this in silence, just trusting that I’ll see it.  Well… I am a “words of affirmation”.  I don’t care how much he DOES, I just want him to talk to me.  Ask me how my day was.  Listen to me talk about the kids or my parents.  Tell me I’m pretty.  Before I read The 5 Love Languages, he would DO and I would completely miss it.  Or I would talk endlessly, and he wouldn’t understand that I didn’t want him to solve the problem, I just wanted him to talk to me.  So our signals were getting completely missed.  This book gave us the tools to get us on the same page – and it has made a huge difference in how we communicate with each other.  Even our kids.  They are forming their own love language and it gives us the tools we need to keep our relationships with them close.  Because when you FEEL loved, you can get through any hard times in your relationship. 

 

KIDS COME LAST

This may seem counterintuitive.  Most everything main stream culture screams at us nowadays to put those tiny humans up on a pedestal.  And man, they are cute.  And I’m a SAHM, so they take up my entire day.  But, in order to keep my marriage strong – they come last.  It might not make much sense, because those gorgeous little creatures you created are so dependent on you for everything that you are the literal center of their world for YEARS.  BUT… they should not be the center of yours.  Yes, we have family dinners.  But I also feed them early a few nights a week so my husband and I can have dinner just us.  Yes, we love to spend time with them and have family days.  But we also put an emphasis on date nights.  Even if is just an early bedtime for the kids and Words With Friends over a bottle of wine in the living room.  I love my kids.  But my priority is my marriage.  One day, Lord willing, the kids will be grown and off to college or a job and it will just be me and my husband.  He’s the one I made a vow to in front of God.  And I really think my kids are going to be better people for it.  They see how he values me.  They see how he leads the family.  They see our relationship take ups and downs, but they see us come through stronger.  They have this relationship being molded for them, and I hope they use it as a basis for their own strong marriage one day. 

By no means is my marriage perfect.  We have our spats.  Our arguments.  And our down and outright fights.  We don’t always take the mature road.  Doors have been slammed and couches have been slept on.  But the key part is that we work through them.  We don’t quit.  We know that love in marriage is an action that has to be taken daily.  It’s a choice that gets made.  And we make it a priority to keep choosing each other. 

The Holidays and grief in trauma

 This Thanksgiving we were lucky enough to get to spend it with both sides of our family.  Sometimes I get in a bad mood and complain and having to drive over an hour to see my husband’s family.  Or having to squish ourselves into my parents’ house because I have about a million aunts and uncles.  (Seriously, there’s a TON of people in there, and it gets SO STINKING HOT). And something crazy and redneck always happens.  But really, I love every minute of it.  Every. Single.  Minute.  I am so blessed to have in-laws whom I adore.  Parents and grandparents who love each other enough to want to be together. There’s so many people who don’t have that and I try hard not to take it for granted.  The food was amazing (at both houses – but shout out to my old faithful tin can shaped cranberry sauce because mama found out this year that baby shark LOVES “sawce” too haha) 

Let the baking begin!

We spent the morning just us 5 at home watching the parade and just being lazy.  Which is something we rarely ever do so it was really nice. Next we drove to Wingate and had lunch with my in-laws.  I love spending time over there because I love to see my husband in his element. Where he feels the most rooted. With his people, if that makes sense. Of course his home is with us, but is HOME is there.  And his whole body language changes at his parents’ house.  He’s not big bad daddy in charge there, he’s Jr.  and his mama still pours his drinks dotes on him and I ADORE IT.  The time there is never enough. 

exhibit a for how comfy he his.  even with baby shark climbing on him, he’s out cold in his parents floor 

 Then we went to my parents for dinner.  My family is loud.  Everyone is having a different conversation but all at the same time.  And they all yell it so they can be heard.  Daddy hides out in the shop because he wasn’t raised in that chaos and doesn’t know how to deal.  But the rest of us thrive in it.  I’ve said it before, but man… I am so blessed to be a part of this family.

And then I see it. The look in my oldest daughter’s eyes. That misty, far away, can’t quite place it look that lets me know she’strying to grab hold of a memory from a holiday a long time ago.  One not quite as lively and full of love (and LOUDNESS) as this one. 

 Holidays are always bittersweet for my oldest 2 kiddos.  I know they are so excited about seeing all of our family.  The presents.  The decorations.  The presents. All the delicious baked goods. Did I mention the presents?  But the truth is, holidays are so hard.  Harder on them, most likely, than I’ll ever know.  Because in the middle of all of the fun and excitementand love that surrounds them, they have a huge piece of themselves missing.  And that bitterness comes out hard this time of year.  They wake up every Christmas morning in a house with parents who love and adore them, but that didn’t give them life.  And as much as my husband and I adore our girls, we can’t magically make ourselves have that biological and from birth connection.  And that feeling is harder to describe than anything I’ve felt along this journey.  I want to be everything for them.  But I’m not. And as hard as it is on me to just sit in that inadequacy, I imagine it’s 10x harder for them.   Most of the time they are so focused on the fun that the moments fly by.  But every once in a while I catch a look, like the one I saw on Thanksgiving, and I know she’s thinking about her.  About her biological mom.  The one who left without any explanation.  The one who’s leaving prompted an immediate and irreversible change to their souls that I may never fully understand.  I get it.  Sometimes there’s just not words capable of expressing enough emotion.  So we just share the look through the silence.  It’s grief.  But far beyond just losing aparent.  Death comes to everyone.  But this grief comes from abandonment.  From not knowing what happened or why.  From not having any answers and knowing you’ll probably never get them.  That person who gave you life, who literally formed you inside their body, is just… gone.  You can’t just erase that bond.  It doesn’t go away.  (No matter how hard I wish that pain away for them).  You just learn to accept that it’s as much a part of you as she is, and you learn to deal. 

But Holidays make it harder to deal with it I think.  There’s an innate emotion surrounding the holidays that has a tendency to bring up the things my girls fight so hard to keep down the rest of the year.  It comes out in sass.  In outbursts.  In tears or sometimes in just down right meanness.  But it also comes out in hugs, snuggles I don’t usually get, lingering hand holding and increased conversations.  Any type of connection they can grasp on to.  And those are the moments I cherish.  The ones I can use to strengthen the bond between us.  They may not have formed in me, but they are as much a part of my heart as my own bio is.  That’s one of the hardest parts of adopting children with trauma.   It’s figuring out what you can and can’t do something about, and then getting out of the way to let God do what He does.  There’s nothing I can do about the grief that hangs heavy in those moments.  But just being there.  A new constant in their chaos.  I think that’s enough, even though it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.  And even though it does bring some bitter memories, I love the holidays for the sweet reminder to cherish what’s important.   

oh em gee be still my heart my babies are gorgeous!

Sick kids, Sick Mama, and Teamwork in Marriage

This week has passed in haze of cough medicine, no sleep, runny noses, and fussy kiddos.  The dreaded cold season has arrived, and with it, an important revelation.  Maybe it’s the medicine, or lack of sleep, but through the sleep deprived fog I’ve been thinking about something.  Go with me here for a minute.

 

sick baby and sleepy mama cuddles

 

Most marriages today end in divorce. That’s a sad but true statistic. I have a lot of friends who have never been married, married and divorced, and married and sticking it out (so far). So what’s the key to keeping it together? I have no idea. This isn’t the blog for that. But I can tell you that the one thing my friends’ conversations about relationships always have in common is the idea of “equal”. People always seem to be looking for their equal. For someone who treats them like an equal. For someone who will take an equal role in the relationship. Someone who does an equal amount of work in the home, with the kids, or at a business. And this word just keeps rolling around in my head. What does being “equal” even mean really? A quick thesaurus check identifies common words to be “identical” and “alike”. But, and this is just my opinion, why would you want to date/marry someone who is identical to you? Why would you want a friend who was completely identical to you? There’s nothing to learn. Nothing to grow from. It’s just like looking in a mirror. You already know it all. Relationships should help you grow as a person. They should build you up and help you reach your best. Having someone who is identical to you doesn’t do that. It just keeps you stagnant.

And that idea isn’t just important in choosing a partner.  I truly believe that keeping that idea of “partnership” is the key to not growing bitter in a relationship. There are seasons for everything.  Sometimes you have the extra energy to rake the yard and sometimes your partner does it.  Sometimes you stay up all night with sick kids, and then your partner makes you coffee and breakfast and cleans the kitchen so you don’t have to.  Even though breakfast and kitchen cleaning is your normal role.  When one partner is down the other one picks up the slack.  And it’s not equal.  Ever.  Someone is always doing more than the other.  But the important part is that you are a team.  You work together to get life done.  When you start tallying who does what, that’s when things start to come apart.  Sometimes your partner does things that you don’t even know about.  Does my husband understand how much work actually goes into something like keeping the kids schedule of doctors, therapy, dentists, and school projects?  No.  He has no clue.  But in the same vein, I have no clue what it takes to keep the yard looking like we actually live in the house or what he does at work to provide for us.  But both are important.  And both get done.  That’s all that matters in the end. 

So this weekend, I was down for the count with a killer cold and sleep deprivation.  2/3 of our kids were sick all week and the baby had only slept in 1 hour increments from Wednesday through Saturday.  Every ounce of energy that I had went to making those sick kids comfy… and then I got sick too.  Normally I spend 3ish hours a day picking up toys and wiping sticky surfaces just to keep up with the mess our house accumulates.  But, needless to say, this week that definitely didn’t happen.  I just didn’t have it in me to clean the kitchen, make a bed, or sweep the floors, when I had only had 2-3 hours of sleep a night going on 4 nights.  I didn’t even go to the grocery store.  Which is huge because we have 5 mouths to feed and food disappears fast around here.  But that doesn’t mean that those things didn’t get done.  My husband stepped in to the hole my sickness left and he filled it.  He did the shopping, the cleaning, and supervised the kids while I napped and bathed and took care of myself while I was sick.  He allowed me to get well.  And THAT folks, is what a good partnership is.  It’s giving 100% of yourself every day and not expecting 100% back.  It’s knowing that you might have to do a TON of stuff while your partner does nothing.  But it’s also knowing that your partner would (and will) do it for you if the situation is reversed.  It’s keeping your end goal in mind and working as hard as you can toward it, without keeping count of who does what.  It’s putting someone else before yourself.  Your spouse, your friend, your kids, your family.  Whichever relationship you are struggling in.  Put them first.  That’s how you build a good partnership and a stronger marriage. 

Also, get enough sleep.  Take it from this sleep deprived mama… sleep is KEY to being nice.  And being nice helps your marriage too.  So, sleep. Do it.  

Making the right choice

If there’s any one most important thing that I’ve learned from being a foster/adopt mama, it’s that there are good days and bad ones. Ups and downs. Tons of lows. Some highs. A lot of times people will tell you “it will all balance out” or “bad always comes before the good”.  But let’s just go ahead and call the bullshit on that one.  Not everything always balances. There’s not always a good for the bad.  Or a happy for their sad. Sometimes, it just is what it is and you are forced to sit with the crap hand you were dealt.  But I will say this, in the middle of that bad DOES come strength and learning.  But only if you let it.  It’s not something that just miraculously appears and it’s easy to get stuck in the negativity.  I’ve done it.  Time and time again.  It’s just easier to focus on the overwhelming negative tsunami of emotions and turmoil, than to find the peace and light in the moment.  But in those moments when it’s the hardest to do, that’s when your kids need it the most.

In these moments of stress, your reactions are your choice.  How you react to your kiddo throwing a tantrum or purposely misbehaving.  How you react to a trauma resurfacing. When your kid repeatedly throws toys in the house and then laughs at your aggressive “NO”.  He’s testing his limits and again your reaction is your choice.  You can chose to get caught up in the surface emotions and react. You can get upset.  You can yell, scream, cuss and punish.  (Lord knows I have.  That’s been my immediate reaction more times than I’d care to admit.)  Or you can take a breath, and realize that these emotions probably have very little to do with you.  They could be just a symptom of a much deeper hurt. They could be from a lack of understanding about themselves and how to regulate their emotions.  The clarity that comes from the knowledge that you are not the sole reason for the existence of the world is a very freeing peace of mind.  It allows you to take a step back from the situation and evaluate it for what it actually is.  I think this has been my biggest take away from foster care to date.  It’s not about me.  But what IS about me, as I’ve said about a thousand times now, is my reaction to all of these scenarios.

I’d like to take this realization one step further.  Your reaction to ALL OF LIFE is a choice. Not just about reacting to your kids.  But just to the everyday people around you.  Being happy is your choice. Feeling peacefulness and contentment is your choice.  But I’m about to drop a little truth.  A lot of people will tell you that your situation or life circumstances aren’t your choice.  But hear me now.  Unhappiness is your choice, just as much as happiness is your choice.  Unrest is your choice. Malice. Discontent. All your choice.  It’s easy to be happy when life is going well. The sun is shining. There’s a slight warm breeze. You slept well the night before. Easy days are easy to be happy.  But then comes the spoiled milk. Flat tire. Traffic. Within the everyday stressors, you lose sight of the fact even among the bad, life is good.  Because you’re alive.  And.  It’s.  Not.  About.  You.  This world is about everyone else.  Our friends, family, and our neighbors.  And the easiest way to see that is to look around you.  There’s always someone who is in a worse situation than you are.  While you’re moaning and complaining about the milk being spoiled, think about the family who had to choose between lifesaving medications and gas to put in their car to get to work so they might can afford those medications next month.  Don’t focus on your negativity when there’s something you can be doing to help someone else.  That’s what foster care has taught me.  That being there for others is way more important than wallowing in our own problems.  Problems come and go. And it’s our responsibility, as parents and people, to find the good in the moment and to spread it.  To cling to it and to teach our children the same thing.  Because being able to find that good, to hold on to the positive feelings and let the bad ones go, to choose to be happy, calm, unyielding to the negativity – that’s one of the most important things we can teach our kids.  With this ability, they can start to overcome their traumas.  They can look forward to the future.  And they can begin to heal.

The Beginning of the Chaos

Bear with me… this might be a long one. I guess to start at the beginning really means, for this part of the journey, to start at the end. The end of my husband’s and mine dating relationship. You see… he dumped me. Hard. We’d been together a little over a year and out of the blue he just was over it (or so he thought). For me, the break up was difficult. I did the typical wallowing, ice cream binging, crying to my mom thing for a while. (I burned some of his stuff in a sacrificial attempt to cleanse myself of his jerkiness… story for another day) But then I decided that the best way for me to get over him, was to go do for someone else. Get out of my own life for a while. So I started looking for a volunteer opportunity. My sister in law was a Guardian ad Litem for the neighboring county, and I thought it sounded interesting, so I decided “sign me up!” Having NO IDEA how this seemingly simple decision would change the rest of my life.

A Guardian ad Litem is a child advocate in the court system. I could fill another couple posts with stories from that experience, but I’ll leave this one as saying – the things I learned about our foster care system left my heart knowing that, one day, I’d be a foster parent.

Honeymoon Selfie!!!

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A little something you should know about me.  When it comes to life-altering decisions, I have a bad habit (but GREAT luck) with just going with my gut. I don’t really think them through.  I never have.  The ideas just kind of pop into my head, I pray on it, and then just go with it.  It probably seems like I’m a little nuts to my family.  But so far, it’s worked out pretty well.  I went to 3 different high schools because I just KNEW it was what I needed.  I took the first job opportunity I was offered, when I hadn’t even graduated college yet.   I still had almost a year to go, but I decided I could do the classes online, because I just HAD to take that job.  I moved HOURS away from my family on  a whim because I just felt it was right.  I eventually quit that job and moved home, without a plan or another job, because I just KNEW it was time.  My guardian angel is truly an angel, because her patience and protection has really brought me through some crazy times.  Ok, back to the story.   Eventually, my now husband/then ex-boyfriend and I decided that we just couldn’t NOT be in each others lives.  So we did what all normal and rational adults do.  We eloped. Y ‘all,  we went from broken up to married in just under 2 weeks.  Flash forward a few years and here is where the story kind of starts to come together.  God’s plan in all of this is so evident in hindsight.  Writing this, I feel like there’s not a way to describe the emotions and feelings and prayers that went into these years, but like always, I went with my gut.  And drug my husband along for the ride.

I decided it was time to quit my job designing kids clothing and began teaching (a life long dream of mine).  During this same we had been trying to get pregnant.  But despite the testing, bloodwork, hormones, and doctor visits, it just wasn’t taking (more on infertility in a later post).  But, truthfully, biological kids weren’t in the forefront of my heart.  What was?  Fostering.   It had been an idea in my head and a pressing feeling on my heart since I had started with being a GAL.  But my husband wasn’t so keen on the idea.  His concerns were the normal fears that I hear associated with foster care a lot.  “What kind of kid will we get?” “How do we just give them back” “How will this affect my family?” And I get it.  The fear, the uncertainty, the unknowns that come along with biological kids are scary.  Put all those fears and worries into the idea of raising someone else’s kids, and all of his arguments were completely understood. But I was just CONVINCED this is what we had to do.  He finally relented and agreed that we could take the classes required and see where it lead us. The classes were to take us 10 weeks to complete.

Week 3 of these classes I was at my school working when I happened to overhear about these two little girls. They had been waiting for the bus stop without winter coats and their older sister, who didn’t live with them, was worried about them. So I purchased some coats and a few other things, and took them to where they were living with their grandmother. I don’t really know why I did that. I hadn’t typically been a “get involved in other people’s business” kind of person. But something just spoke to me and said “go”. So I went. I ended up staying in contact with the grandmother. She seemed to need someone to confide in. We had numerous phone conversations. She talked. I listened. We prayed together.

Week 9 I get a phone call from the grandmother. She told me she could no longer raise the girls. She wasn’t able to be “mommy” to them. Could I just swing by and get them so she didn’t have to give them up to a stranger? “just swing by” I was shocked. Who just gives kids away? How can I just go take someone’s kids? Is this real life?? To appease the current situation I suggested a weekend visit to just give her a break (because really?) But when I arrived, they ran out to my car with the bags she had packed for them. Medicaid cards, social security information, and every piece of clothing they owned. She was done. Ahh!!??? What in the world am I supposed to do!!??? I panicked. I called my husband. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked him.  And for the first time, he’s the one who made the split second decision.  No convincing.  No conversations.  No hesitation.  He just said calmly “bring them home”. So I did.

I make it sound simple here, but it was anything but simple. And the road we were about to go down with Gaston County DHHS was a crazy, long, convoluted one, filled with red tape, bad policy, and more stress and tears than I ever could have believed. I’ll detail that journey separately one day. I also want to say, in no way am I implying anything negative about the grandmother. She recognized her limitations and her want for a better life for the girls and she acted on it. That’s strength. She’s still involved with the girls lives and they visit her as often as they can.

But to end this beginning… looking back it’s amazing to see God working in the details. From the breakup, to laying the GAL volunteerism on my heart, to preparing my husband and I for raising children that weren’t biologically ours. It was all part of this wonderful puzzle that He creates for us. And getting to live every day putting it together piece by piece has been the best, hardest, most chaotic thing I’ve ever done. So I just sit back and try to control the chaos as much as possible, knowing that His plan is way more than I could have ever hoped.

adoption day 2017

Our beautiful girls! – Christmas 2017