About two years ago my husband and I made a huge, life changing decision, we decided to become foster parents. Most of my friends and family know about this decision, but I never honestly felt comfortable putting it out in the open on social media because we weren’t 100% sure we would follow through with our decision. Believe me, we had all of the same thoughts you are probably having right now: we have one kid in college, two kids with muscular dystrophy, we run our own business which takes up a ton of our time……how in the world are we going to “fit” this in our already full lives? All I can say is, when you feel led by something, it does not go away. No matter how busy your life gets, or how full your plate feels, when God is nudging you in a certain direction, that nudge does not just go away when you try to distract yourself with other things. I have always had a passion for helping children in rough places, but once I had my own kids it was really hard to work some of those positions out in the field, and be able to devote the time and energy to my kids. I also wanted to help support my husband’s growing business so working outside the home was too much. We had been talking about the possibility of growing our family through adoption, or opening our home up to foster kids for years, but honestly it really started to weigh heavy on my heart after the boys’ diagnoses. It broke my heart to think about all of the kids out there who are sick and who are not getting the attention or proper treatment that they need. My husband and I would go to the end of the earth and back to make sure our boys have the care they need for their MD. There are a lot of families out there who won’t, or straight out can’t for various reasons. We talked about the pros and cons of bringing more kids into our home a million times, finally we decided to go ahead and start the process to become a licensed foster home. We were still very hesitant and felt a little bit like crazy people to even consider it, but we decided we would just keep going forward, letting God take the lead, until something very obvious told us this was not the right path for us. It took almost a full year from the time I made the initial phone call to Cornerstones of Care, to finishing up our STARS training and home study. I can’t even tell you how many times we went back and forth on our decision. Yes, I have worked jobs in which I saw the effects that abuse, neglect, and addictions had on children so none of that was new to me, but now we were talking about bringing this tough stuff into our home.

We officially became licensed in July 2016, but we had not planned on opening our home up until October due to some other obligations we had. We started receiving the emails with the list of kids who needed homes. I called on a few, but either they had issues we could not bring into our home, or their case workers decided to place them elsewhere. Finally this May, we received an emergency placement call for a 5 year old girl. We agreed to take the placement and I picked her up within an hour of the call. She was a sweet, sassy, beautiful little girl, and she turned our world upside down for the 4 days she was with us. When you take emergency placement calls, you aren’t given much information about the child because they honestly don’t have all of the information yet. After witnessing the effect that her tough stuff had on us and our boys, we weren’t so sure we could do it again after she left. We decided if we were to do it again, we would not take emergency placements anymore because we feel it is best for our family to have more information going into a situation. We took a step back for about a month to re-evaluate our decision, and decided we would give it another try.

The next day, on June 16^thwe received a call about a 7 week old baby girl who needed a home. We actually weren’t sure if we wanted to take in babies initially. With our youngest being 7, it was hard to wrap our brains around starting over at the baby stage. After having one preemie and one colicky baby, we were a little gun shy. After talking about it for a minute, I held my breath, we took the leap, and said yes. Since the call came in on a Friday afternoon, we were scheduled to pick her up on Monday morning. We had the weekend to prepare this time, which was very helpful, since I had basically sold all of our baby stuff in a garage sale a couple years ago. Thankfully we had held onto our crib, and I had some wonderful moms donate some of their baby things to help us get started.

We were initially told that she would be with us for a short period of time. Maybe 2 months at the most. Here we are, almost 6 months later, and once again our lives have been turned upside down by this precious baby. I will call her Baby A. They tell you in the training classes about all of the difficult behaviors you will most likely end up dealing with in order to try to prepare you for what’s ahead. These children have been through unimaginable things, and their grief and trauma can come out in unpredictable ways. Also, they said if you take in a baby who was born drug exposed, expect there to be inconsolable crying. There was one term I also remember them talking about; they said every now and then a family will get a “unicorn”……..a kid who is sweet, loving, has no negative behaviors and fits right into your family. Well, we just so happen to get that “unicorn” with Baby A. We fell in love with her the day we picked her up. In fact, I remember texting my friends and my husband (who was at work when the boys and I picked her up) and my words to them were “Oh man, we are in trouble!” I get the comment a lot from people who find out we are fostering, “I could never do that, I would get too attached.” All I have to say about that is, yes you would……..and yes we DID.

Baby A has been one of the happiest, sweetest, little beings we have ever encountered. From very early on, the first thing she does when you lay her down on her back, is pull her legs up into the “happy baby” pose, which has always cracked us up. Now she can get her toes all the way into her mouth. She loves to eat and sleep, and could bounce all day long. She has the funniest laugh, it is more like a goofy cackle. I have strangers in grocery stores stop and smile at her. She will honestly smile at a person until they return her smile. It is an understatement when I say she has brought our family so much joy!

While Baby A has brought us so much light, laughter, and joy into our home, we have also been exposed to the brokenness that is our child welfare system. Actually broken doesn’t even begin to describe it, and there is no “quick fix” in the foreseeable future. Caseloads are huge, communication of important information is lacking, and unfortunately the kids are the ones who suffer. One of the things that we have really had to come to terms with, is most kids will go back to environments that WE may not feel is best for them. It is completely out of our hands, and we have to put our trust in a broken system. One of the things we learned in training, which not many people actually know, is the number one goal of the foster care system is reunification with the biological family. I think most people are under the assumption that the foster care system’s goal is to take kids from their biological families due to abuse, drugs, neglect, etc., to place them somewhere safe, and for them to never go back. The reality is that the system will give the biological parents every chance to change their behaviors/lifestyles/etc. in order to get their kids back. If it becomes very obvious that the biological family is not able to make those changes, then termination of parental rights will occur, and adoption becomes the goal, however, it can take years in some cases for this to occur. I fully believe that we all make mistakes and we CAN make changes to better ourselves, however, I also believe there are way too many cases where the system allows the biological parents too many chances to make poor choices, and the result is these poor kids are being drug through adult messes for way too long. Ok, rant over, moving on J

We are at a point with Baby A where we will be saying goodbye to her very soon, probably within the next month. There have been a lot of ups and downs in this particular circumstance, and honestly, the training and the literature will never prepare you for this part: the heartbreak of loss. They tell you to treat them like your own, that has been the easiest part. We were not prepared for the feelings involved when bio mom’s success, results in our loss. As much as we LOVE this baby, we could never, ever wish for mom to fail so that we could keep her with us. As much as Baby A FEELS like ours, she deserves to have her mom. We love her so much that we want what’s best for her, and what is best for her right now is to have a happy, healthy mom who has worked very hard for her. This IS a success story, and I am so happy that we were able to help provide a safe and loving environment for this sweet baby during her early, crucial days of life, but as the day draws near when I will have to hand her over, I can’t pretend that this is not affecting me to the core. There are tears in my eyes as I write this all out right now. We are trying to prepare the boys as best we can too, but they have taken their roles as big brothers and protectors of Baby A to a level I never foresaw. I was so worried they would feel like they weren’t getting enough attention from me since I had to spread my attention pretty thin. I am so, so proud of the loving, selfless boys they have been throughout this adventure.

We are at that place again where we don’t know if we can open our home and hearts up to another child in the system. We aren’t going to make any decisions right now; we are all going to need time to heal when Baby A leaves our home. We have in the last month become certified to be a foster-to-adopt home, which means if we decide to go forward, we should receive more calls about kids whose case goal is “possibly” leaning towards adoption, but again, there are no guarantees. The thing about it all is, once you are elbow deep into the system, and learn about all of the kids involved, it is almost impossible NOT to do something. We will just continue to do what we have done from the start, let God take the lead, and we will follow until it becomes clear it is not the path for us.