And the Going Gets Tough: Foster Care

You've heard it, I've heard it many times: Foster Care is tough.

For us, our honeymoon stage with Baby B is most certainly over. We had a fantastic time our first 2 weeks, including a beautiful week at the beach, and it came crashing down with the news that Baby B would start going to a center 3x a week that exhists to counsel the parents on how to care for their children.

I sobbed at the news.

Let me try to explain.

When we got this little baby with bruises and burns on her body, and so mal-nurished for her age, every instinct in your body comes out to protect and figure out how to get them on the right tract health-wise, etc. A bond instantly forms that you would run to the ends of the earth to help. Your pride comes out and flaunts itself making you self-righteous over whatever parents could possibly do such a thing to such a sweet child. Your anger blinds you as you take this little one under your wing.

The news of B starting to be reunited with her birthmom brought a reality check to my heart.

Suddenly, I wasn't this little girl's mama. She had a mama, and it looks like she will be handed back in time. (I don't know what the judge will decide, but it is obviously the path DSS is choosing at this time. As rightly so.... that's the point of foster care, if possible.)

Slowly, I realized I had no voice. I couldn't control what would happen to B. It seems obvious, but I realized my hands were clamped tight around her little life and I was being urged to hold her loose.

Don't get me wrong. I want B to know her mama. I want her mama to know how to take care of her. I want her to go home to a safe, healthy home. We pray hard for these things. But, it doesn't change the fact that for some reason, her mama did not take care of her when she should have.

This brings a whole twist of emotions that you didn't realize could possibly take place in your heart. The whole side of you where you suddenly realize that wanting what is best for the child, may actually be that they go home again, that it may not be that you are so great for this child in the long run. I do rest that this hard decision is up to God to decide, not me.

So here we are: trying to support a mama that we don't really know, hoping and waiting that she gets it together so that Baby B can return home quickly, and the other side of things where you can't forget how tiny she was when you first held her and how she gained a whole pound in 5 days getting fed like she should have been all along.

And the bond that started in the beginning gets harder to maintain, because at times you do feel like you are so far from what is right for her, even though you have a safe home; and her crying drives you crazier than any of your babies' ever did, and you wonder if taking care of them, really is making that much of a difference.

I know these are the low moments that I am being transparent with, and I don't feel as if we are not called and committed to B. It's just tough to weigh through, because she is a part of us right now, and yet there feels like there is writing on the wall.

Does this mean that we don't fight every impulse in our flesh to not love her deep?: NO. It's just not always easy, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth it.

I know God will have the final victory in all of this! I think I just need some encouragement! haha!