Easy Enough

No one ever told us it would be easy, but for some reason, I just assumed it would be.  Well, let me take that back.  I didn’t think it would be “easy” per se, but I imagined it would be “easy enough”.  I mean, how hard is it to love little kids back to life?  All of the trainings that we sat through let us know that kids who come from hard places might have some issues to work out, but for some naive reason, I thought we’d be the exception.  I figured, “We have somehow raised two pretty wonderful girls thus far without managing to screw them up.  We’ll just apply what we have figured out so far in our (then) four years of parenting, rev it up a notch or two, and we’ll be okay.”  Man, even as I type that last sentence, I can’t help but chuckle at my pre-foster mom self.

And then reality hit.  Actually, I would have been quite content if it had just hit.  It actually bulldozed its way in to our world in the form of a precious little 18 month old boy who had spent his last month and a half of life in a group home before entering ours.  Only 3 months older than our youngest daughter, he had experienced more in his short time on this planet, than I’d experienced in my (then) 31 years of living.  I didn’t know what to do with all of the information that his social worker was dropping on us as she sat there on our living room couch; him sitting on one of her knees staring at us with reservation, while she tried to flip through the manilla file folder that she was balancing on the other knee to give us information.  A ping-pong match going on in my head, my thoughts – the ball – bouncing back and forth between “WHAT?!” and “But he’s only 18 months old”.

And then there was his face.  This sweet, tender little face.  Dripping with innocence, and covered in confusion.  Fear seeping through his pores as if his body was all too familiar with this feeling, and it had now become a part of its repertoire.

In the months ahead, we would have the opportunity to love him through the early days. Those were filled with self-harm, scavenging for food in the trash can because he didn’t yet know that the last meal he just ate wouldn’t be his last meal that we would ever give him, and soothing him through night terrors that so ruthlessly replayed his trauma for him over and over again.  Then the clouds began to part, and we had the fortune of loving him through the giggles, and family dance parties, and the realization that it had been weeks since the last time he hurt himself or dug through the trash can after a meal.

The clouds parting.  It was almost like we were finally granted permission to exhale.  The previous weeks’ question of “Why did we decide to do this?” [fostering] seemed to finally be producing an answer.  We were quite literally witnessing a child being loved back to life.  And it was beautiful and magical all at the same time.  It was possible.

And then, as unexpectedly as it normally does, heart-break came.  But this time it wasn’t his pain the social worker was unloading on to us, it was our own.  With every word she spoke, the crack cut deeper and deeper, and reality had once again bulldozed its way in to our world.

We packed up all of his belongings that day, and sent a large chunk of each of our hearts with him.  And while large holes still reside in our hearts for him, it was in that pain that we sobered up and realized that this wasn’t just something we wanted to do, this was something we had to do.  In the days of sorrow that followed, we believed that God was showing us that there were thousands more Moses’ out there who needed to experience what healthy attachment looked like; they needed to be loved back to life.  All He wanted to know was, would we do it?

So we rolled up our sleeves and welcomed another little guy in to our home about a month later.  He came with his own issues to unpack, but we were now realizing that in a safe and loving environment, he now felt free to lighten his load; in all of the some-times-ugly-mess that that looked like.  He was with us for 6 months, and then moved on as well.  After him, we took a significant amount of time off as a family to regroup, and then welcomed a new little guy in to our home.  He left us 9 weeks ago, and our family has gone back down to four since then.

It was in our last little guy’s stay and departure that I was reminded that, ya, this work that we do is hard most days.  It doesn’t just take a lot out of you, it takes everything out of you.  “So why do we keep doing this?” I asked myself.  I think I’ve landed on a few answers to that question: 1) Because now that we “know”, we can’t “un-know.”  What I mean by that is, now that we have been made aware of the GREAT need in our city and county for safe and loving homes for kids who are quite literally experiencing hell on Earth in most cases, I can’t just shut my brain off to it and pretend it doesn’t exist anymore.  While the capacity in which we help children in hard places may change, I don’t believe we can ever stop helping children who come from hard places. 2) While we may not be able to see what ends up happening to a child who has come through our home in the long run, I have to believe that for however long they are here in our home, is a chunk of time in their lives that they felt loved, cared for, and valued.  And I have to pray that those days stick with them, and they are able to recall them at the very moment they need to. And 3) Over and over again I keep hearing the voice of God ask me, “Can you just love them? That’s all I’m asking you to do.”  And so far, I can’t find any other answer but “Yes”, and with His help, that seems easy enough.