A Day of Reflection

A lot of reflection happened today. I had to think back on why we decided to become a foster family in the first place. I can’t deny that Paul and I both felt God leading down this path. We both felt God calling us to get outside of ourselves and to lead our children in this way as well. The problem is that God does not tell you everything you will go through when you decide to obey. He just says “obey.”

Everything over the past week, up until today, has been good. We have all had our ups and downs since we added someone to our family, but nothing unusual. Today, however, felt different. Today I didn’t understand what was going on with E. In everything Joshua did, E. got mad at or felt the need to ridicule him. My first instinct was to stand behind Joshua, to defend him and wrap my arms around him. The anger and ridicule from E. came out of left field to me. For some reason, Joshua was E.’s primary target today.

E. has had so much change in his short life. He started out life on a very rocky road with a drug-addicted mother and an absent father. He has been in 4 different homes since then and he is only 7. Every home has different people, different rules, and different ways. Each time, he has had to jump in head first and learn how to get along.

We dropped Meredith off at Pine Cove on Sunday. On the way home, we listened to a CD that Pine Cove gives parents with a message by Dr. Tim Kimmel. I knew that the message was intended for us to hear. It talked about the three basic needs EVERY child needs. They have a need for security, strength, and love. We, as parents, are called to meet these needs for our children. E. has never had these needs met. It broke our hearts to listen to this message through E.’s eyes. We brainstormed on what we could do to help end this nightmare for E. - who could we write, what lawyer could we hire, etc. - to help E. become adoptable. We don’t know if we are open to adopting E. yet, but we do know that “permanence” is what he needs to begin healing.

To sum up, I questioned everything today. It seemed really hard and the crazy thing is that I knew we asked for it. We went through a lot of training and hassle to even have it “be hard” on us. Is there sanity in that? If E. would not have been in our lives today, we would have had a pretty uneventful day. We would have missed Meredith, but would have found something fun to do. Instead, we were all challenged today. We had to love selflessly even when we didn’t want to. We had to trust and have faith that God would never leave us nor forsake us. We had to love the unlovable in all of us. We had to say “I am sorry” and “will you forgive me” many times. We had to learn to make allowances for each other and have compassion for things we didn’t fully understand. I am not going to write about today that “it was hard but it was good”. It is just too cliché for real life. I am just going to write that it was hard today, and I will trust God.