So, I left off with my last blog discussing our new foster baby girl's arrival on November 12, 2012. Let me first just say that we were not prepared for this experience! Life was already chaotic, but taking in this child took our chaos to a completely different level! I have discovered that there is nothing normal or logical about foster parenting or foster care. If we are fortunate as women to conceive our own biological children, it is a nine to ten month long progression of bonding to this little life inside of us. When the child emerges into this world, their arrival is a continuation of something that began long ago.
As a foster parent, when one gets that call, one is not prepared. Dont' get me wrong, I had all of the stuff--diapers, wipes, crib, toys, pacifiers, some clothes, enough to have a good start. When I received the call from our agency, I was in the middle of teaching creative writing, and I was not in the right frame of mind to make the call, much less make a decision that they needed right then. I talked to my hubs, and we both agreed to take the placement. Two hours later, I picked up a very tiny baby girl, and we were on our way to pick my son up from school. He got into our van, and I said, "Look." He was shocked. In the morning, mommy dropped him off for school as normal, and then mommy had a brand new baby after--now that's a shocker to a child!! He googled over her, and I took a few photos, and then we were off to get my daughter, who was equally as shocked. I didn't realize it at the time, but we had just entered into a time of survival by the moment!
Somehow, this tiny life had to fit into our already busy world. She came with four weeks left of my two college classes, and one was a very demanding math class. I was teaching several hours a week, and we had just finished coaching soccer less than two weeks before. We also had two very hyper puppies who suddenly didn't have much of a place in our world, and who helped me realize that we were truly living in a zoo! In addition to the fact, I was 42 years old, and let's just say that the body changes in such a way that it requires sleep to function. At that point, I ceased to function normally, and in case I forgot, my son was quick to tell me how grouchy I was on a daily basis. I know those days were difficult; I didn't think I would make it through!
At the end of our first week as foster parents, I realized that something was wrong with our baby. She moved all of the time, her body was very stiff, she lost a lot of formula when she drank, and she was a very angry baby. At the one month appointment, I told the doctor that there was something that wasn't right--she was already holding her head up, and I told her she was stiff, screamed through all diaper changes, clothing changes, baths, and was difficult to hold and feed. I told her that her head moved all over the place when she ate, as did her eye balls. The doctor said that she was really muscular. That was that, and we continued to live one day at a time.
It became apparent to me that I was way over my head with all of this when I missed my math final the second week of December. Frantically, I called my math professor and told him what happened, and I told him I had a one month old, had a graduate degree, and had never missed a final in my life. I begged for mercy, and he said I could take it the next day. So, I took the final the next day and failed it. Yep, I failed my first final ever. I went home and that night, I got down on my knees and told God that I was overwhelmed, and I prayed for mercy from the professor. I had an A in the class until the final, and then when I checked my grades, I discovered that he had given me a C for the class. The final was worth 60 percent of my grade, so I should have failed the class!
By the time our baby was seven weeks old, she started sleeping through the night. In reality, she was ready at six weeks, but I didn't get it at the time. I kept waking her up around 2 to 3 a.m., but she wasn't interested in eating. So, I began sleeping through the night again, and how blissful that was!
Thanks to a couple of wise friends who are several years older than me, and women who were clued into my life, they gave me some tough advice about how I needed to downsize my life. They told me that I was on my way to burning out, and they said that I was spread too thin, and that the kids and everyone else around me would suffer if I didn't drop something from my life. So, I decided to drop my teaching job and the two puppies, and as difficult as it was initially, I can sit back now and breathe and say, "Yes, that is exactly what I needed to do."
Our baby was such an angry and difficult baby. There are so many circumstances which contributed to this, and of which I cannot share due to confidentiality, but I have learned some very interesting things about people through this, and so this is where I will digress deeply.
My sister is someone I admire for many reasons. She told me four years ago that she and her husband were thinking about adopting internationally. The country they first inquired into was closed, so they went back to the drawing board. Not long after that, they decided that they were going to adopt from Ethiopia, where there are five million orphaned children. Their hearts were greatly stirred, and so they began a long and arduous process of adopting, and I learned some unbelievable things through it, one of which is how much patience it requires, and two, how not in control they were.
Because we are of the Caucasian variety, there were certain individuals close to us who had issues with my sister adopting a brown child. Conversations erupted which were not pleasant, and it was amazing to see how an innocent, brown orphan could stir the proverbial pot of racial and cultural issues to such a great degree! My sister's girl came home, and then they felt called to adopt a second Ethiopian girl, and she came home in April of 2012. Now, her family is full with three biological sons and two adopted girls. What a beautiful family they make!
Because of my sister's experiences, she was kind of the forerunner for us raising our brown foster child. She has told me countless stories of looks she has received from various people, some looks of disdain, and others, looks of curiosity.
As I took our foster baby and our other children to our predominately white church that first week, it was interesting to see the looks on people's faces. Some people looked for a couple of seconds and turned away, others stared, but I pretended to be dumb and not see them, and others were distant. I was trying to understand this interesting phenomenon week in and week out when only a couple of people that I already knew, and a couple new ones approached us. It wasn't until the seventh week that the leadership of the church approached us, and it was my husband, because I was out of town in D.C. for my doctors appointments, who they approached. They asked who that was and how long we had had her. I admit struggling with the aloofness that people exhibited there. The amazing thing to me about it all was that when we had the three little girls in August for a week, one of the pastors approached us and asked who the kids were. He pulled me aside and told me that he thought that was neat, and that if we needed anything to let them know. He told me that he saw our church moving in that direction of supporting families who were adopting internationally and who were foster parents.
I wondered what happened to that friendliness and support when we had our newborn foster daughter? The same pastor to this day has never approached me. The entire staff has seemed uncomfortable or aloof, and they have seemed to hold us at arms length. Others in the church also seemed to hold us at arms length. I am an extremely analytical individual who has strong perceptive skills, and I cannot adequately describe how I felt when all of this was occurring.
After church many of the weeks, I was alone with all three kids, and we went to Steak and Shake, where kids eat free on weekends. For many weeks, we would go with just the four of us, and I caught many looks of disdain. I found myself doing some serious introspection about my previous judgemental thoughts towards Caucasian women who had brown children. I didn't realize that I had some serious racial issues towards Caucasian women with brown children. Now, I found myself on the receiving end of people thinking that my older two kids were from a white daddy, and the third was from a brown daddy. The looks of disdain I received were mostly from middle-aged white women who were shocked that I had been with a black man, and that he sired a child with me. The psychologist in me was shocked, convicted, and extremely humbled all at the same time.
My sister and I have had many discussions about this topic of race, culture, and its effect on people. We have discovered that having a child of a different race causes other people to evaluate their own racial prejudices, and when they realize they have them, or perhaps if they don't, the looks that come out on their faces are very obvious. Sorry, but those of us in the church are not exempt from our racial issues. In fact, I have mused about the reasons why our church has not been supportive, not helped us, nor extended any generosity or kindness to us, is because it makes them uncomfortable, and they simply don't know what to do with that. So, they do what they know how to do best--they avoid the situation.
This reminds me of when I was diagnosed with cancer, I discovered that my closest friends and church body abandoned me when I need them the most. I discovered that the reasons for this is because in our society, we are taught to show our support to people by talking, why, because it is easy; it doesn't require much out of anyone. When someone goes through a crisis, we feel that we need to have all of the answers. So, when we don't know what to say, we run away, because it makes us uncomfortable. This is what happened to me. I was 34 years old with a baby at home, and no one knew what to do with that--heck, for that matter, I didn't either. I felt very lonely and abandoned. This is how I felt when we took our baby to church those first few months--lonely, abandoned, and I will add another--discarded.
I realize that these are intense emotions, but I assure you that they match an even more intense experience!
Being a foster parent is grueling, harrowing, and a very uncomfortable and stretching experience. I have yet to find any other experience that relates to this. There's nothing like raising a child, where one is told from the beginning, "This is not your child. They will be reunified with his/her parents. You have no rights. It is about the parents rights and their schedule that we work with for visitations. Don't get attached to this child, because she is going home. The more you come to terms with this, the easier it will be for you in the long run."
These are just a few of the comments that have been made to us. As foster parents, we are caught in the middle of a turbulent political hailstorm. The stress of having a child we have grown attached to with serious developmental issues has had its effect on my emotional state. The reality is foster parents have no rights, foster children have no rights, but rather, it is only biological parents who have rights. I won't get into the ins and outs of my thoughts on all of this, but I will say that I had someone tell me the other day something very interesting about foster care. In order to do it justice, I will quote what was said, and this takes me to my "For the love of money" portion of my title.
"I have met enough foster parents who have been more about the money, than the child and it has been turned into a business about funding. More often than not the foster parents, don't know everything and can only say what they have been told. So the ideal of foster care and it being right is a farce, not in this fallen world."
So, I have, along with several wonderful people I know, gone into this intensely difficult and sacrificial situation for a few bucks a month? I resent every notion that this is my intention, or that others think of foster parents in this fashion. Yes, there are those who may do this, but as my friend describes foster parenting, it is "Messy love." We take someone else's mess and love the precious, innocent children subjected to it. So foster care is about funding, and it feeds others love for money?
I know a lot about the situation with our foster child, because we have gone to court five times so far, because if we didn't, we wouldn't know what is going on. We are an advocate for this precious, innocent child, and we are fighting for her life. Whether or not this means that she stays or goes doesn't matter, we are fighting for her.
The spiritual implications of this are tremendous! At Christmas, when I was reflecting on Christ's birth and arrival on earth to redeem mankind, I had a realization that I had never had before. Our baby was an orphan in the eyes of the law--to some extent. What do orphans long for more than anything? A family to call their own. I realized at Christmas the magnitude of the fact that we are all orphans on this earth longing for something that goes beyond punching a time clock and paying bills; it is at the heart of every human being under the sun, and it is our desire to be accepted by our creator. It is our desire to be loved and known; to know that we are never alone left to struggle on our own. The Bible says that God has adopted us as sons and daughters through the precious blood of his son, Jesus, which he shed on the cross for us. We have received the ultimate grand adoption, and once we accept this, we never have to go searching and trying to figure it out on our own. There is a grand design at work in each of us, and our heavenly father is the master architect and builder. I realized all of this with this innocent child, and the lessons keep on coming.
There's much more to be said of this very long novel, but I will save up some juice for the next time. Be well my friends, and remember that you are NOT alone!
