Wait

This is the job: Love on a kid who needs love, incorporate them in your daily routines, feed them well, clothe them well, treat them like family.  This child is functioning like family, and with that comes all the intimacy of family.  She is intimately a part of our lives—I know that touching her ears means she’s tired.   I know how to present her food to get her to eat well, the right distractions to get her to take all 14-16 breaths with her inhaler mask on.  She studies me as I put on makeup, she follows me to the bathroom, she plays in the dirty laundry, and bathes with our daughter.  We see each other at our best and worst.  In only 4 months, we are intimately connected.  We feel fiercely protective of her.  I find assertiveness I did not know I had when pushing to get in at the doctor or convincing the doctor that I know what her symptoms mean. 

And yet, we go to court, and we are not “involved parties,” and so we sit in the lobby and wait.  Wait for objective, detached people to determine this little girl’s outcome, based on information we have given them.  We are not privileged to any information about other family members, custody issues, placement decisions, any details that will determine when and where she goes.  We are in the dark.  We got into this to advocate for these voiceless children, to be their voice.  To get their needs met and ensure they do not slip through the cracks.  And I myself have never felt so voiceless.  We are asked to share the most personal things of our life, and yet remain detached.  To have a reality check every week when I drop her off to Mom, and realize I’ve just been playing house, acting as a babysitter.  My opinion, my way of doing things with her, is good only for today.  All the progress we’ve made with her eating, her development, her ability to attach to an adult and learn her needs can be met…  will any of that matter???  It’s hard to feel empowered and care for her well when it feels like it might all be lost…the things I‘ve fought for might just be dismissed by someone else who doesn’t seem them as important. 

So how do I stay fully engaged in her care, in meeting the day to day needs, without knowing the outcome?  Without knowing if the things I am fighting for now will even matter?  This, too, is the job.  I don’t know how to do life in the gray.  How to carry on day to day, when so many things in our life are up in the air.  When I am scared about our family plan and sibling spacing and how it will all turn out.  Truth be told, I want to sit down and make a plan and take control.  Somehow I need to figure out how to keep living for today not knowing much past tomorrow.  I need to lay down my ability to plan and, when she needs new shoes, just go buy new shoes.  Not because I know how much longer she’ll be with us and so it’s practical because she’ll get a good amount of use out of them.  But because I can make my decisions from what I know today only.  I can love her to the best of my ability for today only. We are in this for little T, and have not a clue what that means.  I tell myself that what we’re doing matters—that we’re planting seeds in her that will stay with her.  We have no certainty, no plan, no answers…we have hope.  

Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.  For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.  Isaiah 30:18

Praying for the Lord’s justice and mercy for sweet little T, and our perseverance in anticipation of his graciousness.  

Broken

In my very limited experience thus far, when we tell people we are foster parents, the responses can typically be categorized into two groups. 

1- “Wow, good for you.” These are the responses that give us great credit for being amazing people, and I try to keep a straight face.  There is nothing amazing about us, save the grace of God.  In fact, at no other time in my life have I been more convinced of my own depravity, brokenness, and ugliness than in this season.  It seems like I felt just barely “good enough” to sneak by in everyday life, but my own devices have truly failed me in these unchartered waters.  Loving someone else’s child, and constantly being reminded that she is not mine, and I am voiceless n the matter…  None of it is by my own strength.  I do this not because I have anything beautiful or good to offer of my own devices.  I am flat on my face and using my own hot mess to live out a tiny piece of the gospel.  And it feels hard and dirty…  I am grateful to be learning more of my need for grace, but let’s not deceive ourselves that it has anything to do with me.

2- “The system is broken.”  These are the responses that reference how ‘”messed up” the kids are, how we are going to get our hearts broken, and how there are always terrible outcomes.  Actually, I’m sure I have used the “the system is broken” phrase myself at one point in time.  I’m finding, though, that no one on the inside uses these words.  It’s a critique at best, an excuse at worst.  A way to keep it all at arms length.  To keep our hands clean.  Trouble is, the gospel is dirty.  Why is it surprising that it’s an imperfect system???  OF COURSE it is.  We are dealing with families, with hearts, with relationships.  These are the most vulnerable, and yet the most important, pieces of our society.  It’s not the system that’s broken, IT’S US.  We are broken, imperfect people.  ALL OF US.  If I am honest with myself, it is only by grace that I am in the role of foster mom and not birth mom.  My flesh wants to keep a distinction, to tell myself that I’m on the other side, that there is something about me that is different or better than “those people.”  But my heart is just as messy as hers.  We have equal need for grace and salvation.  Faced with this, my own depravity, I can’t keep all the messy, difficult parts of life at arms length by discounting them as broken.  The broken places are where we should be, because without Jesus, that is who we are. 

I don’t think it’ a coincidence at all that this week, the week of Easter, we have a really big court date.  In my heart I fear the outcome.  I fear little T going back and what that means for her life.  I see darkness and brokenness.  But no matter which way things go, our God wins.  We know the end of the story.