Wondering where, how, and who

So it's a week after our first call for a placement. I'm wondering where that little girl is, who is taking care of her. Overall I think I am having 'blue car syndrome' only for kids that are neglected or abused. Everywhere I look I see kids not taken care of, tragic stories of a lack of parenting skills, and it breaks my heart. The breakdown of our families is tragic.

The other night at prayer meeting I had something happen, they had a mic up and said that if anything was weighing especially heavy on your heart to come up and pray with everyone about it. Many had come up and I had children not being taken care of weighing heavy on my heart I had decided I really needed to quit being hesitant and speak to what was on my heart and have others pray for these poor children. As I was walking up to the mic our pastor started out a spontaneous prayer, I got a chill and had tears running down my cheeks when I heard him say "We'd like to lift up the parents who have abandoned their post and quit taking care of their children....." he went on to say a lot of great things and he was dead on target with what I was thinking.

So, we've only been licensed for a couple weeks and we've had one call. I'm wondering when we will get the next call, who it will be about, if it will be the right child for us and just what God has in store for our family.

Welcome to the roller coaster!

I wish I could write like my friend Piper who has a blog about CF, life, and transplant...she has a way of making you feel like you are 'with her' on the journey no matter the subject she is writing on. I'm afraid even if I tried I couldn't accomplish what she does so I will continue on with my normal ramblings. 

Here's how our first journey into possible foster placement went. 

Tuesday I had a big project I needed to do for work, I wasn't feeling so hot and never got time during the day to do it. I came home and decided to work on it in the evening but alas my headache turned into a migraine and Jared was working on re-routing the gas lines in the basement in preparation for installing the new water heater the next day which made it cool in the house. I decided to call it a night, my bed heater was calling my name so I planned to get up and go to work an hour early the next day and get to work. 

Fast forward to the next morning pro: I woke without the migraine con: I woke up to Jared saying "Honey it's 7:51" it seems I had done something goofy to my alarm and Jared didn't set his since he took a vacation day to install the water heater. For the record getting to work an hour early is 7am so this was obviously NOT going to happen and since Jared wasn't going to work I had to take the time out to take Lillian to school as well, luckily Jared got her ready for me. On my way in I also remembered that I wanted to stop and get candy for the training session I was trying to develop, a little bit of bribery goes a long way! Finally, I got to my desk and was trying to settle in. I even posted on my facebook that I needed to have a super productive focused day to get everything done....ha HA little did I know. In an attempt to be successful in meeting my deadline for the training class I closed out my email and turned my ringer on my phone to vibrate and placed it on the charger figuring I'd answer calls later. 

I was about three hours into developing the training I needed to give and creeping up to within just under 2 hours of the due date when my office phone rang. I wasn't going to answer it but I saw the number was the same one I had ignored on my cell phone earlier so I answered it......of course it was our worker calling with a placement.

*splat* went my concentration and focus! Through the roof went my excitement and adrenaline! 

I can't really share a lot of details here (rules about that) but it was very exciting none the less and sounded promising to be at least a long term placement if not an adoption. It was a girl named C, she was 1 and Lillian was going to be SO excited! They were going to be in court later that day to get the final verdict from the judge but they were pretty 'positive' I'd have her in just a few short hours and even went so far as to arrange plans and times to meet up. 

I was SO excited. I had of course called Jared before accepting her. Ironically, when I called we had no heat or hot water but Jared was close to finishing the job.....or so he thought. I of course posted excitedly to facebook and ran in to a TON of people at work that knew we were waiting and couldn't help but tell them too. The only thing that kept me from running home and washing clothes, well besides the fact we didn't have hot water LOL, was that I had to stay and give the training. I decided the training was good enough as is, tried to stay focused for a brief meeting with my mentor before the meeting which was very unsuccessful. Then it came time for the training and I decided honesty was the best policy, I explained that I had just had an exciting call and that we had been wanting to expand our family for a long time, everyone was very excited. I even had a couple people come up to me afterward, one guy who had adopted 3 native americans from foster care! The training flew by and I was out the door as soon as possible! 

It was about the time I should have been receiving a call that I picked up Lillian. I got her in the truck and we headed home and then I received the call that we weren't getting baby girl C. The judge had not removed the children from the home for whatever reason (my musings on the system in MI in a later blog). I was let down but not as much so as I thought I would be, I felt confident that it was just not the right time, not the right child, not in God's plan for us right then. Luckily I had the foresight to decide not to tell Lillian until it was a 'done deal'. 

Looking back it is kind of good that we weren't placed though my heart aches for the children in that family and many prayers have went up for them. That night I came down with a wicked flu which is probably why I had the headache/migraine the previous day. That night Jared also didn't get done with the hot water project until about 10:30pm though we did have heat. 

And that, is our first roller coaster journey! 

Fostering Timeline

Orientation & 1st Home Visit 12Aug2010
PRIDE completed 14Oct2010
Home Visit completed 18Nov2010 
Application with the state 22Nov2010
OPEN FOR PLACEMENT 10JAN2011
1st call for placement 19Jan2011   (a 1 year old girl/placement did not happen)
 

Excerpt from  – Keep Changing the world by Mike's Chair
Something here is wrong. There are children without homes. But we just move along, to take care of our own. There’s so much suffering, just outsides our door.But we just move along, to take care of our own. There so much suffering, just outside our door. A cry so deafening we just cant ignore.

James 1:27 (NIV) Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Fostering Lillian'isms

So for those of you who have read on here or on facebook about some of the things Lillian says you know that I have coined them "Lillian'isms" and they are often hilarious and sometimes insightful. I was curious to see what Lillian would think about sharing and becoming a big sister to sibling(s) who may end up being transient in nature.

We were only probably a week into our decision of pursuing fostering when the perfect opportunity presented itself to talk with Lillian and I couldn't pass it up. I'll try my best to describe it below, it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.

L: Mom Kate at school doesn't have a Dad, he died, I mean well no he didn't die her cat died but she doesn't get to see her Dad.

M: Wow, that is sad isn't it.

L: yeah because she doesn't get to see her dad or her cat

M: it's good that Kates mommy is so nice huh?

L: yeah

M: did you know that some kids don't have a mommy or a daddy to take care of them?

L: who takes care of them

M: sometimes their grandma, or grandpa, or someone in their family but sometimes another family has to take care of them. Sometimes their mommy or daddy are sick or have to go away for a while and they need a nice family to live with.

L: Oh

M: what would you think if some of those kids came to live with our family for a while?

L: Oh yeah, they could live with us because some kids don't have a nice mommy or daddy and I do have the nicest mommy and daddy

M: and would you share your toys and things with them?

L: yes, and if they didn't have a toothbrush or some other stuff they need I would share mine with them or we could just go to the store and get them a toothbrush

M: that is so sweet of you, yes we could buy them things they need, you wouldn't have to share your toothbrush but you would have to share some of your other htings and even your mommy and daddy.

L: ok, can we go pick them out now?

M: *laughing* no honey it doesn't work that way we have to wait until some kids need help. these kids would be younger than you so you would be the big sister and we would all love them but then they would have to leave and we would be really sad but sometimes we might get to keep them and they would be with us forever.

L: Yeah, and maybe if their mommy and daddy die then we could keep them?

M: Um, yeah, hopefully their mommy and daddy don't die but if they do then maybe we could keep them.

L: OK

M: so how many kids do you think we should get?

L: 8

M: EIGHT are you crazy?! Your mommy would go crazy with that many kids.

L: ok 5 then 5 kids

M: where would 5 kids sleep?

L: well I will take all my books and toys off of my bed and they can sleep with me and one of them can sleep on my princess mat next to my bed

M: Oh, that is very sweet but I don't think 5 kids would fit in your room, I think we'll start with 1 or 2.

______________________________________________________________________________

Ok so those were the highlights of the conversation. It was SUCH an endearing conversation that I will never forget, I only wish I had known I was going to have the conversation ahead of time so I could have recorded it. There were SO many follow up conversations and snippets that were just as great. I have captured some of them below.

We hadn't really told all of our family or close acquantinces yet when it became apparent that we needed to or Lillian was going to do it for us! Lillian to Uncle Shane: "Uncle Shane new kids without moms and dads are coming to live with us". Thats a fun one to follow up on! I was just sure she was going to tell our florida family before we got around to doing it on our trip down there, luckily she had enough other things like Disney to distract her.

Once Lillian had grasped that there wasn't a baby coming from my belly but that other kids were going to come live with us and they would be her siblings she was loving the idea, there was however a bit that she didn't understand and that is that we didn't get to just 'pick' kids at random. I will never forget after she was playing with an older girl at church named Ella and after prying them apart we were leaving church. Lillian said "Mom I really like Ella, can she come live with us and be my sister" LOL I had to explain to her that Ella had a mommy and daddy to take care of her.

When our social worker Suzie came to our house Lillian kept wanting to know who she was. So, I explained to her that Mrs. Suzie is the lady that helps kids who need a family to take care of them for a while. That definitely peaked Lillian's interest who then wanted to know if we could go get the kids now! In her mind the lady that helps kids was at our house (for a home study) so it must be time to go get them. She then tried very hard to send home toys with her so that she could give them to the boys and girls.

Lillian started to understand that we were going to have to be patient and that we couldn't just 'pick' out our own kids from a store or the church congregation LOL. So she decided to formulate her 'wish list' I suppose you could call it. Just recently this winter she has decided that she wants kids that are old enough to 'play' with and I told her they had to be 0-3 but that she would be the oldest. She decided that she wants a "a 3 year old that can play and not a baby because they will cry and wake her up and she wants a girl because they are more fun but a boy will be ok too." She definitely has an opinion, no idea where she gets that from HA.


I know there are more so I will have to come back and update as I think of things.....so that, for now, are the fostering Lillian'isms.

Becoming a foster sibling

Of course when we first considered fostering one of the major things we had to take into consideration was the affect it would have on Lillian (see how I used affect here, I did that because affect is being used as a verb as in the action it will have upon Lillian....hopefully, still working on this one Mrs. E-----if you are all wondering what I am talking about  see my previous post).

Of course I did some googling and reading for both pros and cons and Jared and I discussed it. We feel that while it WILL hurt and it will have an affect upon her if we talk about it and deal with it the good will outweigh the bad. The good include: being empathetic, realizing how fortunate we are, seeing that doing good means DOING and not just writing a check and/or doing a soup kitchen at Christmas, expanding our view and meaning of family, doing as the Bible instructs us to, embracing diversity, and learning to deal with loss/grief. I am also sure that we will become better parents through this which will only serve to benefit our family.

The grief thing really struck home. It is likely that Lillian will loose me at a younger age than she should have to, perhaps even before she graduates high school though I fight like HELL to make sure that doesn't happen statistically speaking the odds are pretty high. Even dealing with a best case scenario she will deal with seeing me get sicker and having periods where I can't do as much as other times. Jared and I know this and plan to prepare her in age appropriate ways. Something about dealing with loss and loving in the foster world makes me believe that she will be better equipped to deal with such a large loss that she God forbid will have to deal with, though none of us can ever really be prepared to deal with that.

The social worker says that no matter what we do we wont really be able to prepare even ourselves for the loss we will feel when a loved child leaves our home. So, with all of these things in mind we decided we would have the conversation with Lillian to see what she thought about some of the harder aspects of becoming a 'all the sudden sister' that she might understand like.....sharing her toys, her space, and her parents.

Grammar Lesson for the Day

Grammar lesson for the day: 

I can NEVER remember the difference between effect and affect so this lesson comes from 'grammar girl blog' and google. I'm not saying I'm going to use it correctly from here on out but at least I made an effort to learn today! 

affect with an a is a verb and effect with an e is a noun.

So a very easy noun will help you remember that affect with an a is a verb and effect with an e is a noun, 

"The arrows affected Aardvark. (all a words) The effect was eye-popping." (all e words)

Examples 

1. If you are talking about a result, then use the word "effect."

• Example: What effect did the loss have on the team?

3. If you want to describe something that was caused or brought about, the right word to use is effect.

• Example: The new manager effected some positive changes in the office. (This means that the new manager caused some positive changes to take place in the office.)

4. Affect can be used as a noun to describe facial expression.

• Example: The woman took the news of her husband's sudden death with little affect.

5. Affect can also be used as a verb. Use it when trying to describe influencing someone or something rather than causing it.

• Example: The weather conditions will affect the number of people who come to the county fair this year.