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.