Our Foster Care Journey Pt. 2

Thank you all for tuning in last week to hear about our “why” of foster care. Today we are going over the next piece in our timeline that brought us our first placement of a child, and many new experiences that unraveled through that.  

To recap, we were licensed in May 2018, but we had some prearranged commitments that Spring. We provided a date to our licensing worker, and this allowed us to be put on a hold from receiving calls for kids, until that time. Our official “ready to accept a kid” day was set for June 11^th. One of those commitments was our foster baby shower. We had our foster care baby shower on June 7^th – it was incredible! It was Dr. Seuss Themed, per my request, and our family and friends did an amazing job! We received so many gifts to prepare our home for a child. It’s really incredible, if you think about it, we had so many unknowns! We said boy or girl, 0-3, and asked everyone to avoid clothes or books that say mommy or daddy on them. We made a registry, so obviously that helped, but it is quite difficult finding appropriate clothes, toys, and even books that fit that entire range. Anyways, we were incredibly blessed by everyone’s thoughtful and carefully chosen gifts! Here are some photos from our Foster Shower.

Going back to our timeline, our shower was oddly on a Thursday. We both worked that day and had our foster shower in the evening. We were completely tired afterwards and when we got home, went straight to bed. Kyle and I went to work on Friday. I (Erin) have half-day’s on Friday’s, so afterwards I went to my dads office to print off thank you cards. I knew could get a placement as soon as Monday, as that was the official “open to placement day,” so I wanted to get started right away! I also knew, however, that it could take several days, weeks, or months to get a call for a child within our preferred age limit. I was at my dad’s office and I was in conversation with someone and heard my phone ding from a text message. Half paying attention to the message at first, I look down captured the primary word from an unidentified number – “placement of a baby.” I stopped the conversation and my eyes grew wide – it’s a baby….they want to know if we want to take in an 11 month old baby! I excused myself to call the worker for more details, and then Kyle. Essentially, this child was currently in a respite home (meaning they agreed to only host him for a few days) and needed a new one by Monday. The worker said they were looking for a home for this child, we came to mind but they were hesitating because it was not yet June 11^th, but, decided to call anyways to give us a head’s up. I went to run a few errands for the possibility of this happening, nervous and excited and overwhelmed with possibilities. I met Kyle at home to discuss it in person. 

For me (Kyle), I remember it all as a whirlwind. I asked myself, “is this really happening? Already!?” I was surprised when I got the call from Erin while I was at work and thoughts were rushing through my head all day. When we finally got home and discussed and prayed together, we both knew in there was a “Yes” in both of our hearts. Here is the picture we sent to our families after we accepted placement of lil C.

We contacted the worker, learned that he was 8 months old, not 11, and convinced them to let us have him on Saturday rather than Monday, so that we had more time with him before starting him in daycare. That evening Kyle and I stayed up to probably 2am going through all of the shower gifts, praying, and talking about this unknown. We probably got about 4 hours of sleep, then drove to meet the worker and our precious 8month old boy at the agency. 

She handed him to me, we stood in the drizzling rain, and exchanged the small amount of information shared at that time about the case. I sat in the back of the car with him and he stared at me with a confused look on his face. I held his hand and whispered over and over – we’ll figure this out buddy…. we’ll figure this out together. The next few days I barely ate, barely slept, it’s not that he was difficult, but that I was completely overwhelmed with all the to-do’s of caring for a child in general, let alone an 8month old who we didn’t know anything about. Then add on top of that all of the foster parent responsibilities attached to accepting placement of a child, such as medical care. But, day by day, week by week, we got through the newness of everything, and continued our life with him, creating new routines, and we love him so much!

Learning to parent – we had to learn the obvious things like learning his personality and tending to his needs. We learned how fun it is to see children explore their surroundings and what it looks like when the attachment begins to thrive! We learned that parenting takes a lot of sacrifice! Not only sleep, which…he is actually an amazing sleeper, we got SO lucky with him! Anyways, our schedules always had to obviously revolve around him- his eating, his sleeping, etc. I remember it was the first week or two that we had him we had an outdoor event for my dad’s company. C did not go down for nap at the time we had planned. When he finally did fall asleep, he got maybe a half hour, and we needed to wake him up for dinner before going to the event. We quickly fed him and then had to quickly get back in the car to go to the event. We were about an hour late to the event, which was fine, but I didn’t like it. That was my first feeling I think of missing out, to miss the opening activities to care for the needs of someone besides ourselves! The other thing was we found it’s difficult to have actual conversation with adults when you constantly have a child in your face. That was a hard, real lesson that for some reason, we did not anticipate. During that same night though, we also found how much support we had from so many people! The person that was there with me when I got that text message about him- was now there to meet him! Everyone was so excited to meet him and support us in the beginning of our journey. And surprisingly, he did AMAZING at the event- not even cranky from having such a short nap! 

Later that summer we took this 10 month old tent camping with us on a family trip with my (Kyle) brother and it rained the whole time! Have you ever slept in a leaky tent with a formula fed baby? It was rough. Our advise – don’t camp with a child until they are off bottles and are proficient at walking! It was difficult because there was so many conflicting emotions and just overall stress. First off, we wouldn’t call ourselves veteran “camp people”, so tent and dirt-roughing-it brings its own hurdles. Add on the responsibilities and exponential possibilities of an infant. All the while, internally wanting to connect with siblings, nieces, and nephews but realizing it was going to be drastically limited. We felt as though we let them down from their exciting camping trip with Uncle Kyle and Aunt Erin. We quickly learned we needed to create appropriate expectations for our own anticipated experiences.

Another trip we took that summer was in a cabin with some friends. That was a HUGE wake up call to us in realizing the sacrifices that comes with parenting. We couldn’t jump on the boat or jet ski at any given point, we had to carefully plan out when we would have certain experiences, we felt like we were ruining their vacation too. We couldn’t join in for games because we were busy easing a crying baby or putting him down to sleep. It was tough, it was emotional, we were missing out. Even at the time, we knew he was worth the sacrifices, but it’s still hard. This hasn’t change, especially as the second one came! Through these experiences, we now better understand what to expect in social settings, we know that this is what we are saying yes to, and have to accept what we have to say no to. It’s always easier when you know what to expect in any given situation, there’s less potential for disappointment. Now, we understand what it’s like to have kids and have to be stretched, and we are okay with it, even when it is and will continue to be difficult. In each of these social interactions, we may not have gotten to have deep conversations, but we do get to see our loved ones delight in these children, and see how they bring joy to everyone’s life, especially to ours, and it makes it worth every sacrifice. 

Now, let’s talk about the fears we hear. “Have you met the biological parents?!? I cannot imagine having to interact with these people who did _______ to this child. I could never do that!” The thing is, these biological parents love their children too, and more times than not, they are heart broken that they were unable to care for their children and made mistakes that led to their removal. They are people, and people have emotions, and despite what they did or didn’t do to the children, they deserve to be treated with respect and grace, just as we request for ourselves. 

We feel it is important to recognize that foster care is not only about caring for the children, it’s also about supporting the end goal of reunification (if appropriate). To achieve reunification, agencies coordinate visits with the biological parents and their children that are currently in the foster care system. Given the parent’s progress, visits may look different. For us, it has been once a week supervised (by the case workers). However, eventually, it could progress into unsupervised or even over night visits. When considering foster care, it’s important to understand that visits and interaction with the biological parents will most likely happen. Although it may seem awkward and may even include forms of bitterness or spite. We’ve found that bridging healthy appropriate relationships with the biological parents produces ample and fertile gospel opportunities. Every case, every family, every story is different; however, each one carries some degree of brokenness and hurt. In God’s eyes, we are all his children. He wants us all, old and young, to be in a vibrant healthy relationship with Him. If our small acts of love can somehow shine the light of our Father onto these parents, we pray the gospel seeds will sprout.

The first three months of our foster care journey the visits happened in the middle of the day, because the older siblings were not in school due to summer vacation. So, we set up a plan to have him transported by an agency worker. That was probably my first real experience in foster care that I had to loosen my desire to control. It was rough, because while I experienced some details of the child’s time at the visit, I felt there was so much information I was missing. This was something I could not control. We needed to work, so we needed the assistance with transportation and we needed to be okay with having little information over the timing and happenings of the transportation and visitation itself. The week of labor day we actually brought C to the visit ourselves, as we had a camping trip planned, and planned to start our drive that afternoon, after the visit. So, we were together with our first encounter at the visit, and this was the first time we met mom and the other siblings. Going into the building that day to meet mom, we were so nervous, simply because we just didn’t know what to expect. We had insecurities about how she may feel about us, the people now raising her child. But the interaction is quick and fine, nothing too exciting and nothing concerning. We left to grab lunch and then came back 2 hours later to pick him up. After labor day the visits switched to evenings, so school would not be disrupted by the visits. Since then, just about every Thursday since labor day 2018, we have had two hour evening visits with the parents and siblings. The past 8 weeks of COVID-19, we have improvised, doing them by video Zoom.  Now, whether virtual or in person visits, we have interactions each week with the parents ourselves. It’s important to find ways to support their parents in their relationship with the child you have. It’s important that the child see’s that we are not enemies. We want them to have this relationship and attachment. No matter what happens to their permanency in the future, where they came from is ALWAYS going to be a huge part of their life. So, we have made a point to interact with the parents in ways that even when uncomfortable, we show that we support them. We want to be able to walk away from this experience, whatever the outcome, and have no regrets, no grievances about knowing we could have done more. The ways in which we show efforts of support towards the parents are continuously printing off pictures for them, making them crafts at random times, but also specifically on mothers and fathers day, and making sure they are dressed in their holiday or birthday outfits for the visits so their parents get to enjoy their cuteness of those special celebrations. We try also to provide them with details on what the children like and what their interests are, so they know how to talk about things that interest them. 

In foster care, there are always decisions to be made. It’s like that in general with life and parenting, but foster care brings another layer to it. It can be challenging, but it keeps things exciting! Choosing to foster is choosing a life of letting go of control and to regularly make decisions that can heavily affect you and your family, on matters that are towards people who may not have a relationship with in a year or two. In the words of Elsa in Frozen 2 – on June 9^th, accepting placement of little C, we entered “Into the unknown” and with every decisions we make through prayer and lots of talks, have learned to, as Anna says, “just do the next right thing.”

We never know all the reasons or details of what’s ahead. In all honesty, that is probably for our best. First, every step of obedience forward will demand faith and our dependance on God’s will. It also drives us to fail into the “mercy of not knowing” as Jason Johnson writes in his book Reframing Foster Care. Sometimes we need to stop and recognize the unknown is a mercy. We probably can’t handle all the details; rather, it allows us to detach our compulsive controlling nature to rely on the good sovereign Father.

“God will intentionally, lovingly, and mercifully refrain from providing us with certain pieces of information at certain times along our journeys – not to deprive us of knowing things but to protect us from the burden of knowing too much too soon – a seemingly subtle distinction with significantly different implications. This mercy of not knowing, in fact, is one of His most profound acts of mercy towards us. He says go, we ask where, and He simply encourages us to not worry about that right now.”

Reframing Foster Care by Jason Johnson

With that, we’ll see you next week to talk about placement #2 and the associated adventures! Please, let contact us if you would like to address any questions you have. We would love to talk with you more about it!