And so it begins...

And so it begins...

We don't get our mail very often.  On the surface, it may seem pathetic, because its not as though we have to go across town to the post office to gather it up.  No, its right on our curb, 20 or 30 feet from our front door.  In fact, we're so bad about getting our mail that our box was so full once, our mailman thought we were on vacation.  So, yes, its a little pathetic, but its not out of laziness that we do not get our mail, its out of "its just going to land in a pile of mail on our counter until we're ready to sort through it and we have enough messes already, so just leave it in the mailbox for now."  However, this month, our mailbox has been cleared out regularly!  Why?  Because M knew our foster/adopt license was suppoes to be arriving sometime this month, and she has been asking for months "when are we going to get another kid?" So most days, she has checked the mailbox for the long-awaited package!

M was not around on Friday to check the mailbox, but I did...and guess what?  It was there!  That means we are officially foster parents and we will now start getting phone calls about kids in need.  These kids will have parents of their own, and we will have NO rights over them.  We cannot even get their hair cut without permission.  We will be doing our best to take care of them and help them adjust to life at our house, while still working with them & their parents on getting back home.  Over 80% of foster kids go back home, so most of the time, it will be short-term (although there are always exceptions to the rule).

So, just to fill you in...be aware that HIPAA (privacy) laws do not allow us to talk about the kids or to even tell you that they are foster kids.  We can't even tell teachers that they are foster kids.  We cannot post pictures or stories on social networks, etc.  So just know that if you see us with an extra child or two, they just may be staying with us for awhile....or they just may be neighborhood kids here to hang out for a day!  We are a house that is always overflowing with kids!  You just never know who you may find around here!

When that call comes in from "matching" for the first time, we will have butterflies in our stomachs!  Sometimes, the kids need an urgent placement...within 2 hours, other times, we may have a few days.  Either way, the need is so great for good foster homes, that we've been told to expect lots of phone calls until the point our "licensed openings" are "full."  For us, the limit is 2 since that's how many more people we can fit in our car!  :) 

So with nervous hearts, we move forward.  Prayers for our family are certainly needed, as we listen to the stories of the kids we are called about, we need to be able to discern which ones are right for us and which ones would be better served by another family.  More often than not, we will need to make that decision quickly.  We know that God has a plan for us, but don't know exactly how it is suppose to play out.  Yet we know that He will work it out for us as we start this journey of faithfulness. 

A Perfectly Happy Family of ...

We have had such a roller coaster of a year when it comes to this adoption stuff, wondering what the heck we are really suppose to be doing, but it seems the answers have finally come in unexpected ways.   We stayed silent about it initially, and have since only had little snippets that we have shared.  Well, our decision is final, and it’s time to share.

I have to take you back to 2006 when we first considered adopting.  We were thinking of adopting a child who had been through the foster care system.  We completed the initial orientation and had to sign up for a 10 week course in order to become licensed.  Instead, we put our house on the market.  We were unsure where we going to be living, and eventually ended up pregnant with our Little Bo Peep.  We didn’t do it.  After all, we were busy, we lived in what felt like chaos, and we were a happy family of soon-to-be 5.

It was about 4 years later when our church friends brought their first child home from Africa, turning their family of 6 into a family of 7.  Bruce and I had a conversation once again about the idea of adopting.  We brushed it aside…after all, we are busy, we live in chaos, and we’re perfectly satisfied being a family of 5.  Then a second family from our same little congregation brought home their son who was from Haiti.  We had the conversation again, but still…we were very busy, lived in what felt like chaos, and we were quite satisfied as a family of 5. Then, the first family brought home two more kids, siblings, from Africa.  We are very busy, we live in what feels like chaos, and we are quite happy as a family of 5…maybe someday, when our chaos is in order.  We didn’t just have excuses…we had VALID reasons that we shouldn’t adopt.

Then, the infamous book came along.  The one that talked about how God has a plan for you, and its usually crazy.  If it sounds easy, it’s probably not actually his plan!  If it sounds hard, you’d better just buckle your seat belt and surrender.  Very specifically, it talked about having VALID reasons to not follow that plan.  Excuses that make perfect sense.  That's not good enough.  That’s when we surrendered to the idea of adopting.  International adoption was all around us, so we chose Haiti.  We were pretty sure we got it right.  The idea of adopting through the foster care system was scary to us.  So much “baggage.” That’s the kind of stuff that we try to shelter our kids from.   We are a happy family of 5, and the kinds of emotions and behaviors that result from the type of abuse that gets your kids removed from your home is not something we can really deal with.  We know that adoption is hard, no matter what.  Every one of these kids, whether overseas in an orphanage, or here in our foster system, has had trauma in their life, and every one of these kids has to learn how to deal with the aftermath of that trauma.  Yet, somehow knowing that over half the kids in orphanages in Haiti have loving parents who visit them, was reassuring.  They tried their best to care for them, but simply did not have the financial means to keep up, because they live in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.  Here, in the US, it is more likely that the kids in foster care have been neglected or physically & emotionally abused, because their parents are on meth…or have hit some other sort of rock-bottom.

 As you know, the road to Haiti was not very smooth.  We had to do everything twice…expensive and frustrating. To make a long story not quite as long, we had reached a point in the Haiti adoption where we were at a crossroads.  We either had to spend thousands of more dollars and move forward, or we had to change courses.  We had asked the home study social worker to hold off on writing the updated home study until we knew where we’d be living (our house was on the market again).  In the meantime, we chose to take a foreign exchange student.  We thought it would be a good experience for our family, and we truly didn’t even hesitate.  It was an instant decision!

During the last few years, the idea of foster care kept popping up.  (Remember, that’s how this whole thing started).  We didn’t give it any thought at any point. We are a perfectly happy family of 5 who is planning to adopt from Haiti.  Not only that, we have announced it from the rooftops, and we’ve done fundraisers to pay for each step along the way…twice!  Very valid reasons to ignore the foster care thing.  After hearing several times from various people, “you should be foster parents”…we heard from one last person.  She didn’t tell us we should be foster parents at all.  We had no reason to defend our Haiti decision.  She thought it was a noble gesture to be adopting from Haiti and had no intention of swaying us otherwise.  She is the local exchange student coordinator.  (Love her!  She oozes with wisdom that we like to soak up!)  She told us how she & her husband saw a need for good foster parents, so they became licensed and eventually adopted two of the kids they fostered.  She didn’t tell us that we should give up what we thought was right in order to pursue fostering.  We were just told someone else's story, as a matter of fact.  Hmmm...the words echoed, “there’s a real need for good foster parents.”

No.  It would be hard to foster.  How could we give the kids back to their parents?  Another valid reason.  Yet, Ksusha has “real” parents.  She’s going home in 30 days, to be exact.  Yes, but she has GOOD parents.  These kids don’t!  “There’s a real need for good foster parents.” Alright, fine. We’ll do the orientation…AGAIN.  That was December.  We weren’t impressed.  Now what?  “There’s a real need for good foster parents.”  In January, we told our adoption agency that we were going to take a course on becoming foster parents...just to see if it felt right or wrong…it didn’t mean we were committing to becoming licensed after all.  In fact, maybe we could just adopt from the system…not actually foster.  “There’s a real need for good foster parents.”  In February, we received a phone call from Iowa Kids Net. “We have an opening for a course that starts TONIGHT in Cedar Rapids and runs for 10 wks...the class lasts for 3 hours each night.”  Really?  We have so much on our plates already!  Whatever….we just need to start taking the course and we can decide along the way if this is right for us or not.  This is not what we want to do, God…are you listening!?!?!?  We want to ADOPT.   

Silly us.  We finished the 10 week course last Wednesday night.  It was an emotional, wonderful journey that we were initially dreading.  We had a great class, learned an unbelievable amount of “stuff,” and we feel we are prepared to be “joint” parents.  To parent a child who already has a parent.  To parent a child who we have NO rights over.  We cannot even cut the child’s bangs, let alone sign a school permission slip, or tell anyone (not even their teacher) that this child staying with us is our foster child.  We are prepared to parent a child who was taken by a stranger from the only thing they know…it doesn’t matter that it was abusive…that’s the child’s “norm.”  That’s what is comfortable to him/her.  Not a warm bed in our home with a plate full of hot food at the dinner table each night.  We are strangers.  We are NOT who they want.  We are prepared.  They tell us that it’s not a matter of “if” you get turned into DHS with allegations against YOU…either by the birth parent or by the child themselves, it is truly a matter of “when.”  Oh man…that’s a deal breaker, God.  Yet somehow, we’re prepared.  I guess what I’m saying is that we are prepared to ask for help and guidance and to keep our minds open to change and to be willing to learn from those who have dealt with the myriad of issues these kids must deal with.  We are prepared to talk with birth parents and be role models…crazy…our chaotic lives that are so imperfect can actually be used as a role model?  One of the scariest moments is the first interaction with the birth parent.  To call them on that first night when their kids have been removed and say, “I have your child.  I will do everything I can to keep your child safe and comfortable until he/she can come back home with you.”  Meeting birth parents who lost their kids, and learning how important the foster parents were to them in their attempt to straighten out their lives was an emotional eye-opener.  It was the foster parent who one of those birth parents called when all she wanted to do was use meth again.  It was the foster parent who held the phone to the crib, so that birth parent could get through just one more night of sobriety by listening to her baby breathe.  That family is reunited, Mom is clean and sober and teaching US how to be good foster parents.  We are looking forward to reuniting families.  Oh, but it doesn’t end there.  We have chosen to become dually licensed as both foster and adoptive parents.  That way, at any point along the way, if a child is not able to safely return home to his/her parents, we can adopt.  Our licensing worker told us yesterday that she is recommending us to DHS.  It will take about 2 months for the license to be final, and from what they tell us, we will have more placement phone calls than we care to get, so I am sure we will be jumping in with both feet sooner than later.

To everyone who helped with fundraising for our Haitian adoption, and who gave, just to give...we thank you.  We feel the need to apologize for not doing this in the first place.  We are not able to get a refund for any of the expenses we incurred during the process of adopting from Haiti, but we do have some left over which we will donate to Children of the Promise in Cap Haitian, Haiti.  I would call it an orphanage, but that's not all it is.  It’s an oasis whose mission is to heal malnourished kids, reunite them with their families, and provide them with an on-going nourishment program when needed.  Oh, and, yes…they care for orphans as well, and help find them forever families through adoption.  Good people.  That's who they are, and we are happy to send them a donation.