Things used to be different inside my head. I used to live in some what of a fairy tail land where things always worked out they way I hoped they would.I married my high school sweet heart and 10 years later we are still happy and together. We made a beautifully perfect little boy on our first try. We started a business and I got the best of both worlds, staying home with my baby AND making money from home. We decided to become foster parents and I was handed the most beautiful little girl and fell in love with her instantly...
...and then month by month everything fell apart. Before this everything else had worked out in the way we had hoped it would so this should have worked out too right? If nothing else we should have been able to protect her even if we could keep her...right? Wrong.
Wrong. Wrong, Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Everything fell apart. Everything that could have happened in order for her to not be returned did AND SHE STILL WENT HOME.
16 months and now she has vanished out of our lives and we are left to do what?
Keep doing this? Things haven't gotten any easier. In fact, things seem to keep getting harder and harder with no end in sight.
I honestly thought this would end up like everything else in my life. It didn't and it sucks. The bubble has been popped and all of our fairy tail feelings about fostering to adopt have been ripped up and thrown in a huge bon fire along with everyone else who has raised a child for years only to have them thrown back into the mess they were "saved" from all that time ago.
I have dug through this ruble every day since she left, every day since deciding not to adopt Joseph and all I can come up with is that I do like fostering...I just don't like hoping to adopt when it isn't an option. I don't like watching my kids suffer, but I am happy to stand with them and try to bare some of it for them. I love them, I probably love them all too much and most definitely to a fault.
I never would have started this "just to foster". It has been so hard to watch our dreams of adoption crumble all around us. BUT regret...it doesn't live here. If you kick around the ashes you will see sadness, heart ache, strength, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness...but, not regret.
We are still waiting for the joy and peace to be a permanent figure in our memories as we look back at all of this...but it will come. Someday.
The day that she left my hope and faith was shattered. It is still very very broken, but it won't be that way forever. God doesn't work that way.
8 comments:
Um, there is 'talk' about sending Sprout home. I'm gonna vomit :/
Yes. So glad I found you, your blog. Because so much of what you write I can relate to, though I haven't been a foster parent as long as you.
"The bubble has been popped and all of our fairy tail feelings about fostering to adopt have been ripped up and thrown in a huge bon fire along with everyone else who has raised a child for years only to have them thrown back into the mess they were "saved" from all that time ago."
I didn't get into fostering with the intention of adopting. However, when I began fostering I hoped to provide a safe and loving home for children until their parents got their act together, until a situation was safe for them to return to. I never dreamed that I would keep children safe in my home for months and that they would return to situations barely any different from what they were when the kids were removed. NEVER. What is the point of removing them at all if you're just going to throw them back into that hell? So that they can realize what a normal life is and then miss that when they go back to hell? Seems so cruel & twisted to me.
I've had to adjust my way of thinking when it comes to fostering and my hopes of adopting. I don't let myself go into placements thinking there's a chance that "this baby could be mine" anymore. All of the love is there, as strong as it ever was before, and the hurt is still there just as strong when they go home. But by not thinking LONG-TERM, now I find myself focusing more on helping my babies' parents learn how to become better parents, rather than hoping that everything they are doing wrong will lead to me getting to adopt.
In the beginning, when I went into each placement thinking "this could be the one", it seemed like every decision that was made in the case was ultimately taking away my child. It took a couple of TERRIBLE heartbreaks for me to realize that as much as I love them, these babies aren't mine to lose.
Yes, I want to adopt. I WANT long-term. I WANT PERMANENT. And if the opportunity ever comes up, I will snatch it up in a heartbeat. But in the meantime, these babies need me short-term. They need someone to love them with their whole heart NOW, and to be able to love them enough to help to teach their parents and to let them go when the time comes. I can't let myself think about all of the "what ifs," or I'd lose my mind.
Like you, I never would have started doing this "just to foster," but the longer I do this, the more I realize how important it is to try to keep my desire to adopt SEPARATE from my desire to love and foster these little ones who need me. Like you said, there are SO MANY EMOTIONS lying around in the rubble of our shattered dreams of adopting these little ones who've come into and out of our lives. But REGRET... It's not one of them!
I am with you 100%. I love how I have found such amazing foster moms online who know EXACTLY how I feel and say it first. I still have pictures up in my house of my Little Miss...
I so appreciate your honesty. My husband and I are wanting to be a help and safe place to children for the time they need it but also want to adopt. It's such a confusing game to play.
Thank you for your honesty. We are in the "just to foster" bucket, which seems kinda of crazy when I say it out loud, but your candor helps to keep my expectations of the "system" in check. It's truly broken and we will have to work within it's brokenness.
I feel your hurt. So sorry. Hang in there! I'm sure God's not finished yet.
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