What kind of CRAZY person signs up for Foster Care?!

I'm not gonna lie, y'all.  This afternoon it hit me like a ton of bricks:

What have we done?

Why did I think we could handle foster care?

What kind of insane person would sign up for this?

And of those insane people, what kind of complete lunatic would sign up for a Native American Foster Care Placement? 


Before I tell you what led me to this fantastically self pitying moment, let me tell you about how we met our girls:

(I cannot share their names or pictures, but know that they are precious and lovely and beautiful.)

It was a Wednesday afternoon at the end of March, smack dab in the middle of our MUCH needed Spring Break.  I was sitting on the counter applying my make up and preparing for an HOA meeting that we were hosting in our home in about 2 hours.  I saw the number for DCFS on my caller ID and my heart went into my throat just a tiny bit.
I called Matt into the room so that we could listen to the details together on speaker phone: 2 little girls, ages 5 and 2.  They are half Navajo.  Our RFC (Resource family Consultant) proceeded to tell us about why these girls were removed from their parents.  They have a relative who can take them, but she lives out of state and it could take months.  Then he said, "Here's the thing:  the 2 year old is sick- looks like she has hand foot and mouth and they are thinking she may need to stay at the hospital for the night.  You don't have to do this- I mean you can still take the placement and not do the hospital stay, but she needs someone to stay with her at the hospital tonight.  Her sister is at the Christmas Box House."

This experience was completely different from our last "placement".  I felt at peace and Matt and I looked at each other and we both just knew we needed to say yes.  We hung up and talked to the kids, saying a prayer and asking their input.  They were all smiles and yeses and excitement. We tried to prepare them as best as we could.  We told them that it was extremely unlikely that adoption would even be a possibility for these girls, but that we knew they needed  a family in the meantime and asked them if they wanted to help.  They all gave a resounding yes!

Matt and I scrambled around trying to get the house ready (thankfully it was relatively clean..),  get the HOA meeting started and get a bag packed to spend a night in the hospital.  Hand, Foot and Mouth is painful and unpleasant, but it's pretty easily treated, so it can't be too bad, right?

When I arrived at the hospital, I met Luna, and she. was. mad.  Mad as hell and sick as a dog.  I was taken aback at her beauty right away.  Her eyes, y'all.  They shine like no other.  Like the moon.  That's why we'll call her Luna.  These are a few random internet pictures that remind me of her:

I learned very quickly that we were in for something MUCH bigger than we originally thought.  Luna didn't have hand foot and mouth, she had pneumonia.  My one night in the hospital with her would likely be days... she had a partially collapsed lung and her oxygen levels were continuously low.

I spent the next four days at the hospital with Luna. She would vascillate between being so angry she wouldn't let me near her and so sick she wouldn't let me put her down.

Imagine: You're two. You've been taken from the only people in the world who take care of you (even if they don't do it well!) and removed from your sister and you are alone in a hospital without a familiar face.  You're attached to machines and poked and prodded and they do procedure after procedure...

I tried to make the nurses do all the mean stuff so I could be the comfort person, but it's hard to comfort a child who doesn't know you any better than the people poking and pricking you.

If you've had a two year old, or have one now,
imagine your baby: ... sick as can be, low oxygen levels, alone in a hospital without a familiar face, angry and scared.

Luna had good reason to be mad.

After about seven hours with her, at 2 in the morning, they woke her to begin an especially grueling procedure.  I couldn't bear it, so I went outside and paced the hallway.  Her angry yelling turned to desperate, painful screams and I broke.  My knees buckled and tears poured down my face.

I thought:

What have I gotten myself into?

I have comforted countless children over my ten years as a teacher and 14 years as a mom.
But never have I had to enter into their lives during their darkest time, their deepest anguish. I have always come from a place of trust... you don't comfort the children of strangers.  This poor child needs her mama and so help me, I am not her.

Just then a nurse came up and wrapped her arms around me.  "You can do this." she said.  I wept on her shoulder and prayed.  I never saw that nurse again, but Oh, what an angel she was to me that night!

I went back in and we tried to bathe the screaming angry baby to no avail.  She was filthy as could be, but she screamed to high heaven every time we tried to place her in the water.  I got her back to the room, wrapped her in a blanket and she finally let me soothe her, eventually falling asleep in my arms.

The first time she let me hold her, I instinctively began to sing.  That's what I do with babies- I sing.  At the time, I was surprised at the song that came out of my mouth... it wasn't a  lullaby that I had sung to my own babies, but  one that I had sung as a special musical number at church many Christmases ago.  But when it was just the two of us, alone in that dark hospital room, I realized why God put Mary's Lullaby in my head:

(Now please note:  I know Luna isn't the Savior, but I also know God put these words into my heart that night for a reason!)

All mine in your loveliness, Baby, all mine;
All mine in your holiness, Baby Divine.
Sing on, herald angels, in chorus sublime;
Sing on and adore, for tonight you are mine.

The wise men are coming to worship their king.
The shepherds are kneeling, their homage to bring.
Out yonder, the star over Judah will keep;
No harm can befall thee, then sleep, Baby, sleep.

Oh, let me enfold thee, my baby, tonight;
While legions are singing in joyous delight.
A new star has risen to hail thee divine,
For you are a king, but tonight you are mine.

Away, spectered future of sorrow and plight.
Away to the years that must follow tonight.
The pangs of Gethsemane, let them be dim;
The red drops on Calvary, not, Lord, for him!

Oh, let me enfold thee, my baby, tonight;
While legions are singing in joyous delight.
A new star has risen to hail thee divine,
For you are a king, but tonight you are mine.

All mine in your loveliness, Baby, all mine;
All mine in your holiness, Baby Divine.
Sing on, herald angels, in chorus sublime;
Sing on and adore, for tonight you are mine.

As I held that baby and wondered what the future held for us, those words pierced my heart:
Away, spectered future of sorrow and plight.
Away to the years that must follow tonight.
...Sing on and adore, for tonight you are mine.

Matt and I took turns with Luna in the hospital... she adored him from the start and called him Dad right away.  Unfortunately, the hospital offered a teeny chair to sleep in and you may have noticed that my husband is, well, a rather large man.  So, I took the night shifts. We did all we could to comfort Luna and encourage her to eat.  No matter what we did, she refused to eat or drink or smile.  She was the saddest, sweetest, most pitiful baby.   After two days of switching off with our kids and Luna, I went to the Christmas Box House to bring home Luna's sister, Sunshine.  She had been sick with the virus that caused Luna's pneumonia and we were counseled to wait until she was feeling better so that we didn't get all of our bio children sick as well. 

I drove to the Christmas Box House, exhausted and excited to meet this little girl.  She came bounding out from around the corner with the roundest, sweetest face and the best cheeks you've ever seen!  She was so bubbly and happy and you'd never guess she'd been through a traumatic experience.  Sunshine has a smile that just lights up the world!  Here are a few pictures that remind me of her:

 She was so excited to come and meet our family and to see her sister!

We drove to the hospital and I walked her into the room and a little miracle took place:

Luna, sitting in Matt's lap looked over and saw her sister.
For the first time in 2 days, her eyes lit up and she smiled, bouncing up and down in Matt's lap and pointing at her sister.  
And I tell you, it was like the Sun and Moon, meeting each other again.  Matt and I were so thrilled to see such joy on their faces. 
Luna still had to stay in the hospital, so I took Sunshine and our other 3 kiddos home to get dinner and get settled for the night.  

If you're a mom, you may be wondering, "What did they eat? What did they wear? Did they have clothes?"
Well, y'all.  I have people. Angels.  My wonderful friend Mary, who I told you about in THIS post had brough over a box of clothes for Luna.
 My dear friend Corrie brought over a delicious dinner- we still want that recipe, Corrie! 
... and my incredibly selfless and serving sister (we dropped the in-law part a long time ago) Natalie had gone shopping for clothes for both girls.  She washed them and folded them and had them all ready to go for us.  Matt's mom and sister Raegan, went grocery shopping for us while we were in the hospital, so we came home to lots of kid friendly foods.  More angels! 

I gave Sunshine a bath and she swam around in there like a little fish!  The next day, she took two more baths- it was her favorite thing!
Matt had breakfast duty the next day and we both know that food is a sensitive issue with foster children.  They have lost so much control that it is important that they be able to choose foods that are familiar to them.  Matt asked her what she'd like for breakfast and Sunshine said, "Mac and Cheese".
Matt said, "Well, like for breakfast, what do you want?  Anything you want, like bacon, eggs, pancakes?"
Sunshine replied, "Mac and Cheese".
So, they had Mac and Cheese, pancakes, bacon and eggs for breakfast!  
When we finally brought Luna home and had everyone together in our house for the first time, it was all of the feelings.  All of them.  Everyone laughed.  Everyone cried.  Everyone was exhausted.

Our children each, at separate times said, "I'm glad theyre here, but I miss the way it used to be."

We completely understood what they were saying, even though it was only the first real night.

That first night was hard.. nothing could prepare me for putting Sunshine to bed and having her look at me, with tears pouring down her cheeks asking, "Can you get my parents out of jail?"

There is no training class for that.

My heart ached for her.  We didn't sleep much that first month.  The past four months have been a blur of visits and failed court hearings and medical visits and early intervention testing and lots and lots of love and hugs.  I'll try to tell the stories here as I can, but it's been a constant roller coaster. Because the girls are Native American, the case falls under the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, which I explain in this post:  Just scroll down until you see ICWA.

 If Foster Care is a roller coaster:

Then ICWA foster care is this roller coaster:

There are even less certainties and more frustrations and less control for the Foster Parents. 

In the beginning, we thought we'd only have the girls a short time... a few weeks looked like the most it would be.  Gradually, every possible family placement fell through for various reasons and we've had them longer and longer. (Which has been a blessing- truly!  We have felt so blessed to have them each day.) With each step, I let myself hope a little more that they might stay forever. I speak a little about that in THIS post. 
Here are a few ways that an ICWA case differs from regular Foster Care Cases:

• Hearings that would have been completed within 30 days for a normal foster care case have taken 4 months, because the judge offers continuance after continuance after continuance.  The State does not want even the appearance of having removed these girls unfairly or for racial reasons.
• After 120 days in a normal Foster Care case, the State is no longer obligated to look for family members or a kinship placement. No such limits exist in an ICWA case. 
• In a normal foster care case, once the children have been in the foster home for 6 months, the foster family gets preference  for adoption (over relatives).  With ICWA, no such placement exists. 
• In a normal case, parents have 12 months from the date of removal to get their act together and get their children back. In an ICWA case, the parents have 15 months.  And of course, that time line can always be extended by a judge and you can bet that with ICWA, there will continue to be extensions offered.  
• The State always has the burden to try and reunite children with birth parents, but with Native families, the State's burden is higher... they must make "active efforts" to reach the goal of reunification. 
• Most importantly, the Tribe can step in AT ANY TIME and remove the girls from our care.  The Tribe's power trumps the power of the State.  The Tribe can trump the will of the biological parents as well. 

I could go on and on and on... but I won't.  And I don't mean to imply that we have it harder then evey other  Foster Parent... there are a million different stories and a million different struggles. Sufficeth to say that the past four months have been amazing and exhausting and exasperating and wonderful...
There have been trials and miracles and setbacks, but:
We love these girls.  
 With every passing day, we love them more.   We want them to have a happy, healthy and safe life.  We both know that it would be best if the girls' parents can get their lives in order and get these girls back, but we have reason to believe that this is highly unlikely.  We want them to be a part of our family forever. That may be the wrong thing to say, but it's how we feel and I have to speak the truth. 

So, after all the "Wait!  They may be leaving! " moments, they are still with us.  After the last hearing, I began to think maybe they really will be staying with us for the next year.  Maybe there really is a chance that they will stay with us... forever.  Is that fair to hope?  Is it fair to Luna and Sunshine to hope that their parents completely screw everything up and fail?

No. The very best thing for Luna and Sunshine would be for their birth parents to heal and be healthy caregivers to them.

Is it fair to pray that Luna and Sunshine can become part of our forever family?!

I do not know.  Praying for this outcome is praying for us, rather than praying for the girls.... If the girls become part of our forever family, it means a permanent, tragic loss of their first family.  And it isn't fair to pray for that. 

Just as these thoughts were swirling around in my head and my heart, I got the August issue of our church magazine in the mail.  It fell right open to this glorious piece of goodness from David A. Bednar: Accepting The Lord's Will and Timing. 

I truly felt that this was a precious tender mercy from God just for Matt and me.  How we needed these words!  Elder Bednar shares the story of a couple struggling with late stage cancer.  Now, please don't misunderstand me:  I do not think for one minute that our difficulties are anything like facing death, but... we needed the same lesson this couple learned. 

"I then posed questions I had not planned to ask and had never previously considered: “John, do you have the faith not to be healed? ...
We recognized a principle that applies to every devoted disciple: strong faith in the Savior is submissively accepting of His will and timing in our lives—even if the outcome is not what we hoped for or wanted. Certainly, John and Heather would desire, yearn, and plead for healing with all of their might, mind, and strength. But more important, they would be “willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [them], even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19). Indeed, they would be willing to “offer [their] whole souls as an offering unto him” (Omni 1:26) and humbly pray, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42).
John continued: “Having the faith not to be healed seemed counterintuitive; but that perspective changed the way my wife and I thought and allowed us to put our trust fully in the Father’s plan for us. We learned we needed to gain the faith that the Lord is in charge whatever the outcome may be, and He will guide us from where we are to where we need to be. As we prayed, our petitions changed from ‘Please make me whole’ to ‘Please give me the faith to accept whatever outcome Thou hast planned for me.’"

I'd like to say that I read that article and completely abosrbed that lesson into my heart.  But I am still struggling with it.  I felt I had found peace and the ability to trust whatever outcome God has planned... I live in this beautiful crazy stressful world where I love Luna and Sunshine entirely and I plan for their future as far as I can because I refuse to sit in limbo... but then out of the blue something will happen that pulls the rug out from under my beautiful, happy picture.  

Today, the caseworker came for a visit.  She talked about another ICWA case that they have been working on for a year and a half.  The tribe has failed to get involved and now that they are moving toward terminating parental rights, the tribe has stepped in and is removing the children from the foster family.  After a year and a half with this family, just as adoption looks possible, the Tribe is stepping in and those children will be removed and placed with strangers.  

We knew this was a possibility, even a likelihood.  I have read stories where this happened.  I was warned this might happen before we accepted Luna and Sunshine.   We were told that the Tribes don't have the resources to provide foster homes so they often will allow the state to deal with foster care and then step in when adoption becomes necessary.  I knew this.  I have discussed this possibility with the caseworker before.  But for some reason, when she talked about it today, it made me physically ill.  My stomach felt like it was in my chest and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't keep the tears from slipping down my cheeks.  

"They are never going to let you adopt them."  The words kept coursing through my head and every time they brought a new wave of grief. 

What am I doing?!!! 

Why are we doing this?!  

Are we INSANE?!

Only a crazy person would do this.  Only someone who had lost her right mind would serve up her heart and her husband's heart and the hearts of her children on a plate and say, 

"Cut us up. Bleed us dry. Break our hearts 

until these girls are safe."

And then I realized...
Isn't that just what Christ did for us?  

I am completely obsessed with this song by Natalie Grant called , "Alive"... take a minute and listen.  I cry every. single time. 

One of the lines reads, "What kind of heart would let itself be broken every time, until He healed mine?  You, only You..."

And so...

We love them.  We sacrifice our wants and our feelings and our schedules and our sleep and our time and our patience and we give until it hurts.

We love them.  
And we fail at it every day.  But God is there, picking up the pieces of our broken offering.  He takes our five loaves of bread and our two fish and He magnifies it.  When Sunshine came to us, sh could not count to three or identify the difference between a letter and a picture of a cat.  Now, she is writing her name and other words and walks around repeating the letter sounds.  It's miraculous.  Truly.  HE did that.  Luna, who said only three words and could hardly walk when she came to us, n ow walks around our home singing and learning new words every day.  She is a miracle to watch.  GOD did that.  Not us.  

And so, though it hurts, We love them. 

We want what is best for them.   We will love them as long as we are allowed to have them.  A few months ago, our Bishop stopped me in the hallway and said he was watching us during church.  
I immediately apologized for the circus that is our rowdy family of seven, but he stopped me and said, (forgive me if I paraphrase, Bishop!) 
 "No, no, no... I was watching you, with Sunshine on your lap and I saw you whisper something in her ear and carress her hair and I watched her lean back onto your shoulder and I thought, 'None of us knows what will happen with these girls.  I'm sure that rips your heart out a thousand times a day.  But even though we don't know what will happen in the future, for now, for this moment... those girls have known the love of a mother."   

And I would add the influence and love of a righteous father- ALL of our children are incredibly blessed to have Matthew in their lives- he is giving and patient and playful and He loves the Lord.  And don't get me wrong: I know that what little righteousness we have comes directly from our Savior...Our prayer continues to be that all of us will come closer to Christ through this experience. 

And that. THAT is what keeps us going.  We believe, we have to believe that this time with them, however short or however long will give them enough good to help them.  We have to believe that their time with us will help change their trajectory... that maybe the stability and the love and the Holy Spirit that they have felt in our home will help them to seek that out for themselves when they are able. 

How long will we have them?

We do not know.  Likely, it will be another six months to a year or maybe longer.  Or the tribe could step in.  Or they could go to a relative at any time.

And so, I just keep singing:

 "away spectered future of sorrow and plight. Away to the years that must follow tonight.... For tonight you are mine."