I’m often asked how we got into fostering or what made us choose to foster?
Pour a tea friend, because in twelve years, I have not developed an “elevator spiel” or even a “readers digest” version of this story.
I love long chats with my Dad. He is out of province so our conversations are usually over the phone. Often we exchange stories from our everyday; events that made us so furious that we can now have a good belly laugh over both the event and our poor reaction to it. (Remind me to one day share the story of being dragged through a leach infested slough by the collar of a Great Pyrenees.)
But sometimes we share our serious struggles. The ones that strike up a battle between our heart and our mind. I can assure you friend, that the life of fostering can serve up some doozies!
Out of whole hearted empathy for my reoccurring pain, Dad asked me. “Sweetie, why don’t you just quit?”
If I allow my swirling mind to take over this post, I’d list off a dozen reasons not to quit. Most of which may not tip the scale to the average listener.
However, as I delivered my answer, young faces visited my minds eye. The faces of the children I currently had in my care.
I visualized in real time the analogy I gave my Dad. I’m sure he heard it in my voice.
“It’s like I’m wading in water.
Only waist deep for me, but over the heads of my children.
I can’t save them.
All I can do is reach out and pull them up above water long enough to catch a breath. Then, watch as the depths consume them and pull them up once more.
How could I just walk away?
How do I turn my back and head to shore to enjoy my life without a care how their worlds may have swallowed them up?
So I stand with them.
Cold, wet, and tired, to be whatever support I can be.
When the water softens, and their panic and fear subsides they may trust my guidance, they may successfully learn to tread on their own.
My prayer is one day their treading takes them to shore.
Or to a time when the water only reaches them waist high and they are available to others who may also be drowning. “
Dads silence on the other end of the line, told me he understood.
But how did I arrive in these murky waters to begin with?
What lead us to fostering was actually a long, painful, failed international adoption.
The discussion that entered this journey was a short one.
A statement: “I’d love to adopt.”
Replied with: “I always knew I would.”
With that, we went all in on adopting two boys from Ethiopia. Four years, and five figures in, we had all our approvals in place. We were third on the waitlist for our match. Everything was in order ….other than my anxiety.
When would my boys be home and in my arms?
Our entire family and all our friends waited with us. My Mom even quilted the boys matching bedspreads.
Then out of left, right and center field simultaneously, the perfect storm exploded. Our adoption agency filed for receivership. UNICEF swept through the African plains closing down orphanages. And the African government changed legal procedures requiring adoptive parents costly travel to country on multiple occasions to attend court and obtain a visa for the child.
As the storm raged, our documents began to expire, one by one.
The expenses climbed and hope declined.
My anxiety grew to frantic levels.
Imagine leaving vacation. Just as you reach altitude on your return flight home, you realize that your children did not get on the plane. They are back at the terminal in a foreign country. No one to care for them. No way to reach them. There is not another flight for weeks, but even with that, it will take months to obtain a new visa. You may be able to get instructions to the authorities about the care of the children, when the translator returns after summer end.
This was the frantic that was taking over me daily. My sons, sons I have never met, but loved completely, trapped in another country.
No way to reach them. The mountain of obstacles inching upward.
My husband was at a loss how to support me.
So he distracted me with a baby!
While we waited out the storm, we conceived and delivered our third daughter.
I had been out of the baby game for a minute, (or 12 years) and though I lapped up every moment of it, I felt the need to serve outside my home. I volunteered once a week at “The Childrens Cottage”. I handed my baby over to the capable & loving hands of my husband while I snuggled, fed and baked for babes that for a variety of reasons could not be home with their mamas.
While I relieved the tired staff by sanitizing high chairs and folding laundry they shared some of the children’s circumstances. Some of these kiddos where waiting for a home. Fostercare was so short of homes at the time, babes would wait at the cottage until a foster bed would come available.
I returned every week, and each time it got harder to leave. I wanted to take them
Home with me!
