Our Foster Care beginnings...and blessings

Exactly 6 years ago today we became a foster home. We found out we were licensed and ready via phone call at about 3 pm that day. We were approved and licensed to take in one child. At about 6 pm, we got a call for a sibling set of 2 children. By 9 pm, we had our first placements in our home- before we even had the paperwork in hand that said we were official.

The children were a 2 year old little boy (the children had been removed from their home on his 2nd birthday) and his 11 month old baby sister. From that first moment in our arms, those 2 babies turned our lives upside down in the most chaotic, insane, tumultuous ways. We truly did not know before then that lives could be so traumatic. We did not know sin could run so deep in a family. We did not know babies could be so utterly and completely impacted and hurt and broken by the mistakes and shortcomings of their parents. We would learn- the hard way- the effects of early childhood trauma. Over the next 4 1/2 years (and longer) we would have a front row seat to the pain of sin like nothing we had experienced before... but those first days and weeks- we were just trying to meet needs and survive and function.

There was little to no sleep, unending messes and noise, food issues, hurt, a little boy who at 2 did not know how to play, phone calls, meetings, professionals traipsing through our house whenever it was convenient for them, illness after illness after illness after illness, doctor's appointments after doctor's appointments after doctor's appointments, more phone calls, more meetings, more noise, more messes, more chaos, less sleep, less sleep, less sleep, more food issues, tantrums, meltdowns,....you get the idea....

But also a chance to show love and care and fun to kids who had literally NEVER had those things in their life. We were drowning physically and emotionally in the shock of fostering...but we were also falling in love with those babies. 

It has been 6 years. We had 28 other children come through our home in our fostering years. Nothing in our lives is the same as it was back then. Nothing will ever go back to our previous "normal." We are changed as a family forever....Opening your family to fostering and trauma and pain like that can't help but change you....but not all in bad ways.

We have been SO, SO, SO beyond blessed. Because out of those 30 children who we fostered...only 3 of them are still in our lives (with updates and pics of one other child). And our first 2 babies are now the most amazing big kids in the universe. They are happy and well adjusted and thriving with an absolutely perfect adoptive family. Yes, the effects of their rough beginning are still there- but they are triumphing over them...and we get to be witnesses to that...because their adoptive parents have allowed us to keep loving "our" babies all these years.

So- this weekend we attended a birthday party to celebrate that precious broken little boy, who at 2 could not sleep, could not play, could not sit still, and had to be surrounded by mess and noise every second...He is now an 8 year old!!!! (yes, I have trouble believeing that! He is SO grown up now!) But is the sweetest, most kind child ever!

Beauty out of ashes...blessings out of pain....it was ALL worth it.

With "my" foster babies back in 2017

And in 2020- not babies anymore...not in foster care anymore...but still, in my heart, a little bit "mine":)