Our kindness advent led us to the library yesterday. The kids made bookmarks and then left them in books on the library shelves in the kids area. We added this activity last year and the kids were quick to add this one again this year when they were narrowing down our kindness for this December. In the past I’ve been ahead of the game a bit…getting them to prepare the day before, but this year we’re kind of doing most everything the same day. This has actually made things better in my opinion…somewhat slower and easier. So yesterday after school they crafted all their bookmarks…paper, stickers, markers, pompoms, hole punch and ribbons…and then we headed to the library after dinner. The pompoms were in heavy rotation and there was one hot glue gun casualty, but we all survived.
Today we are taking cookies to the fire and police department down our street. This is when all those boxes of Otis Spunkmeyer cookies we purchased to support our school come in handy.
And tomorrow we are taking a special treat to a Salvation Army bell ringer.
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It’s been almost 3 weeks since we took our foster daughter home. Over the past weeks our family has done a lot of talking about our role as a foster family. I’ve done a lot of thought processing and thinking about all those big feelings. Lots of friends and family have asked how we’re doing and the truth is we’re doing good. We’ve gotten to see her and her parents several times. Babysitting and snuggles in church. There’s even a sleepover planned for this week which we’re all super excited about.
When I received the official word she would be going home I immediately broke down into tears and proceeded to cry on and off the entire day. This completely surprised me because I felt like we had gone to great lengths to continually remind ourselves and our kiddos of what the goal at hand was and that was reunification. I had lots of feelings that popped up like “Well now what about us? What are we to do now?” I kind of felt like someone owed us a shoulder to cry on or something. I was thinking about myself and how I felt instead of them and how they felt. I realized how selfish I was being…real honest feelings for sure, but selfish ones. From the beginning…before she was even placed in our home…our entire family had been praying for reunification. I cannot even count the number of prayers I heard come from our children’s mouths asking God to allow her to go home. And in my moments of “what about me” I was missing the miracle.
Over the 10 months we formed a relationship and deep love for her parents and we all so wanted them to succeed…to flourish…to make it. We were their #1 cheerleaders because everyone deserves to have someone cheering them on and telling them they can absolutely do it! I told our kids what an honor and privilege we have getting to see God answer a prayer in the manner in which we had been petitioning Him for over a year. We were seeing Him bring about restoration and redemption in only a way He could and we got front row seats.
We moved from feelings of “what about us and our feelings” to a manner of “wow, look what God has done.” And it was quite amazing to move between those two big emotions. We miss her for sure and we still pray for her and her family everyday. We still talk about her daily. We didn’t want it to be a “goodbye, so long and good luck” moment, but a “you can do this, we’re not going anywhere and we’re here for you” moment.
When we all loaded up in the car…all 7 of us…to take her home that night, Josh Kelley and I had already prepped everyone for a quick drop off. A non-intrusive drop off. I tend to be the person who would want to go in and unpack all her things and have “my moment” with her, but Josh had reminded me we needed to respect their space and their moment with her. They had worked so hard and she was theirs. And he was right.
Being a foster parent has taught me a great deal of putting myself in the other person’s shoes…it’s constantly on the brain when you are caring for someone else’s child and you know they are missing the moments you are having with their kiddo. I know we have so much to learn still, but we’ve definitely learned how important it is to be respectful of the other party involved. They are real people with real hurts and struggles and hurdles to overcome just like us. They are no different than us at all and we are all in this together.
So now we wait. We are back on the list and already praying for the next sweet kid and their family who we’ll get the privilege of meeting and loving on like crazy.
Happy Wednesday.
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