Before

I wrote this back in November 2018. So this is not new.

I just got a shutterfly memory from 10 years ago. Micaila was an adorable chubby two year old and Ryann was a bald smiley six month old. We were still living in Florida and I know life was FAR from perfect but today I long for times past.

Before foster care and trauma and Reactive Attachment Disorder. Yes, life was imperfect but blissfully ignorant.

Today I am struggling with feeling defeated. This morning we sat in a family team meeting and shared our hearts and concerns about moving forward with adoption. And although nothing is happening today or tomorrow, DFCS believes they need to begin looking for another adoptive family. My heart feels crushed and ripped apart and anything else you could use to explain the deep deep pain of recognizing you aren’t “it” for these children. But that doesn’t remove the fact that I have a very real and deep love and concern for them. I love them so much and hate acknowledging that maybe we aren’t what’s best in the long run. I can’t simply “love more or “pray harder”. Trauma doesn’t work like that and if you’ve ever lived with it you likely agree.

So how do I move forward? How do I finish this day and begin again with out being crushed in worry, hopelessness and defeat?

I wonder. Can we as foster parents give ourselves room to fall down and get back up? Can we allow ourselves to be okay with getting hurt in the process, maybe even from our own inexperience with trauma care? I have learned SO MUCH in the last 8 months. I have learned more in my home than I EVER have in my “training” about early childhood trauma, brain development, and attachment issues because I have lived with it day in and day out. Right now our family doesn’t have the tools and capacity to give these boys everything they need, and they need a lot. But I’d like to believe all this time and learning won’t be wasted. I choose to believe that we can get back up from this.

Henry Ford puts it, “Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again. This time more intelligently.”

Satan is always trying to whisper words of failure in my ears. Everyone keeps saying “You haven’t failed the boys.” I want to believe them.

Yes, It would be nice to go back to before. Before I was so well acquainted with CPS, foster care, neglected and abused children. Before interrupted adoption plans, RAD, and heartbreak. Before miscarriages and all this loss that is so prevalent in life. Back to when I didn’t really know in any capacity what it looked like to live out Paul’s declaration, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered……that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings,” Philippians‬ ‭3:8-10‬ ‭ESV‬‬

I pray to my good Father, not only for me right now, but one day these boys and my children will hold firmly to His Word.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Romans‬ ‭8:18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

And I pray we will get back up again. I pray we won’t close our eyes and try to go back to “before”. I believe God can and will use this. And I pray that if you are a foster parent walking through a change in your adoption plans or a “disrupted placement” that you would get back up again, too. This is not failing.