Our first foster care placement arrived on our doorstep Friday morning at 10am in the shape of 3 siblings ages 2, 4 and 6. Two separate caseworkers arrived with all of their belongings in duffle bags and a notebook for my reference. They dropped the kids off, inspected their rooms and were gone....and so it begins.
Someone commented on my facebook status yesterday that I was "superwoman." In case there's anyone else with that perception who might read this blog, I just wanted to take a moment to rid you of that illusion. In an effort to "keep it real", I am gonna tell you....THIS.IS.HARD. Harder than we thought it would ever be.
At 9:30pm last night, I was just pulling into the driveway with the 6 year old in tow after spending the late evening registering him for after school care and lugging him with me to Target to buy school supplies, carseats x 3, and miscellaneous other things we didn't know we'd need. Tim had gotten the other 3 (including our biological daughter) ready for bed and tucked in.
As we both collapsed into each other on the sofa downstairs, the enormity of what we have begun set in. Tim was in tears (sorry babe, keepin' it real here, remember?) and I was doing my best to hold it together.
Tim asked me how I was feeling and I replied with "You know that feeling you got in the pit of your stomach before you walked down the aisle at our wedding....or the one you got when my water broke and you knew we were coming home with a baby and there was no turning back? That's it."
I'm not gonna lie, we've already had the "we don't know if we can do this" discussion with the caseworker this morning and we've called on Jesus so many times, He's probably had enough of us already.
This is a calling though...to love someone else's children, to answer when they call us Mom and Dad, to say "yes" when they ask "do you love my brother?", to cuddle them when they crawl up in our lap, to protect them, to nurture them, to kiss them and hug them, to provide the necessities and to prepare them to be better at life than their parents have been.....even if it's only for a week, a month or a year. We'll do our best.
Some people have asked how Makenzie's doing. She's having fun playing with them, she's tattling on them and being tattled on just the same, she's sharing toys, she's calling them brother and sister and she's said they can stay. We're giving her extra attention too so she knows she's special.
