Skip to main content

New Mom

Today has been an interesting day. The whole week, for that matter. Through a chain of events I never anticipated, I have added two more to my clan. Yes, six.

So it happened like this: I am at a friendly BBQ with my son and his friends and meet a fellow mom at the party who is a judge. She plants a seed: She says I should be a foster mom for "emergency babies"...you know, those babies who they are trying to place with a relative, but are waiting for clearance. SHORT TERM. Two days to two weeks. I think, "Yeah, right." Maybe in some distant future.

Did I mention i have a sister-in-law who works for CPS?? So my OTHER sister-in-law decides to have her baby at home, (YEAH!) and has a midwife who is both a foster mom and a midwife. WOW. I am in awe. During the birth i see that she is completely normal, (not crazy) and appears to be okay. I also learn of two local moms who have gone the foster parent route in order to adopt.

Three months later I decide to "inquire". You don't just "inquire" about fostering. If you have a heart, you start figuring out ways that YOU can do it. I really enjoyed the classes and before I knew it, i was taking CPR and first aid with my husband...and then it started. First, we thought we would take an older boy...like, three or four. The more serious I got, the more I realized how important it would be for me to bond with the child and the younger my preference got. Every step of the way, I thought, "this is optional. I can back out at ANY time..." However, I did feel a direction from GOD and an urgency I couldn't explain. In myself, I kept trying to back out. But i thought, "what is the harm in getting the liscense, I don't have to take any actual kids..." Yet, I still felt an urgency...and I was talking about getting two. A one year old and a newborn. HA HA. We were told siblings are difficult to place and most of the time they are very close in age. I also learned that it is good to keep your birth order of your birth children. Being that my youngest is 2 1/2 years, I thought, well, we w0uld have to take one or two Under two.

Around Christmas, i cried because I felt that i needed to pray for any pending foster children...especially if one is in Utero that we could end up with. I kept feeling a push, a shove, really, I couldn't explain, like God was telling me..."GET IT DONE" (My liscensing, that is)
Mid January, my kids break out in Chicken Pox, first one, then the other. Meanwhile,I prayed, "God, did i obey you??" By now, I am sure you have guessed it. Those children are now sleeping in my house tonight. We don't know if we will have them past Tuesday, or past their next hearing, or if relatives are going to pop out of the woodwork. They could. They might, but somehow I doubt it.

By the way, the first few hours I was full of adrenaline and scarred out of my freaking mind. Ask me tomorrow how I feel after a night with a five week old I cannot nurse. But somehow, throught the course of the day and with a TON of extra grace today, I got through it. And you think God is a figment of my imagination....

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

If You Love Your Children, Discipline Them, Please!

Is it just me or are parents getting more and more "permissive"? Parents afraid of their 3 and 4 year olds and SO EXHUASTED of parenting that they have already given up. I always imagine old episodes of Maury Povich when women would go on there, crying that their 10 year old beat them up. This blog is my two cents on discipline. After a being a mom for 1 year less than TWO DECADES, I think i am qualified. My two oldest are quite the little high achievers, both get great grades and in my biased opinion, are good citizens. In a mom group I attended a while back, they were all reading a book promoting the ridiculous idea that time-outs 'withhold love' and therefore are not healthy. The place was so filled with whiny, clingy, out-of-control children it made my skin crawl. My feeling is that time-outs are best executed like Super Nanny, where the child is first warned once, then put in time out with no explanation until the time-out is completed. (One minute per age of you...

DATING = INTERVIEW (Language Lesson #1- Follow UP)

I used to tell my hubby that since we are the only two in the relationship, we get to define what that means for us. Think: "In the World, but not Of the World." Anyway, the point is that WE define what certain words mean to us. If Dating means to most of the World that you sleep with everyone you go on a date with, then that potentially poses a problem for me. "The World", Status quo, or whomever may hold that view, but in my house, DATING = INTERVIEW. At sixteen, dating means you admit you have mutual interest or at least acknowledge that the person has interest in you and you are willing to give them a chance. It means, you go out to lunch with them and get to go on 'group dates'. It means, through your friendship, you have determined that he is 'date-able'. Since you are maintaining emotional distance, you are not texting non-stop and talking on the phone until the wee hours. Phone calls end at 9pm. It doesn't mean to 'kiss to find out if...

God's Heartbeat.....

 As I have entered into a world recently that many are unaware of, I have become convinced that I should speak up.      Foster children are the invisible children around us.   My message to you is that more families or couples in our churches need to nominate themselves to become foster parents.   Not because they have time.   Not because they are in the perfect place in their lives.   Not because they are waiting for God to ‘tell’ them.   I think we need more people to take radical, preemptive leaps of faith, for the sake of these children.   I think we need to stop more often take notice of the need and wonder what Jesus thinks of the children in foster care. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 9:13)    and  we are instructed to pray, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is Heaven,” I sometimes wonder if we have the a...