It has been a while since I have updated with a foster care post.  This month has been a little rough.

Our first placement was a successful reunification on December 5th. As all things, this was bitter sweet. We were thrilled for Mom, she has worked so hard and was so happy to be picking up her little girl.  We were happy for S, she deserves to not be shuttled back and forth any more.  She was only with us 23 hours every week, so the transition has been easy on us. But little things still make me miss her, the spare paci I found in the car, the extra place at the table, the tree (oh how she would love to destroy the tree). But for the most part we are just happy that we could help her while we could.

Our other little lady has hit the two month screaming spells. Though I had read this could happen, again my naivety had me thinking we would miss this, especially when we were still dealing with the no sleep/hard time pooping/stiff muscles. For whatever reason, I thought we could keep our baby from crying. But its real people, so very real.

I am writing this from a hard spot.  This Christmas vacation has seemed like anything but a vacation, and I am not gonna lie, I a feeling a bit worn down. There have been moments when we look at each other and wonder if we can go one more day. A beautiful text from one who has traveled this journey before me came at just the right moment today "Hold on to the call you both heard. Sometimes that's all you have." It sent me back, back to Tim's office where we were discussing this challenge. I remember the prayer, the resolve, the "call". And I remember the knowledge that we couldn't do it alone.

I think that is the thing, too often I am trying to do it alone. Today a beautiful soul offered to bring us a meal- do you know what a life line that can be on a really tough day? And my answer, my first answer, was "nah, we are okay". I could almost feel God shaking His head at me as I pushed send on the text, and He gave me a second chance. This friend wouldn't give up, and brought us that meal, forgiving my crazy. Somedays it just feels like we are calling in all the favors and never passing them out. I hate being on this side of things.  I would much rather be the extra laundry folder, meal bringer, babysitter. But God isn't asking us for that right now.  He is asking us for vulnerability, and letting those friends bless us with their gifts.

So thank you once again friends. Thank you for walking with us. Folding our laundry, taking our kids for playdates, bringing the meals, and just telling us you are thinking of us and praying for us.  We couldn't do this without you all,

ASH

There are days when Tim and I look at each other and we wonder where the rewind button went. If I could go back to this part of the day, I could save it. Or if this one thing went differently the day would have gone so much better. Today was one of those days.  It started out so great! We played games, read books, seemed to grow enough arms to pacify four children all at the same time. And then . . . I dropped the lemon bread. Yeap, all of the delicious gooey goodness that was going to become tried and true Hawkins Family Christmas treat, got dumped all over the inside of the oven. It was as if I as a parent couldn't rebound from that. From there it was crabbiness and messes.

But yet, tonight, in the silence, the melancholy sets in and I can't help but think of our true number three. It was six years ago, almost this exact time when the contractions I was praying weren't there started rolling and just wouldn't stop. Through that long and seemingly endless night we said good bye to the baby we were so hoping to meet several months from then. Christmas eve has never had quite the same joy as before.

Tonight I take a moment to side step from foster care and just grieve. Maybe this year is harder because we also said good bye to SS this month. Or maybe it is because we just had great fellowship with friends whose son would have been in her kindergarden class this year. Or maybe it is always like this and I forget from year to year. But this year, for whatever reason, I find myself sitting here thinking of her. What would she have been like? What gift would we building to put under the tree? Would she be reading every book she found, or slowly sounding out letters? Was she my one organized one who would have wanted to help line shoes up by the door? Or the one who couldn't see the mess she left behind as she built another beautiful masterpiece. I have said more than once, I am glad that God left a missing stair step in our family line. I like to look at the landscape of our family and still invision one more, right in between a brother and a sister. But tonight, that missing stairstep just seems to be missing.

We signed up for this

I can remember times with our biological kids, that Tim and I would look at each other and say, "and we decided to do this?", mostly joking with a hint of truth. And I would always come back to my verse "He settles the barren woman in her home, the happy mother of children", scolding myself for even half a second not being grateful for my gifts.
Having kids wasn't easy for us, with a wait of 4 years for the first, and three for the third, and loss in between. I always said that would give us perspective, but sometimes, in the dead of night, perspective slips and you wonder why you prayed, begged, hoped so long for this insanity. But then, he/she/they look up at you and God taps your heart and you remember, you were made for this, they were made for you, and it is all okay.
This morning I had an ugly moment.  Let me tell you all, it wasn't pretty.  I had gotten a literal 2 hours of sleep, that were tinged with guilt because they came at the loss of my husband's sleep, and he had to go act human at work. As he was walking out the door, Tim says over his shoulder, "Its okay babe, it's what WE signed up for." There it was, hanging out there, just like with the bios, we had made a decision, one you don't back out of, even when it gets ugly, even when it gets hard. Its what we signed up for, together as a team. The tears fell a little, but the day started looking up.
It is true, we signed up for this. At some point in our journey we specifically said, "what a gift it would be to help someone trying to get clean when we know what it is like to have a screaming baby". At that time though we just didn't realize what we were truly signing up for.
We got the call, the "can you go to Wichita and pick up a baby girl? You will have to take classes to take her home. She was born addicted . . ." And we said yes. We had done our research, we knew people who had similar stories, we thought we had a clue.  But there is a difference I tell you between reading words on a page and experiencing them.
Symptoms may include: Tremors (trembling), Irritability (excessive crying), sleep problems, high-pitched crying, tight muscle tone, hyperactive reflexes, seizures, yawning, stuffy nose and sneezing, poor feeding and suck, bowel issues . . .
Words on a page cannot prepare you for the child that needs swaddled constantly even at 5 weeks, who has trouble pooping on her own or is up literally all night long.  It just can't. So there are going to be moments when this "we signed up for this" stuff feels a little unfair. But, then, she smiles, she calms, she snuggles close and God taps your heart and you remember, at this moment in time, you were made for this, she was made for you.

"Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly- not for what you get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God." 1 Peter 5:2

Breath In and Breath Out

Balance. This is not something I am good at.  When my 3 year old is waking 3-4 times a night, because she is needing reassured that she hasn't been replaced. When my 7 year old is crawling under the bed continually and saying he doesn't know why he is here.  When my 9 year old gets all sassy because he thinks he can. When I want to snap and yell and unleash the crazy sleep deprived mom on them (have we mentioned little pudding doesn't sleep, like at all?).  He whispers "balance" "grace" "mercy" "change". And I have to breath. Breath in and breath out, "mercy" "grace" "mercy" "grace". He is good, I am not. Thankful that He lets us borrow from him.  "come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest".

Rest came last night for us in the form of babysitting.  Two girls who are very busy themselves simply said, "we have a night free, can we come hang out with your kids." And they went above and beyond.  All three of the oldest woke up talking about how awesome their babysitters were, and talking over each other trying to be the first to tell us about the "chopped championship" that had happened in our kitchen.

The thing I have discovered most about fostering in the last year is that you have to be vulnerable.  You have to ask for help, call in the favors, be on the receiving end. This isn't an easy thing for me.  I would rather have all the kids at my house, take people the meals, offer the babysitting, fold someone else's laundry. These people around me didn't decide to foster, but without them, there is no way we could do it.  It just cannot be done alone.  So thank you friends and church family who have loved us so well.  Thanks for helping us find balance.





"Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly- not for what you get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God." 1 Peter 5:2

Two Families

Today was little puddin's first family visit, and while I feel like God started preparing my heart last week, I still wasn't ready.  Already her case is so different than our first, and yet so similar.  The first time around we were advised not to meet parents (we meet them both this week as well!). This time, I not only met the mom, but grandma, great grandma and grandpa, siblings, friends . . . All at the same time.  While I am a long way from the introverted shy girl I used to be, this was still a major stretch for me. Tim and I spent the day praying, asking for wisdom, and then feeling at peace with how things went.
For about 2 and a half weeks I had romanticized what we are doing.  I had imagined this wonderful scenerio where little puddin stayed forever, there were no visits, no case plans, no court dates, just cut and dried, black and white. About a week ago, God spoke to me, again in a dream.  I got a picture of Mom in my head (completely wrong but I knew who it was) and I realized, little puddin's story is anything but clear cut, black and white, already told. And I felt so sad for mom, but still had an idea in my head of the little one staying with us.
Wednesday of last week, my view had to change again. No only was there one person fighting to get little puddin' back, but a whole family. And Tim and I were faced with the harsh reality of what we had really and truly signed up for.  We had signed up to take the hard, so that someone else could have the easy. That is what we are doing this time around.  We help detox and get healthy and keep safe, until it all plays out and again, we say good bye. I know, if you are reading this, you might be saying, well that is foster care, and you would be right. But it is hard to tell that to my mama's heart, I have to lean in to Him and trust Him to carry us through when it gets hard.

"Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly- not for what you get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God." 1 Peter 5:2

Strength

This was my facebook post yesterday:
Three weeks ago almost this exact minute I got a call that changed my life. A call I didn't think I was strong enough to say yes to but a call my mama's heart couldn't say no to. I don't feel strong enough still. When people say "I couldn't do it" I want to cry because I can't either, not yet, not without God preparing my heart, just as He had to prepare our heart for the first yes and the second and all the yeses that got us to this. We aren't strong. We aren't amazing. We love this little being as much as if I had birthed her. So for now I pretend this is forever, because that is all I am strong enough for right now. 

Sometimes I think God has a funny sense of humor.  When you say, "I can pretend it is forever, and that is all I am strong enough for", He might say, "I am asking you to let go when it is time." And then you just want to curl up in a ball and cry. Or at least that was my reaction this morning when I heard a little more of "Little Puddin's" story from the social worker .  The thing with foster care is that NOTHING is set in stone, at least foster care in Kansas. Now we wait, but for how long we don't know.  Things could change next week, or 6 months from now, or it could all fall apart and she could still be with us long term. So my default has to adjust back to, "we will love her as long as she gets to stay and carry her with us the rest of our lives". But, it's not easy, and today, without Him, I am definitely not strong enough.



"Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly- not for what you get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God." 1 Peter 5:2

Chasing a Dream

All blogs have to start somewhere, and I supposed mine should start with a little back story. 

Job 33:14-15 "He [God] speaks in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds. He whispers in their ears..." From an early age, I had dreams: crazy dreams, memorable dreams, dreams that I can recall in detail today. That is just how my brain works. I would take a story I had heard during the day, and it would become so vividly clear in the night that it was as if I was living the story. I remember getting chased by Grover monster and falling over our banister and never landing, I remember being in the long line waiting death in the Holocaust, I remember being chased in crazy sequences through streets in Europe after watching some action movie. These dreams though were just dreams, just my brain seeing a picture and reliving it- there wasn't a message there (or maybe there was and I missed it). But there are other dreams, dreams that God speaks into my heart and my head, and for whatever reason, will not be shaken. My husband once asked me, what differentiates these dreams from the normal ones, but the truth is that I do not know. Before I completely lose you (I realize this has nothing to do with foster care, yet) hang in there, remember, this is just the back story. It doesn't happen often, maybe 5 or 6 times, but when it does it changes things.  It might be asking me to pray for a sister that didn't tell me how bad things had gotten, but He chose to show me how bad it could get. It might be offering a warning I was too afraid to share with a friend because, who tells a friend that. Or it might be a long line of negative pregnancy tests, followed by one single positive, with a name, whispered in my ear. Some are clear cut, and have quick confirmation that yes, God was speaking, like when a phone call confirmed that things were not just bad but horribly wrong, or like when a tragic dream played out in reality a few weeks later ending with a small grave. Others are harder to interpret, like a reoccuring dream I had about a crumbling house. That one took a few weeks for God to show me the meaning (in this case to protect the amazing gift of marriage/family that He had given to Tim and I, in the midst of a really busy time). And some take so long to fulfill that you begin to wonder if He was speaking at all, or if it was merely a nice dream- as when it took two full years after I heard the name "Alexandria Grace" whispered in my ear to even know another baby was coming. This blog is about a dream like that. A dream that helped catapult Tim and I towards foster care. I was originally going to call this blog Chasing Daniel- as Daniel was the name I heard this time around, but now, with a sweet little puddin in our home I realize that maybe Daniel was just one face to show me the need of many. I believe in dreams, sometimes they are the things that keep me going.

"Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly- not for what you will get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God." 1 Peter 5:2

A New Beginning

So, apparently I started a blog in 2010 and never worked to develop it. I am stealing that blog, changing the title and using this page to make me sane again!
My reasons for starting this blog are simple:

1. Keeping my Mama up to date on the comings and goings of the Kansas kids
2. A place to write down and express the joys, frustrations and sorrows of being a foster parent.
3. Keeping all that emotion off of my friends Facebook feeds, because lets me honest, I have written a lot of long posts lately :)

Signing off for now