Permission to speak freely...

I started this blog to share our fostering journey. I quickly realized after the journey actually started that I really didn't want to share much about it.  I had no desire to share how I felt I was tragically failing at this thing I felt so called to do.

Greg and I spent months going through training and preparations for this change in our lives and the entire time told ourselves 'this is going to be very hard.'  We said it over and over to each other and to ourselves. Yet somehow, once the journey began and it turned out to in fact be very hard, I was frustrated.  I cried a lot.  I was overwhelmed and scared and desperately wanted to turn around, say 'never mind', and get my life back.

I felt so guilty and disappointed in myself.  I was so confident in the decision we had made, we were doing exactly what we felt we were being called to do and I had complete peace about it until the moment we started actually doing it.  I was angry that I wasn't able to fall desperately in love with this child immediately and wake up every morning ready to do God's work!  I had no idea how to be a mom to a 9 year old boy!  I am just now feeling confident being a mom to a one year old girl.  To say I was outside of my comfort zone was an understatement.  My comfort zone was nowhere to be found.  About a week after 'R' came to live with us Greg reminded me of a very important season in our lives.  

The weeks after Charlotte was born were a giant tornado of emotion at the Evans house.  We were thrilled one minute and terrified the next.  We were amazed by this precious baby God blessed us with and then wishing her away so we could just go back to the way things were before.  I also spent quite a bit of time being angry at the giant expectations the world places on new mothers.  I was expecting my life to become one big Johnson & Johnson commercial and that just didn't happen.

Once we got our heads above water with Charlotte I remember thinking how important it was to be honest about the new baby experience.  Honest with myself, others and someday Charlotte.  She's going to need a mom just like I had who will tell her it's okay to feel every horrible thing she's feeling.  Maybe if we were all a little more honest with each other the initial culture shock wouldn't be quite so shocking.  So, I've decided the same has to be true with the situation we are in now.  It has been hard.  It has required a LOT of patience.  There have been some total 'fake it til you make it' days.  But, that's okay.  That's life.

I was so blessed to have certain people in my life during those first few months with Charlotte.   People like my mom and sisters to let me know that what I was feeling was completely normal, and I had to let go of the guilt.  I had no time for it.  My child needed me, as much of me as I could possibly give her.  And wasting my time and energy with guilt was just that, a waste.  Having Greg remind me of this transitional time was helpful, and after a few days I even allowed it to be encouraging.  I look at Charlotte today and am seriously so in love with that kid I can't handle it.  I may never get there with R but that isn't what it's about.  This process isn't about me.   

Being a foster parent is hard and frustrating work.  I knew this. But I find new encouragement every day.  When I'm reading to R from the Bible before bed and he thinks every new story he hears is 'so cool'.  When he comes home with the first 100% he's ever gotten on a test at school.  These moments do make it worth it and provide the help I need to quit throwing myself the world's largest pity party. 

Greg and I have had hope from the beginning of this process that we could maybe inspire other people to become foster parents too, if they felt called.  I know this post certainly isn't going to accomplish that goal.  However, I see a little more hope in this situation every day.  I know that this sweet boy is in our house for a divine purpose and my only job is to continue on.  Give him every thing I have to give every day, and rest in the comfort of knowing that is enough.

Picture this...

Our reasons for wanting to become a foster family are really not that complex.  This isn't a decision we made lightly but honestly, it isn't one that required too much thought.  I vividly remember being in church during worship early last year and seeing the words to the song Hosanna up on the screen. I seriously love that song for so many reasons. But the words that struck me the most that day were these:

Heal my heart and make it clean

Open up my eyes to the things unseen

Show me how to love like You have loved me

Break my heart for what breaks Yours

Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause

As I walk from earth into eternity

I decided that day to make that my prayer for myself and my family.  I was pregnant with Charlotte at the time and my mind was so focused on what kind of mother I wanted to be and what I wanted the family we raised our kids in to look like.  And that was it.  I wanted to love like Christ loves me, and to have my heart broken for what breaks his.  I wanted everything we had, everything we did to be fully devoted to God's kingdom.  This is a crazy scary world we live in and to me that seems like the only way to survive.  To be constantly focused on the eternal life ahead of us and hope that my kids see that and adopt our tunnel vision as their own.

I quickly learned that the prayer for a broken heart really works.  The heartbreak I had always carried for OKDHS was amplified and made very personal.  Greg and I were bombarded with information about the foster system in our state.  We had many discussions about it and both agreed on what we wanted our future family to look like.  A beautiful picture of kids with different stories and histories that can all come together under our roof.  And that picture makes us both so unbelievably excited, hopeful and, well enter the superlative of your choice here.  

I mentioned earlier that this decision didn't honestly take a ton of thought.  Prayer, discussion and research: yes.  Thought: no.  Let me hit you with a little statistic, at the beginning of last year there were 8,046 children in OKDHS custody.  8,046.  That is a ridiculously big number.  Too stinking big.  These are children who through no fault of their own have had to be removed from what they knew as their home.  I heard through a friend earlier this year that the shelter where too many of these kids are living had to bring in a load of extra cots so these children had a place to sleep at night.  

After learning all that we did about this system that is in such desperate need for help the decision was really pretty simple.  These facts were just too hard for us to swallow.  They make my heart hurt.  Which was my prayer all along, so I guess we're doing something right.

James 1 says "Religion that God accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…" 

the blogosphere...

So I've been a reader, fan and stalker of many blogs over the years but never felt I had anything special enough to fill one.  I still might not, but I guess we'll see.  Greg and I have had an amazing year and are just finishing up the process to become foster parents.  I decided I would love to have an outlet to record all the thoughts and feelings I've had during this process, and an easy way to keep loved ones updated. It will also be neat to have a sort of scrapbook for us to look back on.

My feelings of excitement and anxiety over the fostering adventure are pretty much neck and neck right now.  I can’t wait to have another sweet kid in our house to love on and hopefully provide some much needed stability, but my days are also peppered with feelings of fear and not being able to handle it.  

I’m only 25 and my parenting experience is limited to 9 pretty seamless months with Charlotte.  Well if we're being honest it was 6 terrifying, exhausting weeks and then 7 months of feeling like we maybe have a handle on things.  But we’re really so blessed to have such a bright and beautiful little girl who’s made my job incredibly easy.  I have times of seriously doubting that I’m cut out for the challenge I know this next experience will bring.  But I've recently realized that if I truly believe we're being called to do this, then I have to live every day with true faith in that calling.  Faith that we'll be equipped with every tool necessary.  I'm insulting God with any thoughts contrary to that.  Thank goodness I'm recording this somewhere so I can come back for a reminder when the days get tough. 

I'm so thankful we have such sweet and supportive friends and family who I know are going to be an invaluable gift in the coming months.  Greg and I are huge believers in the "it takes a village" philosophy and I just seriously love our village.  It's a good one.  So stay tuned…I can't wait to see what kind of adventure is headed our way.