When God gives and Takes Away....and Then Gives Again (part 1 of a 2 part series)
Imagine losing someone you love. The finality of death. The longing. The missing. The grief. Now imagine one day years down the road you answer your phone and it’s the hospital stating that there has been a mix-up. Your loved one is alive! The staff asks if you can come get him, but also informs you that the amount of time you will have with him is unknown. What would you do? Would you drop the phone and run to the hospital as fast as you could. Would the fear of losing your loved one again keep you from being with them and caring for them for whatever amount of time you may get with them? This is my story…only the foster care version.
I remember that day like it was yesterday. The day I became a mom. Not in the traditional way you may think. My road to motherhood was not marked by pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, baby showers, or labor. Rather it was filled with paper work, classes on how to care for kids who have been abused or neglected, fingerprints, and intrusive examinations of our home. Similar to a pregnancy though, for about 9 months we prepared for the moment we would welcome a little one into our lives. But nothing could have prepared us for the road God was leading us down as foster parents.
We got the call one afternoon that there was a little boy who needed a short term placement while his mother got situated into a rehab facility. Approximately a week they said. This sounded like a great intro into foster care. So we said yes. As we sat at our dining room table that night, eating our pizza bagels (yes I’m a gourmet chef), we awaited his arrival. Soon a knock on the door sounded. We looked at each other with deer-in-the-headlight looks and answered the door. Standing there was the chubbiest, cutest curly headed boy I’ve ever laid eyes on. His emergency placement foster mom walked in holding him and bluntly (but with a twinkle in her eye) stated, “sit down and finish your dinner together while I say goodbye to him…it’s the last meal you will ever get to sit down and finish together.” We quietly obeyed and in a few minutes she was gone. And just like that we became Mom and Dad.
What was supposed to be a week, turned into much longer and for the next year, we reveled in being parents to our little guy (and our newborn daughter who was placed with us shortly after he was). So many milestones we celebrated with him. First birthday, first steps, first broken bone. We made sure every day was filled with laughter, every owie smothered in kisses, every bedtime covered in prayer. We drove him back and forth to every visit with his birth mom. We quickly got to know her, and soon learned to care for her too. We supported her recovery, encouraged their connection, and went to every court date. At times the goal for his case was reunification, at other times it was adoption. Back and forth it went for that roller coaster of a year. We advocated for him, and through every passing day our love for him grew and grew.
“How do you just hand over a child you have raised as your own for the last year. How do you walk by his empty room as the memories of his laughter, his tears fill your mind? But this was what we signed up for right?”
As the end of that year approached, we received notice that our foster son was going to be reunited with his birth mom. While we were happy for his birth mom, the feeling of impending loss weighed heavily on our hearts. How do you just hand over a child you have raised as your own for the last year. How do you walk by his empty room as the memories of his laughter, his tears fill your mind? But this was what we signed up for right?
When his birth mom arrived at our home to pick him up, we asked for just one last moment with him. My husband and I took him into his bedroom, the same room we had tucked him into bed every night in, and held him and prayed over him. We begged Jesus to draw his heart to him as he grew older and for protection for him. After we said our final goodbyes, we walked out to the living room where we found his birth mom softly crying. We all understood that our great loss, was her great gain. It was so bittersweet. We were so happy for them, and yet so utterly crushed by the loss. I handed over her son, my son, our son and told her how proud I was of her. They walked out to their car and just like that, they were gone.
Although we agreed to keep in contact (and we did for a bit), we began noticing some concerning things when we would visit with them and eventually as mandated reporters, we had to do just that. Unfortunately after this his mom pulled away and shut us out of their lives. Heartbreak doesn’t do justice to the pain I felt from the loss of our foster son. No training class, no advice from friends, could ever prepare you for the emptiness, the grief that accompanies the departure of a foster child from your life. The only way I could describe it was, that I was grieving the “death” of my child. The emptiness, the finality, the loss. The grief would hit me at unexpected times. Like during worship at church as I sang along to “you give and take away, you give and take away, my heart will choose to say Lord blessed be your name” tears would poor down my cheeks. God did give, and he did take away. I had to choose to say, Lord blessed be your name.
Despite the fact that we welcomed many more children in our home over the next couple of years, and were even blessed to adopt our two amazing daughters, a piece of my heart was always missing. That is why that unexpected phone call 3 years later, knocked the wind out of me, and overwhelmed me with feelings I never expected…