After our last placement with a teenager that went wrong in every way possible, Sean and I decided foster care was not right for our family. Among many reasons, we discovered that our county lives up to its reputation of being the worst in the area when it comes to caring for the children. We saw the confusion, disruption and turmoil that it brought into our home, our marriage and onto our children. We decided to let our licensing run out and help the children in our community a different way, however we could.
We didn't complete a single required hour of training in 2 years and didn't sign a single paper reinstating our license, yet we received a continued license from the state for fostering and continued to get numerous calls for children after demanding we be removed from the calling list. The state is desperate for foster homes, and it's easy to see why.
August of 2016, the week school started, we received a call for 2 year old twins in the Noyes Home. The home was at capacity and could not keep them, and they were from out of state with no connections to Missouri. It was intended to be a very short-term placement as they contacted family in their home state. The bio mother is a user, among other things, and the father was not being considered as a safe or reasonable placement.
We took them. We opened our home, our hearts, our lives and our license to care for these children. We took two malnourished, terrified, sick babies and loved them. We stood in awe as our family and friends, our church and our co-workers poured into us and provided us with EVERYTHING we needed. Beds, car seats, clothes, shoes, food, prayers...EVERYTHING! We potty-trained one who was ready, created a stable and consistent routine, began seeing major speech progress in a non-speaking child, figured out allergies, habits, discipline and everything else that goes with having a child.
We did this as we weekly took them to visits where children were literally pried from my hands, kicking and screaming because they didn't want to spend one hour with their bio-parents. We attended monthly team meetings where we witnessed the bio-parents manipulate the system and attempt to use the children against each other. We prepared the twins for visits, only to have the bio parents cancel at the last minute because they were too high to attend. We watched as they showed up high in court, and get 3 more months to work on themselves while the children suffered. We sat around tables where family members begged they be adopted by us, but the team chose to give the parents more time. We watched our own children patiently work with them on behaviors, close their doors for time to breathe, form strong sibling bonds, help me dress, bathe, feed and buckle these kids just so I could have a moment to pull myself together and get out the door. We watched our kids shut down from the stress of constant behaviors and attention given to their demands. We held on tight to a marriage that was crumbling because of disagreements, different emotions/ideas and no time to focus on us. We worked with the daycare to come up with solutions and left work when the solutions failed because the twins were kicking teachers and biting play mates due to the stress of their environment.
We did everything we could.
And then we had to stop. We had to make the heartbreaking decision to hand these children off to a more capable family and better situation then what we could provide before too much damage was done.
I'm not sure I've cried so hard and so ugly ever before in my life. For weeks. There were ranges of emotions between hurt, hatred and defeat that will never be spoken of, because this world has enough of that already. The evil that comes into your home and life when you begin a journey like this is like nothing I've ever encountered, and I was simply not strong enough for it.
I made the excruciating call to their caseworker and begged that he not put them in the first available home, but find the best one that could be their forever home. If he couldn't do that, I vowed to retract my statements and keep them as long as necessary. I prayed hard for a family to fit these twins, to love them wholeheartedly, and to be strong enough to fight this system.
God answered those prayers immediately. After speaking with the new foster mom for 45 minutes, a friendship was created that is an absolute miracle. After meeting the family and bringing the twins to visit, I knew without a doubt that this family was God's match. As I cried in pain after handing them off this week, I took great comfort in feeling like I gave my children to my best friend to raise like I would. We talk daily, share tears, share strategies and pray for each other and these littles that we both love. God is good, even when the world is rampant with evil.
So we close the license for good, now. I don't know what is in store for our future, but I hope YOU know that we greatly appreciate all of the love and support we received and that we did not foster alone. You were with us every step of the way. I especially thank our children's teachers and our family as they stepped up this week to love on us as we go through the pain of losing 2 children. Pray for the new foster family and the twins. Pray for our system and the children involved.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
