foster care, week 1

Grant and I are foster parents. Yeah. We're crazy! Nothing like adding busy-ness to an already busy life. We became licensed this fall after completing the training classes (about 30 hours of class) last spring/early summer. Another couple from church, also our neighbors, became licensed a year ago, and this past spring a larger group of families from our church got licensed as well. A particular bonus of this group licensing effort is that 5 of the families live within about 1 mile, and we all go to the same church.

{recommendation #1: become licensed with people you know so you can support each other through the process.}

So fast-forward to now. A couple weeks ago, Grant and I got a call for a 6 year old boy. It sounded good, and we got advanced notice (not always the case), so we thought about it and said yes. We met him and picked him up a couple days later. He's now been with us for a week and a half. We'll call him "Buzz". We'd turned down a few calls prior to this - two babies, two toddlers, etc... they all sounded like a lot of work and just weren't the right timing. Grant and I had decided we needed at least one foster child who could take care of their own basic needs (walk, potty-trained, etc).

Week 1:  Well it was way different and way harder than I ever expected! How do you prepare for such a thing? I was scared, nervous, sad, excited, and just generally anxious. Whew. Not what I expected. I am happy that I had emotions about it, though, because to me, that means I'm invested. I work with kids who have been in foster care in KS, so I know that the quality of a foster family is important and very influential. The emotions were exhausting, though. How does a 6 year old kid understand what's happening? He doesn't, and yet he probably understands more than I want to know.

It's not easy. It's professional parenting, likely with no "thank you" ever. It's blind - you don't know what's going to work. It is so important. Up there right with marriage and having children. I wanted to quit after the first week. I was sleep deprived and self-time deprived. (Sounds familiar to when Vera was a newborn...) Yet, someone has to do it. If Buzz wasn't with us, he'd have to be with someone else. At this point, I'd rather have him with me. With us. With our family. For now, he's part of the family. I'm already sentimental about him. He was meant to be with us. There's a reason he's here. I'm not just here for him -- he's here for me. God's going to teach me a lot through Buzz. And with that, I'm already thankful for him.

A big question I asked our neighbors/church friends who've been licensed for a year and a half now, was "why do I choose to make my life more complicated?". Which is something that I honestly think about in my anxiety... "how am I going to get through ALL this?"... Yet I realize that God brought me to this point for a reason, and that Grant and I are more than capable of doing this. We can do this. With God, with each other, with family and friends supporting us. {recommendation #2:  We can't do it alone.} But someone's got to do it, so why not us. I'm happy to love Buzz. And learn from him.

Now if anyone has suggestions about teaching a kid to read, send them my way :)