one year anniversary...sort of

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 One year ago today our extra Kredit got dropped off at our home.  One year ago today he stood on the driveway and cried with his bottom lip stuck out, his baseball cap turned backwards in baggy jeans and sneakers....a very scared and sad little boy who was being moved into the home of strangers.  I put my hands on my knees and leaned down to meet his gaze and said...."I know this is scary but I promise....I promise it will be ok."  I was naming it to tame it....I didn't believe a word of it either but it was the only thing that made sense to say.  

We settled into a weird normal in the midst of a pandemic and we went day by day.....and here we are, 365 days later....still trying to do a weird normal and take it day by day. Foster care is this really strange space where I try to parent another parent's child, while that child sees the actual parents regularly....and calls both sets "mom and dad".  We need to live with hope and promise for best scenario and also brace ourselves for worse case scenario and both of those scenarios can, by definition, mean the same or opposite things.  Reunify or terminate parents rights....I'm so glad it's not up to me to decide...and yet I live in the space between the decisions.  I prepare food, read bedtime books, tie shoe strings, answer questions, navigate discipline and agonize over the trauma and fear and unfairness of it all.  There is no happy ending here.  There is only new beginnings...and maybe a sense of knowing that over 365 days there was love and nurture and structure and routine and a few really awesome experiences.  

There has also been a lot of tears and cuss words and damage control and rupture and repair in relationships.....and folks.....it's not over yet.  Foster care is really, really hard.  It is work.  Hard work.  God's work.  The work of breaking in to a horrible situation and moving things and children around enough to find space to breathe and hopefully a path to healing....for kids and parents both.  I do not do this work because I think it is cool or fun or trendy or whatever......I am doing it from the moment I wake up until the moment I sleep and even in the in-beween of that....because God wants me to do it.  That's why I do it.  He knows I can.  He knows I'm not really very good at it.....I kind of suck actually....but I gave God a "yes" and so I am foster mom for now.  

One year ago I expected and prayed for and believed in a really happy ending to what we said "yes" to.....and that isn't happening so far....and it is a lot to hold.....but I will hold it anyway.  It is a quiet kind of anniversary that only I can uniquely recognize as mine...and his.  So in about 15 minutes I will declare it bedtime again, and offer a last snack, and brushing teeth if he's not too tired.  We will go to the bedroom and read a story and say a prayer and put on some worship music (just 2 songs now) and I will end day 366.....of foster care.  

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