Our day

For anyone who has been reading With Great Joy for any length of time, you know that we are in the process of adopting through the foster care system. When I say "in the process" I mean that we have a completed home study, and a foster care license. We are now waiting for a placement of one or two children under the age of three.

Last month I updated you briefly about some changes within our agency. The short of it is that they have recently lost some case managers and are currently not making any new placements. We are not sure when that will change, but for the time being, we wait.

We have a room across the hall that is also waiting. We had to have a ready room in order to do our home study back in May, so it is filled with a crib, changing table, rocking chair, and space for a bed if we end up getting a sibling group. When we learned that our agency was not making any new placements, I began wondering if we shouldn't do something in the meantime. We have room in our hearts and home and there is such a need for foster parents. I asked Mark what he thought of doing short-term foster care while we wait. (I was pretty sure he'd say no.) Of course when I asked him, he said, "That's exactly what I've been thinking we should do." Oh.

We cleared it with our agency-- would that be okay, if we do some short-term foster or respite care in the meantime, while they are experiencing this slowdown?-- and our contact there said that was fine. So we made the necessary phone calls and got our names on the list. The state told us at the time that they are "desperate" for such families and were so thankful we were willing. That was a month ago. They made it sound like our phone would be ringing off the hook, but we haven't had any calls.

This morning that changed.

A placement coordinator from the state (not our agency) called to ask us if we'd be willing to take in a 14-month old baby girl. They knew very little about her, really, except that her mother was a drug addict and had been in and out of treatment. She was asked to leave her current treatment center, apparently because she wasn't abiding by the no-drugs policy. The facility she had been at was one in which she had her baby with her. Now that she'd been kicked out, the state had decided to remove this little girl from her mother. They wanted to know... could we take her on Monday? She mentioned that this was a girl who would not likely be returned to her mother so we would have her awhile. (Think: months.) When I asked about the little girl, she gave me her name and said she was Caucasian, but that was all the information she had.

I wondered immediately why on earth I didn't have a manual to consult for this type of thing. I felt so unprepared for this. What questions should I even be asking right now? I came up with a few, told her I needed to speak with Mark about it, and asked her if I could call her back within the next hour or so.

And then I prayed. And as I prayed, I kept thinking:How could we NOT take this little girl in? We have a stable, secure, loving home to offer her and that's exactly what she needs. We can take good care of this girl and pray over her little self while she's in our home.

I called my mom and asked her to pray.

I made a phone call to a friend of mine in town who has fostered several children and asked her for her thoughts. I told her the situation and she said before I'd barely uttered a sentence, "Take her. If you don't, we will."

Mark came home for lunch and I told him about it. He wanted to call our agency to run it by them to be sure they were okay with us accepting this placement. We did, our agency placement coordinator said to go for it.

We talked with the kids about it over lunch. We told them there was a little baby girl whose mama was very sick and we were asked to watch her while her mama gets well or until another family could adopt her. Ella shouted "YES!" with utter joy, Isaac wanted to know if the baby would be here "all day", Isaias told us he wasn't going to be shy. (?) "Okay...", Mark said, "but are you going to be gentle and loving?" He assured us that he would be.

We called the state back and said we were willing to take her. We were told we would hear from the social worker sometime on Monday and that arrangements would be made for her to come to us sometime that day.

Ella promptly got up from the table to go "clean up the baby's room". It has become a playroom of sorts, so she busied herself cleaning up the extra toys, changing the sheets on the crib, laying out pink blankets everywhere, and making things all cozy for the new baby. (Note: this was all her own doing. I didn't ask her to do a thing. This is just my Ella. She was absolutely beside herself with happiness. And of course, needed to be doing something.) She came in a little while later to ask how to spell the baby's name. I wasn't sure, but guessed, and she carefully copied it down.

After a couple of hours, she had that room looking well-prepared for the new baby. She'd carried in every baby toy we own, and removed anything that wasn't baby. This little sign was carefully taped over the crib:


And how dear is that? "Soon you will go home but I love you so much."

While Ella did her thing, I spent time on the phone with Amy, hearing about their lives since I spoke with her on Tuesday: all of them got the stomach flu (poor sweet tired mama who ended up getting it herself!), and talking about this new turn of events in our lives.

The phone rang again a little before 3:00. It was the woman who'd called us initially about the baby girl. She said, "Guess what? We won't need you to take her after all."

I was sort of stunned. WHAT?

I managed to ask what had happened and she told me that they're doing this new thing now where they have one final "family meeting" and during that final meeting they decided to let the mom keep her baby. Apparently she'll go to a different treatment center and they (I'm not sure who "they" is. The social worker? The court?) decided to let her take the baby with her. So. End of conversation.

I walked, heartsick, to the living room and called Ella over, breathing a prayer for help as she came towards me. And then I told her, gently. "Honey? That was the lady who called about the baby girl. She said baby "L" doesn't need to come and stay at our house anymore." Ella looked stunned and I saw such sorrow in her eyes. I said, "I know that makes you sad, sweetheart." And as soon as I said that she wept. Loud, heart-wrenching sobs, crying, "l want her to still come. I wanted to take care of her. I wanted a baby." Me too, honey.

So I held her on my lap and we cried together. And then we prayed together. For her heart, for my heart, and for this baby "L". By then Isaac had joined us with questions and concern for his weepy girls.

So, that was our day. A bit of an emotional roller coaster.

Ella is doing okay, now. And me? I'm okay, too. A jolting introduction to the world of foster care. (Could they not have waited to call us until AFTER that final meeting?)

And we continue to wait...



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[For anyone who would like to catch up.] Our process, so far:

February 2007: A New Journey
May 2007: Update, Our Home Study visit, Found
August 2007: August adoption update
September 2007: September Adoption Update: Part 1, September Adoption Update: Part 2
December 2007: December notes
January 2008: January adoption update