And sometimes it's too much. I'll have a nightmare that the adopted family of a former foster son of mine decided they didn't want him anymore and dropped him off with a stranger without asking us if we wanted him back. Then I'll be spoon-feeding my current foster son and notice his bib says "I Love Mommy" and I will start to cry.
Because I'm not his mommy.
I am. But I'm not.
And I'll start thinking about what a broken system it is and what a broken world and how these kids that I have for a short time are going to eventually be out there on their own with a million obstacles in their way and a million pounds of baggage to carry around, and I won't be there. Sure, I loved them and cared for them for a few months or even a year or two when they were babies, but I won't be there when they start asking questions about what happened to them or what happened to their parents or why they're adopted or why they were sent back to parents who were not ready or why they weren't wanted. I won't be there to tell them that they were. They were always wanted. Always special. Always loved.
Sometimes it's all too much. I want to give up. I look at the chubby little cheeks of our foster baby and they remind me of our last foster baby, and I think "What have I done?" Have I done nothing but traumatize them more by making them love me then giving them up? How cruel. How selfish. How horrible to live in a world where these things can happen. Where kids can be abused by their parents and shuffled around from home to home and treated like nothing more than numbers. How can there not be a better way?
The baby we have now is the sweetest thing you've ever seen. And he'll play in one room while I'm in the other and babble happily and clap his hands and try so hard to crawl. But then, I will walk through the room he's in on my way to help one of the other kids or do a load of laundry or go to the bathroom or whatever, and he will see me, and he will start to cry. He'll fix his eyes on me and whimper and whine, and I don't know why. I don't know why the sight of me makes him fuss. I think it's because somehow he knows I am the one person who will do anything for him, so when I'm around he doesn't have to make do or comfort himself or wait for something he needs or wants. Because there I am. I will do it.
Until the day he's gone and I won't anymore. And that's just...too much sometimes.
The Bible teaches that someday everything will be made right. Justice will reign. Tears will be dried. Broken things will be made whole. I don't think I could do foster care without that hope. And even if you think the Bible is nonsense, I bet you still have that longing for something more, something better. For everything to be made new. For the day all children will be precious and beloved by stable and selfless parents.
That day is not today. Today, it's too much and the inside of my chest feels like it's being wrung out by the cruel hands of despair. But I believe in Someday. I believe in hope. So I will keep loving through the pain.
And I hope you will too.
