There's no plan for this

Image by Amanda Randolph from Pixabay

I've always been a planner. I knew the when and where of what everyone in my family was up to even as a young child. I was meticulous with school work and schedules growing up, which helped me achieve a 4.0 GPA even while involved in numerous sports, activities, volunteering, and work.

Planning has also served me well as an adult, allowing our family to get by on one income by sticking to a planned-out budget. Keeping my day-to-day life under control enough to carve out time for my writing career. Decreasing the stress in my life by having family meals planned out a week at a time.

Yes, planning can be a useful and beneficial thing. And I used to think it was the most useful and beneficial thing.

Then I became a foster parent.

You can't plan which evening you're going to receive a late and desperate phone call from a social worker wondering if you will take a placement. You can't plan what a foster child's parents will or will not do, what the court can or can't decide. Can't plan for how it feels when you meet a new child. How it feels to love them. How it feels when they leave you.

Being a foster parent has taught me--by force, I suppose, but taught me nonetheless--about the beauty of living in the moment. Living for today. I like to plan ahead. I like being prepared. But there's something really special about holding a child close right now, today, and letting it be enough that you got to do that right now, today. Not stewing about how many more days they will be with you or who will decide what about which part of the child's case. Not trying to plan for this to happen, and then that, and then this. Just being thankful for today.

I wonder what it would be like if we could all love the people in our lives as they are right now, one day at a time. Not wishing for more or waiting for change or running around too busy and distracted by everything coming up to appreciate what we already have.

Planning ahead makes me better at a lot of things, but living for today makes me a better foster mom. It's hard, but I'm called to love each child that comes along as much as I can, while I can. I'm called to surrender my need to know what's coming. My desire for order and schedules. My carefully thought out calendar. And I'm called to trust that God will take care of all that stuff while I do the job He gave me to do.

So...I guess that's my plan.

The Purple Bowl

For me, it was a purple glass bowl I had set down on the counter. For Ellie in the movie Instant Family, it was a beautiful crystal dish she'd tucked away in the top of her cupboard. Both smashed to pieces by foster care.

Both symbols of devastation...and love.

Have you seen that movie? It's about a married couple who become foster parents to three kids. Their lives are flipped upside down as they learn to parent kids from hard places and discover what family really means. As a foster parent myself, I relate to so many of the scenes in the movie, but the one that always strikes me the most is when Ellie's dish falls from the cupboard during an incident with the children, breaking beyond repair.

I was heartbroken when it happened to me. My 2-year-old foster son was "helping" me make biscuits. I set my best mixing bowl, a glass Pyrex we'd received as a wedding gift, on the counter and turned to grab a spoon from the drawer. In a flash, he swiped at the bowl, and I turned back just in time to see it fall. I gasped. He screamed. A frantic cleanup commenced. And I continued to find tiny purple shards of glass in inexplicable places in the kitchen for weeks afterward.

It was my absolute favorite bowl. One I used almost daily. In the movie, Ellie's dish was important to her too. But then, foster care.

We've been foster parents for almost five years now, and these broken dishes have come to mean something very important to me. I have learned you can't love kids from hard places, kids who are not "yours," without being broken. Shattered. You can't be what they need without giving up your ideas of the perfect family. Your hopes for a clean house. Your time and attention. Your favorite bowl.

If you have kids, you might be thinking that all parenting is like that. And you're right. Biological children break bowls, too. But choosing to step into foster care breaks you in a way other kinds of parenting cannot, because you're giving up all those things for children who are not going to stay. Who will never be yours.

It's devastating. But isn't that also what real love is? Allowing yourself to be broken for the sake of another? Even when you know they could be whisked away tomorrow, leaving behind shards of glass that will keep piercing you long after they are gone? Real love isn't safe. But it's what kids from hard places need.

I still miss my bowl. It was just the right size. It was easy to clean. It was pretty. But I miss that little boy more. Would my purple bowl still be intact if he had never come? Would my heart? Probably so. But would I undo it if I could?

Never.

Are you afraid of being smashed to smithereens? Are there any special items in your home that you would hate to see destroyed? If so, then maybe you think foster care is not for you. But if you have room in your heart for some real love--if you believe that broken things can be beautiful--well, then, just maybe it is.

Just enough for today

He was taller. Had a different haircut. But I would've known him anywhere.

Little Man.

The first child I ever brought home from the hospital who was not born from my body. The first child to need me in a way I'd never experienced before. Our first foster son. Gone from our family almost two years now but still always in our hearts.

His aunt and uncle, now his adoptive parents, didn't have to let me know they were passing through town. Didn't have to go out of their way to stop and see us. But they did. He climbed out of the car and it was like the last two years disappeared and there was my Little Man standing at my knee. Only this time he didn't know me. Didn't know what the fuss was all about. Didn't understand why I kept taking his picture.

It was one of those moments you can never really prepare for. All we'd ever wanted, all we'd ever prayed for, was that he would someday have a loving family and be happy and whole. And there he was, loved and happy and whole, and all I could do was stare and thank God. I didn't know what to say, but Little Man smiled at me and I thought, "He's okay. After everything he's been through, he's okay."

Our new foster son, Baby Shark, was there too, wearing a shirt Little Man used to wear and sitting in a stroller Little Man used to ride. Little Man played peek-a-boo with him, laughing, and said, "Baby." Then he looked at me, the wheels in his brain turning, turning, trying to figure out why I seemed so familiar...why I felt like family...and said, "Grandma?"

I never imagined I'd be a grandma in my 30s, but it felt right. It sounded beautiful.

When our visit with Little Man and his family ended, we all said goodbye. It wasn't nearly as hard to do this time, knowing he was exactly where he needed to be. But as I drove away, listening to Baby Shark babble in the car seat behind me, my heart squeezed. I need to give him more kisses, I thought. I need to give him more snuggles. More, more. But will it be enough? Any month, any week, any day now, he will be gone, just like Little Man. He will leave and there will be no guarantee we will ever have the chance to see him again.

Baby Shark was ready for his nap when we got home and I closed the blinds in his room, turned on his fan, and held him for a minute, a little tighter than usual. Little Man's story had turned out better than I could've hoped, but what about Baby Shark? Would he too have a loving family and be happy and whole someday?

Yes.

My breath caught. Yes. Because he has a loving family and is happy and whole right now. Today. I don't know about tomorrow, but today?

"I love you," I whispered.

I don't know how long he will be here or what will happen to him. I don't know if he'll eventually go on with his life with nothing but a vague memory of some lady who smiled at him and gave him kisses. But because of Little Man, because of the gift of seeing him again, I know that what I have to give Baby Shark, all I have to give, is just enough for today.