#Reality

A friend sent me a text this morning and asked how the kids were doing and I lamented how I wished I could post the real stuff on Facebook. That the professional pictures or fun side trips don’t even paint half the picture. And the unfortunate part of Foster Care is that you can’t share the truth. You can’t lament about the deepest corners of sorrow and tragedy because that threatens to expose the children and their circumstances. No one posts about the bad stuff anyway. Who wants to wants to read through one depressing situation or sad scenario after another? We’re all in our own trenches, anyway.

But here’s the truth about foster care. Ugly, hateful things are said. Best laid intentions are misconstrued. Chastising occurs where Thank yous should have been. Frivolous things are made into gigantic mountains and dangerous or idiotic things flow quietly under the bridge. Fingers are pointed and something is always lurking in the shadows. And in the current state of foster care in this country, foster parents rank at the bottom, only ever so slightly below the children themselves.

But then I remind myself, that where shadows are the greatest, it’s because the light is brightest. And that the water under those bridges and those gigantic mountains only help to emphasize how great a blessing it is when you find a still lake or a gentle path on level ground. And I’m grateful that God is painting such a vivid landscape through these trials and this journey. Though, admittedly, some days He could certainly switch it to a Bob Ross style of painting instead of Picasso.

The truth is, as the kids are with us longer and longer, my anxiety is more pronounced than it has ever been...or more adequately stated, I now have a massive amount of anxiety where none previously existed. It's hard to decipher if that's specific to foster care or just the fact that my heart is now walking around on the outside. My hunch says every parent would agree it's the latter.

The truth is writing in metaphors and attempting to describe very specific situations with generic, yet descriptive words in an effort to paint a clear picture is exhausting.

The truth is, more often than not, we find ourselves saying "You mean we willingly did this to ourselves???"

The truth is something occurred today where I wanted to put someone in their place because I was oh so right and they were oh so wrong and their actions were the type that threaten to tilt you entirely off your axis. Thankfully, I know the One who keeps me centered and I have a great community of people who are walking in the same trenches and know how to pull me back to shore.

At the end of the day, we're more exhausted than we ever knew possible...it's not just from the kids, it's from every part of "the system" that is most definitely broken. When laws and rules triumph over common sense and human compassion, we have lost a little (a lot?) of Jesus. When children are not at the center of THEIR own story, we have lost a little of humanity.


Thankfully, foster care has also allowed us to experience grace upon grace. Where our do-overs get do-overs. Where we get to impact lives and THAT makes all the ugliness beautiful.