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May Those Arms Be Mine...
Last year a baby I had never met spent his first Christmas in the ICU. Doctors worked to get him breathing on his own, believing he would be blind and mute for the rest of his life.
This Christmas he is safe. He is healthy. He is happy. He is loved. When he is sad, his face turns to mine. When he needs love, his arms reach for me. When he is scared, his voice cries for me.
And I wonder…
What will his next Christmas be?
Whose arms will he reach for?
Whose voice will calm him?
Will he know love?
And I thank God for this time. This baby. This Christmas. May it not be a happy oasis in a desert of his life. Rather, may it be the standard.
Always arms to hold him.
Always a voice to calm him.
And may those arms --that voice-- be mine.
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Each Human Life
I have always held that each human life is precious and deserves a chance, but sometimes that belief is challenged.
As our foster baby’s birth mother rose to her feet today I noticed a tell-tale bump. We hadn’t seen her in a few weeks. Now, there was no denying the obvious. What heretofore had seemed normal post-partum weight was the beginning of another human life. Baby J. is going to be a big brother.
Pregnancy in mothers of children in the system is the norm. Our first foster baby, Megan, was the seventh child born to her twenty-five year old mother. Before her adoption was even finalized Meggie herself was already a big sister. Praise God that her adoptive family greeted Meggie’s newborn sister with open arms.
Our county faces group after group after group of six and seven siblings, groups that have no hope of staying together in a foster, let alone adoptive, placement. Rarely do any of these siblings have the same father. This causes more problems when members of the various birth fathers’ families decide to take in the ones related to them. The sibling group is broken and the sibling relationships lost.
As I loaded J. in his carseat my mind was on the baby to …
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The Shrine
Tomorrow will mark a year since we lost Jenn. More than once I have gone to write about the day she left, the purple fuzzy jammies with white polka dots, the look on her face as I walked away… but I just can’t. Even a year later the wound is still too raw, the pain too deep.
For the first few months I felt empty and brittle, as if the slightest touch or one insensitive word would shatter me into a million pieces that could never be reassembled. Though I didn’t shatter into a million pieces, I will never be the same. And that’s okay.
It’s hard to carry a grief that few people understand. Yes, she is alive. There is hope for her future. Ours is a God of miracles. He is watching over her; He will lead her to the cross. But, the harsh reality is that this baby, who I love, is being raised by a heroin addict. Each day I need to place her back into the hands of the Father. If I couldn’t do that I would be those million shards strewn across the floor. I have learned more about trust in this last year than in my other thirty-four combined.
I can’t look at pictures of her. As I go through Photo Gallery with my kids and stumble onto a picture from those eight months, something …
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Let My Heart be Hardened
One of the hardest things about foster parenting is taking a child who thinks that he is yours to a visit with a birth parent he doesn’t know at all.
All morning I am tense. My hands tremble slightly, and I keep forgetting what I am doing. I don’t even attempt to eat breakfast. The kids joke and I attempt a smile, which gets nowhere near my eyes, not having heard a word. I snap at them over nothing, and they pat my shoulder to show me that it’s okay. I pack a diaper bag overflowing with snacks, toys, and extra clothes. Finally, I get the baby dressed in a cute outfit, making sure everything matches and nothing is worn out or stained. A friend once had birth family file a complaint because the child was wearing two slightly different white socks. The story has stayed with me.
I arrive a few minutes early and hold the baby in the car until the last moment. Then, kissing his fluffy baby hair, I gather his bag and hurry across the parking lot to the DHS building. Inside he sees his parent and leans nervously into me. I talk to him happily, soothing. I whisper one last prayer that only he and I can hear. The caseworker arrives, ready to take them back to the visitation …
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Ever After
Ah, sweet Meggie, the first baby that I brought home who would not stay, the baby that I fell in love with in a matter of days and spent five and a half months loving and raising before she was taken from us. When she first left I e-mailed each month on her birthday to see how she was doing. After several months I called her caseworker to check on her. I was devastated to hear that, while Meggie was at that time still safe with a good foster family, it appeared she would soon be going to live in a very bad situation.
And I stopped e-mailing. I stopped calling. I couldn’t bear to have the worst confirmed. I wanted to hold onto my fragment of hope that maybe she would be okay, that God wouldn’t let that happen to her. So the months passed and I hid in my fear, embracing ignorance of the truth rather than facing the pain that truth might bring.
Finally, as an important meeting loomed, things were dredged up that I had tried to keep buried. I found that I was just barely brave enough to seek some answers. I was going to have to face the truth of Meggie’s fate no matter how much I wanted to keep my head buried in the sand. And so, with shaking, hands I e-mailed her new …
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Dreams
The car that took Meggie away pulled into my driveway and there she was, just as I remembered her. Her brown hair stuck straight up and she seemed to recognize me with her quizzical little smile, almost as if she knew that she had come home at last. The ache in my heart eased. I picked her up and clung to her as I carried her to the rocking chair in her room. I began to feed her, tears of anguished joy pouring down my face, not understanding how she could be there but thrilled beyond reason to hold her again…
And then I woke up.
Baby Jenn’s parents walking up to me, “We think that she’ll be better off with you, and we miss our freedom.” They hug me and put her back in my arms. She turns enormous blue eyes on me and hoots happily, bopping up and down in excitement. As I take her in my arms pure elation mixes with disbelief, I turn to find little Meggie, as the tiny newborn I first loved, laying in a hospital bed, abandoned and alone. She wears only a diaper, her ribs poke out from too thin skin. Seeing no one to care for her, I scoop her into my other arm. She nuzzles into my neck. So does Jenn. I cuddle them close, feeling a blinding unspeakable relief and joy. I …
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Love Comes Softly
I’ll be honest, when the call came asking if we would foster Baby J. in fewer than five minutes I had said, “no.” I had plenty of good reasons; there were numerous complications with his case. Plus, we were busy. We weren’t even in the state at the time. I was already numb with grief and had five kids to care for, never mind two new puppies. I had no time for one more thing.
But, he stayed on my heart, I felt no peace, and they called again. They didn’t have anyone else who could stay home with him. They needed someone who could really care for his special needs. Yes, they could get someone else, but it wouldn’t be a good situation for the baby. I said we would consider it. Then, I hung up and asked God to send someone else.
He sent us. Sometimes God says, “no.” And that’s okay. Because He knows better than I do what J. needs, what I need, what my family needs. I’m not the first one to beg, “Oh, Lord please send someone else.” These words are just an echo of Moses, who spent nearly an entire chapter of Exodus trying to convince God that He had the wrong man, his words uncannily like my own: “But Moses said, ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.’” ( …
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Deliver Us from Evil
“Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” -Psalm 82:3-4
Several months ago an evil man very nearly killed a helpless baby. During his long stay in the hospital, the baby’s little body revealed serious past injuries, showing that his short life was likely filled with pain and fear. Someone (in their infinite wisdom) hung a picture of this man right there on the wall in Baby J’s hospital room. That first day, I snuggled Baby J in my arms, careful not to touch his wounds; I looked at that picture on the wall, and I felt that I had come face to face with evil.
We brought J home on a Wednesday. It wasn’t until the following Monday that I was able to read through his hospital discharge papers. When I did I wanted to pass out, to scream, to shake, to vomit, but I simply wept. For two days, I wept. How could anyone do these things to another human being, let alone a small baby? The reality of human brokenness, evil prevailing where love should have been.
“Deliver us from Evil,” I’ve always prayed, faithfully reciting the words Christ taught. I prayed them …
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The "Massager"
As we left the hospital with Baby J. the nurse told us to bring everything on the counter; they would just throw it out if we didn’t. So, I upended the pink plastic medical bin into a bag and didn’t look in the bag again until we got home.
My husband Matt was holding the baby, my sister Jenny making dinner, the kids circling me with interest to see what treasures I had brought from the hospital. (You know, besides a baby). I pulled out five tubes of antibiotic ointment, about twenty syringes, blue gloves, adhesive tape and then a long cylinder of some sort with one tapered end and a twist on lid on the other. A flashlight? I twisted the end, but no light came on, instead it started to shake. I looked at my sister confused. She began to laugh.
“Is this what I think it is?” I asked.
“Um, yup, I think so,” she laughed, “When Ella was in the hospital they rubbed one on her back to help loosen the gunk in her lungs.”
“Huh. Yeah, J. did have breathing trouble there for a while.”
“Hey, what’s that thing?” one of the kids asks, “A toothbrush?”
“Uhhh… no.”
Another comes over and looks at it with interest.
“Ooh, it’s a back massager!” He takes it, turns it on and trots over …
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Choosing to Suffer
When you look at a helpless baby, whose body will bear the scars of a grown man’s rage for the rest of his life, a lion awakenssomewhere within, ready to defend that child at any cost.
The wounds we bear from the loss of our foster babies still bleed crimson, as I bend to pick up little J. from the hospital crib. His eyes are glazed, his diaper dirty, every inch of his face covered with burns. My hands tremble as I gently lift him, not because I am nervous, but because I am afraid. I know where this path leads. I will fall helplessly in love with him. Our time will be too short. He will go to live with relatives as the plan already indicates. I will be left with a broken heart, mourning his loss as those who came before him are dredged back to the surface of my grief. Is that a place I can choose to go?
I haven’t decided that I will bring him home yet. But, if I don’t, who will? I cuddle him close as a recent conversation with my five year old replays in my mind.
“Mommy, when is baby Jennifer coming back?”
“I’m afraid that she isn’t coming back, sweetie.”
“But, we can go visit her! When can we go visit her?”
“I’m sorry, honey, we can’t see her anymore.”
“Why not?” …
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Last Night I Bought a Charm Bracelet
I walked slowly into the jewelry store. The sales girl, young with long blond hair, asked if she could help me. I said that I was looking for a charm with a pearl on it. Megan means “Pearl or Precious One.” The young woman pulled out two trays of charms, and showed me three with pearls. Two were large and gaudy, but one was simple, with just a tiny pearl, like my tiny baby. I asked if she had a helmet charm, too. She showed me. It was thick and chunky, like my little Jenn who wore a helmet for four months. I said that I would take them both. She showed me the bracelet that went with them and how it works. I reached a finger out, touched the little pearl and began to cry.
The poor sales girl kept saying it was okay and did I want a tissue. I told her very briefly about our babies, gone from our arms but never from our hearts. She didn’t know what to say. She boxed the bracelet, and I paid. Then I walked with red eyes through the mall and out to my van. I drove partway across the parking lot, then parked again. I opened the box and took out the charm bracelet. I removed the charms and, holding them in my palm, just sobbed.
At last, I threaded them back on, first …