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 come.  Sorrow weighed me down as I thought of what J.’s little sibling’s life will be  --born to a very troubled mom, child of a sick and evil man.  Destined to repeat the lives they have led.  Odds are that he or she will spend years in and out of foster homes, sucking up all the social services available only to inevitably end up in jail or pregnant with babies who will land in foster care themselves.  What a hopeless mess.  So many would say that it would be best for everyone if the birth mother simply had a little surgery and thus retained her figure.

THAT is why I’m  a foster mom.  Because even in the face of a seemingly hopeless situation I firmly believe that God has a wonderful plan for each little life.  I want to be front and center watching his miracles unfold.

I watch a video clip of Meggie happily babbling away to her new baby sister.  All the odds were against them and yet God pulled them out.   I think of Jenn, whose grandfather paid her mother to abort her.  I remember the way the mother’s entire body trembled the first time she took Jenn in her arms, her look of disbelieving wonder.  How near she came to never experiencing that.

And finally I look at Baby J. The first part of his life was ghastly, yet amazingly, he has overcome it.  He is curious and funny and personable.  He loves to rub bananas in his hair and feed his toast to the dogs.  He smiles, waves, claps, and hugs.  What if he had never even had a chance? Yes, he would have avoided the pain and the horror, but he also would have missed the joy and the laughter.

So, while I look at the situation of J.’s little sibling, and I can’t help thinking of how bad his life could be, I know that the God who saved Meggie and her sister, Jenn, and J. is strong enough to save one more.