Bittersweet goodbye

Two years ago today, we packed up all of your things and we said our goodbyes.  We spent 54 weeks loving you, caring for you, giving you stability and a family while your family got the help that they needed to be successful for you.  A year prior, you were brought to us late one Friday night almost unexpectedly, but we know God had a plan all along.  I was in Lowe’s shopping for plants while Daddy Mike was at home watching a Stars playoff game.  My phone rang, it was the caseworker that we had for the girls who left just 3 weeks earlier.  My heart sank when she told me that there was a little baby girl, you, who was in a hotel room with the investigator.  You needed a soft place to land and she felt like we would be perfect for you and you for us.  I called Daddy Mike who jokingly asked if you could come after the game was over.  Always a jokester but he was excited for you to come, just as I was.  Once I saw your picture, I was in love.  Your big brown eyes were wide and alert, you had no idea who you were with, but you instinctively knew that you were safe. 

That night, you arrived in our home asleep, passed from the CPS worker to me without any waking.  This part is hard to say, but you smelled really musty and your hair was dirty.  You were wearing a little white onesie and no pants because that was all that the worker had on hand for you.  Sweet angel, I just wanted to bathe you and put you in the right clothes, but you clung to my chest as I filled out and signed a mountain of paperwork.  Finally, the work was done and the overly talkative worker left for the night.  You woke up screaming and mad when I went to change your diaper, but you quickly calmed down and trusted me.  I rocked you to sleep before placing you in the crib and you surprisingly went straight to sleep and stayed down for several hours.  Not until later would we really know what you’d been through the day before.  Bless your little heart.

You quickly adjusted to our family while we learned about you and yours.  Most weeks you went to visit your family in some form or fashion, always returning to our home with a glazed stare, much too young to understand or process any of it but also deeply affected.  Each week, I cried for you. I was so angry that this innocent beauty was going through something so ugly and there was absolutely nothing I could do to fix it.  Except we did everything we could to try to fix it.  We provided for your basic needs of course and every little extra we could indulge on you, too.  You went to church with us on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings.  You went to every family event we had. You went to the park, to Henry’s baseball games, to parties, to the pool.  You went to the doctor, some days it felt like all the time to your Mama Lacey. You were finally caught up with immunizations just in time for another routine run of them.  You were gaining weight, your hair was finally growing.  You learned to walk in our living room.  We heard many of your first words.  You were the sunshine in our world and we bathed in your light.  Sweet girl, you were everything to us and we felt like we were everything you needed.

Time carried on between each court hearing and weekly visitation.  Before we knew it, you’d been with us a year.  Things weren’t going as originally planned and someone made a big mistake of telling us that we were “this” close to getting to adopt you.  Our hearts were overjoyed but it was incredibly bittersweet because we knew that your family would lose you.  Well, as God’s plan was unfolded, the judge overturned that direction and you would be returning home to your family.  Our hearts were shattered but we tried to remember His plan for you isn’t what we would always like or understand.  Mama Lacey had a lot of sleepless nights leading up to this day two years ago.  I wanted so badly for your family to succeed and no matter where my insecurities lie or how much we loved you, we were going to have to say goodbye and turn our prayers into those of protection and provision. 

It’s been two years and you’re doing fantastic with your family.  There was a big bump in the road early on, but again, God provided for you.  Our love for you carries on and there isn’t a day that goes by without thinking of you.  Your pictures hang on our walls and we talk of you often.   Your Easter dress still hangs in our laundry room, I just can’t bring myself to put it away. I know that you aren’t with us anymore and that it’s ok, but mercy baby, I sure miss your cackling laughter, your precious hugs and the way you would reach for my hand to keep you safe.   We know that you are safe, loved and well taken care of now and we find peace in that.  You will always hold a precious spot in our hearts, and you will always have a place to return to if ever needed.  

We love you, always and forever.

Daddy Mike and Mama Lacey

Our road to foster care

You can read the first post in my series on foster care awareness here.

So a question we've been asked plenty of times, what made you guys decide to be a foster family?  Well aside from the seeds being planted along the way and feeling like God was calling us to do so, we felt like we had the resources to be a foster family. In no particular order, Henry really wanted siblings, we had the financial means to support another child, our family was supportive, we had great friends and our marriage was strong.  We felt like we had a "picture perfect" life that could sustain adding to our family, either temporarily or long term.  And by picture perfect, I certainly don't mean that we thought that we were perfect.  That's far from the truth, we have our challenges and downfalls just like everyone else, but we felt that with enough faith, prayer and hard work, we could be a safe place for a child in need.  Plus, we knew we had 30+ hours of training ahead of us and surely that would be enough to at least get us started.  Later on in the month, I'll get into how inadequate we quickly felt after our first placement.  But for now, we will start pouring the foundation for that walk.

For many years leading up to this decision, my body was riddled with endometriosis.  Chances are you know a woman, if not several of them, that have this sometimes debilitating disease.  I started showing symptoms in my late teens, had one ovary removed at the ripe age of 21 and went on to have a total of 7 laparoscopic surgeries before waving the flag of surrender for a total hysterectomy at the age of 31.  That decision was a long time coming and once Mike and I discussed it, we both felt like that decision was the only one that made sense if having a baby the good old fashioned way wasn't in the cards for us.  My doctor who specializes in endometriosis, whose work has been published and has students and patients from as far as Europe and beyond, agreed that my body just wasn't ever going to make a come back from the damage that had been done.  After my spay, as we jokingly call it, he told me that while not likely at all, had I gotten pregnant, it would have most likely been catastrophic for me and/or the baby as my insides were not competent or capable to sustain life.  That was all I needed to hear to know that the right decision had been made.  Again, God was sowing those seeds, removing doubt and making sure we didn't live in regret of that final decision.   It's been more than 5 years and I don't question if the right decision was made.  I know it was.

In the spring of 2014, we started our foster care licensing after finding an agency that best suited our preferences. (Which reminds me, I definitely will write about making the right decision for an agency because as I've seen through our experiences and through my CASA work, there's a huge variety of directions to go.) Mike and I went to 1 or 2 trainings a month and we started learning a lot from others in the class that were already foster parents (these FPs were getting in their continued education hours that are required each year).  After some classes, we would feel energized and excited about the future but other times, I for one would leave feeling overwhelmed and terrified about all the what ifs.  Mike was really encouraging to me especially, reminding me of all we had already come through and that nothing in life worth having is easy.  Someone along the way told us, "If foster care were easy, then everyone would do it."  We decided that it was ok for us to take the road less traveled because we were comforted that God would guide us through it so we could be what these children needed.

I'll write more tomorrow about licensing and what all that entails.  Thanks for reading so far.

Foster Care Awareness Month

National Foster Care Month 2019 starts today and runs through May 31st.  I've challenged myself to blog each day in the month of May to raise awareness for foster care.  Not every day will be an experience, some days may just be a quote or a statistic, a chance to really raise awareness about foster care and children in care in our communities.  I won't get into deeply personal details but I do feel that sharing part of our story as foster parents and after, may help educate and maybe even help bridge the gap for another person or family to feel ready to explore more about becoming foster parents.


To start off, our journey to foster care was laid out way ahead of us, seeds of faith being planted along the way.  My cousin and his wife were foster parents and we met a few of their kids at different family events over the course of a couple of years.  I thought it was noble that they would take children into their home, but I also feared all the same unknowns most people do.  There's a long list of them, but I always wondered if I would be able to love and let's be honest, tolerate and accept someone else's child in my home.  I mean, at that time, we either hadn't had Henry yet or he was an infant, how would my heart love and care for children that weren't mine and weren't my relatives, but total strangers?  That may sound callous, but if you're honest with yourself, at some point in life, you've been around a kid who was just being a kid and thought "glad he's not going home with me."   I love kids, but other people's kids?  They must be special for taking all that on.

I would later learn that special has a different meaning but I will save that for a future post. 

In May 2013, we went to Henry's school's summer picnic in an attempt to meet other families with kids Henry's age.  While we were eating dinner, a precious lady from the school came over to chat with us.  We talked shortly before she made a comment about her children, we learned that she has seven kids, two of whom were adopted. We related to my cousin's adoption of 3 boys that had just taken place a month earlier.  Mike and I both were intrigued, mentioning that our church had recently had an info session on foster care and adoption, we even told her that we thought it was really cool how much adoption has made a footing in our society, no longer as taboo or hush-hush as it once was. In retrospect, God was absolutely planting and sowing those seeds in our minds and in our hearts. 

More to come.