Happy Thanksgiving (4 months with M)

It's hard to believe that it has been 4 months, and 1 week, since M first came into our home. Like any major change in life it feels like it has been forever but at the same time it feels like it has been no time at all. Lindsay and I keep joking that we are playing a "live action role playing game" (LARP) of parenting and we keep leveling up (yes I know we're nerds). Some of the levels we have reached I never pictured us reaching so soon. I would go into more detail but for privacy sake I can't. 

So, here we are, it is Thanksgiving and M got to take part in his first (and hopefully not his last) Thanksgiving with my family. We started the day by waking up at 4:45am, leaving the house at 5:45, and getting to our parade spot at 6:05am. It has been a tradition with my family to attend the parade since 1990. By 8:30am we had a total of 27 friends and family, majority of which (including M) wearing matching family shirts and turkey hats, all sitting curbside talking, laughing, running, playing, and dancing to the music of the DJ that setup down the street. Even though M had to wake up so early he was all smiles and super excited about the parade. I truly loved being able to share this tradition with him. All throughout the parade, and the rest of the day, seeing him playing with my family, (should I say his family? Even if it is temporary.) I was hit with wave after wave of feelings of gratitude, happiness, and sadness all at the same time. Thankful that God has allowed us to be a part of his life, happy at how well he has come to be a part of my large extended family, and sad because deep down I know there is a chance he will move on and not be with us anymore. But worst of all, I am sad to know that, because of his age, if he is to move on he won't really remember us. 

All of these mixed emotions got me thinking of a posting I recently saw on an online foster parent support group that we are a part of. The song is "Love Feels Like" by the Christian artist Toby Mac. The main words of the song that really hit home with me are roughly this:

This is harder than I thought it’d be 

Takin’ every part of me 

So much harder than I thought it’d be 

But empty’s never felt so full 

This is what love Feels like 

Poured out, used up, still givin’, 

stretching me out to the end of my limits 

This is what real love Feels like 

Music video can be found at: http://youtu.be/reWLIs51e2Y

There truly are no words to describe all the different emotions you experience when fostering, but at the heart of it all there is love. I don't know what life will bring. I don't know if M will stay with us for only 2 more months (because that is all the court has guaranteed), if he will stay with us forever, or anywhere in between. However long he is with us I pray that I continue feel, as the song puts it, poured out, used up, still givin’ until I am empty but yet filled with what only true love can give. 

If you are a believer I ask that you join me in the prayer that I hold for M, and every child in foster care, I pray that God's will is done. I pray that He touches every heart of the individuals involved with the case (including my own) and that He guides their steps so that every decision made is made based on His divine plan and not the plan/will of man.  

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11

Finally, from my family to yours, I pray that God will give you peace, comfort, and guidance in whatever roller coaster life throws before you. Happy Thanksgiving!!

First True Long Term placement

Oh wow! I knew I had not updated anything in a while but I didn’t realize that it had been 6 months. Life has been such a whirlwind of activity and emotions that I pretty much could not bring myself to sit down and put it into words… So how about an update now? We were officially licensed in mid-March. The day after our license went through, we had 2 children placed with us (a 2 year old and a 6 week old). The children were with us for about a week until we got a call out of the blue saying, “Thank you for your help, but we will be moving the kids as of tomorrow.” Turns out they had found family. I was sad to see them go, but I am glad they went on to be with family. Since those kids left, I felt like we had moments when we could hear crickets and then other moments where our phone/email was going off like crazy with proposed cases. It seemed like no matter how many cases we said we would take, they all fell through for one reason or another. That was until…

A little over 3 weeks ago we were contacted about doing a respite stay (basically baby sitting) for a 3-year-old little guy (M) while his foster family went out of town. The day after we agreed to take him on for a few days for respite, we learned that the foster home had decided to close their home, meaning all the foster kids had to move, and since we were already lined up to do respite, it was decided that M would go ahead and come our way for the respite stay and we could use the respite time to figure out if we were the right home for him to be in as a long term placement. Part of us wanted to jump at the possibility of having a child placed in our home. However, considering the fact that his case was really new, and the current goal was reunification (returning home), and our desire to adopt we were not sure what would be best. The next day (the day before picking M up for respite), we were contacted by our agency and we were informed that we had been selected on the case of 2 legally free brothers. This meant that there was a 1 in 3 chance that we could be chosen as their forever home. At this news we felt that it was a sign from God that we were meant to wait and not accept M as a long-term placement. The next morning I went and picked up M for his respite stay and almost immediately everything just felt natural and a part of me wanted to say right then and there that, no matter the outcome, I wanted to keep him as a placement. However, that evening we were contacted and informed that we had been selected for yet another case. This time the case was for a single legally free child. So yet again we felt it was God saying “Just wait. I have great things in store for you.” The bad thing about being selected for these 2 cases, on top of having M as a respite case, is that, for various reasons, we had to choose between M or one of these cases and we couldn’t really accept him as a placement on top of one of the cases, assuming we were chosen as “the family” for either one of the cases (this is not always the case but wouldn’t you know that we would be the ones to fall into the weird “out of the norm” situation lol). However, to make the situation even more difficult, a respite stay can only last for 14 days but the meetings to decide which family was “the family” for these cases were 19 days after he came our way. In the end we ended up petitioning and getting permission for him to stay another week with us so that we could know the outcome of the legally free cases before making a call on M’s. To say that this situation was heart wrenching would pretty much be an understatement. There were several times that I would be sitting on the couch watching him playing and I would start crying as I prayed “Lord, thank you for sending M into our lives. Thank you for all that you have given us and done for us. However, I come to you right now asking and begging for guidance. Lord, I have fallen in love with this little guy and I do not want to have to make him move on to another home. However, I truly do not know what to do. Lord, PLEASE make your plan clear.” After days of praying and dealing with all the “what ifs” I feel God finally did make His plan clear and He did it in a way that was crystal clear. In the end, we were not selected for either one of the legally free cases. Some would think this would be heart breaking to have such a sure thing of adoption slip between our fingers. However, I truly did nothing but celebrate as we informed the agency that we would be more than happy to take M as a long-term placement.

So that brings us to where we are now. Lindsay and I now officially have M placed with us. His foster placement papers were signed today. His case still has a lot of unknowns, and he still has the goal of reunification, so there is still a chance that he will move on. However, I take comfort that the possibility of him moving on is no longer solely in our hands. At this point if he moves on it will be because God chose to lead the individuals involved in his case to make that call. At this point we have no intention of “putting in notice” and making him move yet again. This little guy is with us for the long haul, wherever that haul leads to. I ask that you all join me in continuing to pray that God’s will be done in M’s life as well as every other child in care. I will not lie and say that I do not hope and pray that M stays with us forever. However, I am not going to try and make anything happen that is not His will. Therefore, I will continue to make the choice to place this all in His hands fully so that His will is done. After all that has happened in my life I know that the things he has planned is far greater than anything I could plan myself.

Ready to be Licensed!

We got some exciting news today. Our home study report has been approved! However, there is still some required paperwork. 1: We have to provide updated auto insurance information since the policy just renewed. 2: We have to provide proof that the dogs have updated rabies vaccinations since Wookie’s, our Shih Tzu, expires at the end of the month and Roswell’s, our Jack Russell, expires in June. 3: We need to provide pictures of the house, inside and out. We started taking the required pictures about a month or 2 ago, and then we got distracted by the fruit basket turn over of rooms in the house, as well as the craziness of replacing the AC/heat and having our home study visit.

Anyway, after getting the email I quickly sent in our auto insurance info and Lindsay made an appointment to have the dogs’ shots updated today. We just got done scanning and emailing all that in. Now all that is left are pictures and, I forgot to mention it earlier, one more walkthrough of our house by the agency. We are getting so close to being licensed it is insane. Which means we are even closer to have a child/children in our home. I cannot wait.

Home Study Visit

It’s been a BUSY last few weeks!!! As I said on the previous post, our case was assigned and on 12/18/14 the individual completing our home study contacted us. We were given a few choices as to day/time for the face-to-face visit and chose to have it today (1/19/15). That gave is only 1 month and 1 day to replace the AC/heat, have the fire marshal inspection completed, and to clean, baby proof, and generally prepare our home for the visit. In the end, we got it all done and the day arrived for the visit. She came in and very quickly got down to business. First item of business was personal interviews. Basically, she sat us down individually, with the other in a different room, and asked for clarification on just a few things from the written questionnaire that we completed. After that, it was time to interview us together. That portion consisted of a lot of basic questions primarily on our expectations and what we are/are not willing to do for a child, particularly while in the foster phase. For example, if we were to have a child placed with us that is of a different religious background, how would we handle it? We explained that we would be more than willing, as long as it is a Christian background, to take the child to a church of their denomination as long as we were still able to take them to our church either before or after their services. Once we got done with the interview portion it was time for the walk through. We literally went room to room showing her the contents of every closet, drawer, and cabinet both inside and outside of the home. Once it was done she gave us a little question and answer time and then we were done. As she said bye she told us, “Y’all are going to be great! I have a really good feeling about you two. You’re very realistic and not living in a fairy tale like so many people I see.”

So what’s next…

From my understanding, our contact person is going to go back to the office and work on typing up the home study report. Basically, this is a massive report that addresses every aspect of our lives, individually and as a couple, our home, and all other pertinent information, such as our support system. Once the report is completed, it is sent to a “reader” to be reviewed. Once it passes the reader’s critique, the report and all other necessary information, will be sent to the state to apply for a foster/adopt license. If our timeline ends up about the same as a friend’s who recently went through the process with the same agency, we should be licensed within 4 weeks, which would be roughly the second week of February. Once licensed, the waiting game begins. There really is no telling how long it will take for a child to be placed in our home. However, what I can say is that the friend that I spoke of earlier had children placed in her home 5 weeks after being licensed. Keeping with that trend it would be around the 3^rd week of March. If that is how it works out I feel we would be blessed beyond words, since the 3^rd week of March is spring break for the school district that I work in, and it would allow me the entire week to be at home and help the kid(s) get settled in. However, as in all things in this process, there are many unknown. With that said, we are choosing daily put all things in God’s hand and trust that above all things His Will be done and that we will meet the child He has planned for us.

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Tune in next time for a post on our (still in the works) Foster/Adopt shower that our family is throwing us.

Questions, Reactions, and a small update.

This is a post that has been a long time coming and I realize that some people could take offense to my/our thoughts on this but I just want them out there.

Since my wife and I decided to start this path of adoption, we have gotten quite a few responses from people that I find…interesting. Here are just a few of those responses and my/our reaction to them, in no particular order:

1. “You’re still young!! Why don’t you try to have kids of your own?”

Well, believe it or not, we have been trying for 3 years and as much as everyone says, “Stop trying and it will happen”… it has not. Also, this is something we WANT to do and have been talking about since we first started dating over 9 years ago.

2. “Why don’t you do/have you tried invetro?”

No. Why? Because…we don’t want to. It’s as simple as that. I know there is a lot to be said about conceiving a child and raising it from birth and what not, but that’s not what we feel is right for us. If you yourself have used invetro to create your family, more power to you, I am happy for you, and I don’t look down on that at all. All I ask is for the same respect in our choice NOT to do that. There are sooo many children out there that naturally came into this world that need a home and someone to love them. This kind of goes back to what I have been feeling about our society as a whole. If you decide you want to get a dog or a cat and you buy it from a pet store or a puppy mill, you are looked down on and criticized that you did not adopt a dog or cat from a shelter that needs a home. I don’t understand why we put such an emphasis on the lives of animals over the lives of people. Did you know that in the US, just as in nearly every other country, the ASPCA was in existence for years, if not decades, before the child protection agency came to be in existence? In fact, the first case of child abuse was actually reported to and investigated by the ASPCA in the late 1800s.

3a: “Whoa! That’s really expensive isn’t it? I couldn’t afford to do that...”

Not really. However, it depends on the route you take in adoption. When it comes to adoption, there are a ton of options I did not know about until we started down this road. Most of the time people think of adopting an infant - where they get the child at birth and the birth mother chooses the future parents for their child. Private adoptions such as this are the ones that cost thousands of dollars. From what I have read, it typically works on a sliding scale of 5-15% of your annual income. My question there is “where does that money go? Who is making a profit off this?” but that is another post for another time. Another costly adoption route is to do an international adoption. We never considered this so I cannot say how that would work or how much that would cost. What we chose to do from the get-go was to adopt from within our state from the pool of kids in CPS custody. This was not a financial decision’ however, when going this route the cost of adoption is SIGNIFCANTLY less, and if the child is part of an “overrepresented population” in CPS care there are subsidies that cover the adoption in full. Also, since there are so many kids in need of adoption, the state give other subsidies as well for the kids in the before mentioned population, such as Medicaid until 18 and free in-state public university tuition for the child(ren).

3b: “Oh so with all those subsidies, it is kinda like Rick Perry (governor of Texas) is your baby daddy!”

... Sure. If that is the only way you can relate to any of this, go with it. More power to you

4: “So how does this work when your husband leaves you?”

Lindsay has run across some special people. Just saying. Well, let’s first off point out the fact that this girl said “when” and not “if”. Just because you anticipate going through husband after husband does not mean that everyone else will be doing the same. However, to answer your question little lady, how did it work when you left husband #3 with baby #4? If it was to happen, it would be the same as any other couple that might go through a divorce. Once the adoption is finalized, there is a new birth certificate issued and the adoptive mother and father are listed as the mother and father. Nowhere on that birth certificate, to my understanding, is there the word “adoption”. Therefore, the child at that time is no different from any biological child you may have.

5: “You know once you adopt you will get pregnant, right?”

If that is what God wants to happen then it will happen. However, just know that that will not keep us from adopting at some point. We truly feel that this is something we are meant to do.

6a: “What will you do if your kid is black?”

Love them. We obviously will be telling our child from the get-go that we chose them and we will share with them as they get older all the hoops that we had to jump through to get them. I know if our child looks drastically different from us that it will make things different. However, I think if that is what God gives us He will give us the resources to make it work if He wants it to.

6b: “Do you know how to take care of black hair/skin?”

Nope we don’t. Will we learn? You bet ya. In fact, in conversation when Lindsay told hairdresser, who is African American, that we are working towards adopting she quickly said “If you get a black kid I will totally help you with the hair! I am so excited for you!”

Now that we have decided to go the foster to adopt route we have gotten even a few more reactions to that:

1: “I couldn’t do it. The thought of getting attached to a kid just to have them leave… I just can’t imagine….”

I hear you, and I don’t know how we will handle it. However, with all the stories that we have heard about children who get into foster care because their birth home kinda sucked only to have a ton of crap happen to them in foster care, I feel we have to do something. When you think about it, the only way to make sure that the foster kids have a good safe and loving home is to make sure that the pool of people to provide that care is full of genuinely good people and not people that just want the check of having a foster kid. If you have never heard of people like this, talk to a teacher. Pretty much every teacher has had or at least heard of a foster child that has been in a home that only wanted to use them as a cash cow.

2: “How are you going to handle a child leaving your home?”

I truly don’t know. I will tell you when/if that happens. All I know is that while the kid is here in our home, I feel we can provide the needed love and care to help them grow as much as possible. If God feels that child needs to move on then that is what it is.

UPDATE:

Still getting bids/quotes on replacing heater (see previous post). However, we just got some good news. Typically the policy is that all inspections must be done before the home study can be completed. However, since we have been keeping our main contact with our agency up-to-date on the bumps that we have hit and how we are working though it, they seem to have decided to bend the rules a little. Apparently we are already heading towards the home study. Lindsay got a call yesterday (12/12/14) from the woman that will be doing our home study saying that she is going to look over everything we have turned in so far and get back to us by Tuesday (12/16/14) to start working on the home study. HALLELUIAH GOOD NEWS AT LAST!

PS.

Please share your thoughts. I am curious to get other people’s perspective on the questions we have been asked and the responses that we have had to them.

Bumpy Roads of Gas and Heat

Feels like forever since we did an update and it is kinda depressing to see that the to do list stayed about the same for most of this time until about this last week. The main reason for this is the bump that we hit due to the gas line test. We scheduled our first gas test at the beginning of Oct. and when the test was completed we got the “wonderful news” (note the sarcasm) that we had a leak somewhere in the house. It took a couple weeks for me to track down the leak and about a day to fix it. It turned out that the leak was in the wall of our master bedroom. Apparently the issue was that when they built our house back in the 70s they did not insulate the main gas line where it comes into the house so, when they laid the brick the mortar was right up against the line and over the last 30 something years the acid from the mortar eventually ate a small hole in the line. Once we replaced that pipe and had them redo the test we got the awesome news that we passed.

So “what’s next?” you might ask. Well the next thing is the heater. I just had a guy come out today to check the system so that we can say that it is safe to operate in the “harsh winters” of Houston and guess what we just got the news that we have another bump. Turns out that our heater is 39 years old and therefore is “beyond it’s useful life and needs to be replaced”. So now I have to get estimates to replace the heat system. The first estimate is $2275 but they will be nice and take the $75 fee that I just paid for them to check the system out of that. UGH! 

Now is not the time to shut down and quit. Now is the time to “get r done” lol. The thing that really does make me sad though is that we had hoped to be licensed by Christmas and now I truly don’t see anyway that can happen. But as they say, “all things in His time” there is a plan for it all and who knows maybe God’s plan all along was that we would first not blow up from gas, second not die from carbon monoxide poisoning/fire caused by the heater, and third that we would have a child to love and care for. Just because we want to jump to #3 does not mean that we need to ignore 1-2. After all 1-2 are kinda important. 

Updated to do list in no particular order: 1: finish cleaning the house and taking pictures (inside and out) 

2: replace the heat system 

3: have fire marshal come out and do fire inspection (must be done after heater) 

4: schedule home study (must be done last)