Good and Perfect: Reality: The Lows

The way social media is these days, it’s very easy to show a partial picture of your real life, where you only post the positive moments and everyone is all smiles and everybody loves everybody and there is never any hurt or anger. I have posted some statuses and shared some pictures since we started fostering J that have gotten gobs of “likes” and comments about what wonderful people we are and how much we are blessing this little boy and stuff like that. So let me assure you, that is not the full picture. I hope that by being real about this journey and why we felt called to this that people can be encouraged and challenged and maybe even spurred on to do this thing themselves, but I never want to misrepresent what the reality is. The reason you’ve only seen the sweet pictures is because I’m too busy pulling my hair out and thus don’t have a free hand to stop and pull my camera out during the bad moments. If I’m not pulling my hair out then I’m crying and wouldn’t be able to take a focused picture anyway. Writing a status like, “THIS KID IS MAKING ME LOSE MY MIND” doesn’t seem like the best idea although, admittedly, I have felt that way about my biological children many times as well. I guess I could post pictures of some of the text conversations I have with a friend who has had to take on the role of my therapist over the last several weeks, even though she didn't exactly sign up for that. Texts like “Ahhh, it’s Monday, the day when I excel as a foster parent because I can send him to school and let someone else deal with the stress,” or "We had to wrangle the new kid and carry him kicking and screaming to the car this morning, so that was a great start to my day," or "WHHHHHY ISN'T IT BEDTIME YET?!"

This is our reality. There are indescribable highs. Those are more important and that post is coming next. But the highs wouldn’t be high if it weren’t for the lows. And let me tell you, there are lows. When I wrote down some of the lows that we’ve experienced, the list was depressingly long. YES, it is good that he is with us compared to where he was. But it is not good that he is separated from his family, that he has lived in so many homes and been in so many schools that he doesn’t know what to call home. That is not good. This whole thing is tragic and the “hard” for us doesn’t compare to the “hard” he has endured, but allow me to be real with you about our hard in this.

When we are all home, I can never let my guard down. Ever. Things change so quickly and, at this point, there is never a time where we’ve been able to say “just go play” and feel good about how that's going to go. If there is a game with rules that everyone understands and a referee to enforce said rules, we are good. But “down time” just doesn’t happen. Plus, any time there is down time there is more room to think and as a result have emotions and worries and fears about where his family is and when he gets to go home to them and why he is even here. All of the unknowns of any “unstructured” time mean we have had to literally write down a schedule for the weekend where every minute is accounted for. And that’s okay if that’s what we have to do to survive, but it is mentally and physically exhausting. The weekends are when you want to relax, but we have to be “on it” every single second. J hasn’t been exposed to a lot of TV and doesn’t really know how to sit and watch a show, so those tricks we used when we needed a break during the toddler years aren’t working on this 6 year-old.

Just like a newborn, there is some adjusting that has to happen when a new person joins your family. There are lots of things we are having to teach. Very few things are understood. We are teaching simple things like hand washing and wiping after the bathroom. But then there is a lot of "un-teaching" as well. Sweet moments where kids are giggling quickly go south when we have to explain that most of the stuff he thinks is funny and is doing because he wants to make our kids laugh is actually highly inappropriate and not funny or acceptable. Then he feels disappointed because he disappointed us and we understand how confusing that is. But this type of stuff is all. day. long. And, someone apparently forgot to inform my other kids to automatically become little adults who don't need to be parented right now, so I still have to do that in the midst of all the new teaching and un-teaching as well.

When we do survive these highly packed, highly structured, highly emotional, super busy days, Josh and I don’t have a lot left over for each other. I know the time will come but we can’t foresee a time in the near future where it would be feasible to go on a date (unless it was a late night date after kids go to bed, in which case our conversations would probably only revolve around how painfully tired we are). It’s hard to connect when you are on the go at all times.

Our kids have to make sacrifices because of this, and that’s not something they signed up for. I have less time and energy to give to them and we have had to run our home like drill sergeants so that we reinforce (and reinforce and reinforce and reinforce) that the kids are not running the show around here, we are. That’s hard. Our oldest has established some sense of freedom that we are having to take back a little bit. We have to make an example out of them, so to speak, so that there is no misunderstanding about the fact that we mean what we say. That part is not fun, but I don’t cry for them if they are sad about us tightening the reins on them a bit. I do cry, though, when my daughter’s friend tells her that she probably won’t be having playdates with her anymore now that this boy is here (for the record, it wasn’t that the issue was J himself but just that J being here has made me busier and more stressed which means that I am less willing to host playdates and therefore this whole fostering thing is not benefiting my daughter’s friend… and she told her as much). Moments like that are difficult, because even though there are so many great opportunities to teach life lessons, my 3, 5, and 7 year-old weren’t on board with the discomforts that come from this. Or when my 5 year-old watches J favor the 3 year-old over him (probably because he reminds him of his own younger sibling who he misses very much), that’s rough. Cooper doesn’t know how to express those feelings of sadness but I see them on his face and the mama bear in me wants to protect him from feeling left out. We address those things and talk about them often, but my kids are feeling hurt because of all of this and it goes deeper than just stricter rules. And we don’t get to take a timeout and huddle our biological family together to readdress all the things we talked about before we were licensed to foster and try to apply them to now. We are having to do that as we go, while he is with us, while we are all tired and emotional and feeling the discomforts of having the flow of your home disrupted.

You know what else stinks about this? That everyone thinks you’re a hero. And that might be weird to say, but when you are hanging by a thread and people are telling you what a great person you are and what a blessing this is, sometimes you just want to cuss at them or give the “mean ugly” face that my 3 year-old does. We are not heroes. At times we are doing a downright crappy job. This weekend when I was dealing with some blatant disrespect and he was just eating his cookie and staring me down like he did not care what I had to say, the feelings that welled up in me were not heroic. It feels uncomfortable to think that people have the wrong perception of what all of this is like for him and for us. When I’m feeling so worn down and everyone is so positive, there are times when I feel like I could shout “No, No, No! You have it all wrong!” and then I realize that we will never be able to recruit more foster parents if I respond that way, so I generally say something nice like “well it’s definitely a roller coaster with high highs and low lows but neither of them stay that way for too long.”

And that’s what’s true. And that’s why we keep going. The lows are hard. The emotions are heavy. This whole thing is a load to bear. But the lows don’t last forever, and they shoot straight up to highs that give hope and reassurance that there is something to be gained from this. Not just for J, but for us as well.

Last night J cried again for his family, but this time it was kind of in a manipulative way. I know he misses them, but in this moment, he missed them because he didn’t like our rules and was tired of being told no. He and I are just alike in that way. Discipline is hard for me. Change is hard for me. I often lack self-control when my emotions are all over the place. I make mistakes all the time. I have to be taught some things over and over. I don’t like to be uncomfortable either. I hate getting out of bed in the mornings, too, and am not a pleasant person at dark-thirty. I don’t like it when my world is rocked and I can’t really think of a time when I have responded to some kind of significant upheaval in a kind, positive, always-thinking-of-others kind of way. I’m messed up. I need Jesus just as badly as he does and I have been more aware of that in the last 3 weeks than I have been in a long time. I really just wanted to sit and cry with him last night and tell him, "I get it, buddy. Believe me, I get it. This sucks." But we pray for grace for each moment and we keep pressing on… because a constant, unwavering, always- there love was given to me and this kid deserves that too.