Good and Perfect: I Didn't Always Like Her

Our call into foster care is a long and complicated one. It was not a rush decision. There are so many layers to it that I hope to share openly and completely one day, but it was a stirring that had been on our hearts since very early in our marriage, and James 1:27 kind of solidified it all in my mind: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction…”

It was that simple. Take care of people that really need to be taken care of. That’s what pleases God. I want to please God, and I like to help people, so why not?

After we took some time to heal from our first placement, we were contacted about L. It was actually a rare and unique situation where we knew all about her story – lots and lots of information – and knew for several weeks that she was going to come. It wasn’t a rush placement, it was a situation where she needed to be in a different home and we appeared to be the right fit.

When she came, there were all the big feelings. I could see the ending of this big happy story: enter a cute little girl that just needs love and structure and consistency, our family falls in love, she falls in love, her life is redeemed, and we are the heroes. It was so obvious to me.

What was less obvious to me was that she was in what many would call the “honeymoon phase” when I was having all of those big feelings. I prefer to refer to that version of her as “robot mode.” She was in robot mode. She was a beautiful, obedient, compliant, pleasant little robot. She did whatever you said, she did not do anything at all without asking permission, and she seemed very content. The problem with all of that is that she wasn’t a real child. It’s sad, really, when a child so young would have such a background that her survival technique is just to be a robot that doesn’t express genuine emotion. She was easy those days, but she wasn’t real.

And then came the day. The day when she became real, the day when it became painfully obvious that she was not a robot. The day when the reality of having a traumatized child living in our home with our own children was going to prove to be a very difficult road.

And I am going to be raw about this. My instincts were not to scoop up and hug and kiss and protect that poor traumatized child. My instincts were more like the “mama bear” that was going to do whatever was necessary to protect her young. It hit me like a ton of bricks that there were going to be some changes in our home and that was going to mean sacrifices for my own children. And naturally I understood a lot of that when we entered into foster care, but there were pieces of it that I was not prepared for.

For instance, we had to implement new rules in our house when we started to notice that there were “understoods” with our children that were not “understood” with her. Some privileges and play we just had to put a stop to altogether. The details are not important, but given that our job was to protect all four children in our home, it was the thing we needed to do. But the way that played out is that my four year-old had to start being punished for things he had never been punished for in the past. Six months earlier that was an “okay” thing, but now it was not. So I had to discipline him for not following these new rules, because if she saw that it was okay for him to do it, then she would think it was okay for her, too. And I hated doing that. I really hated doing that.

No one is in harm’s way and no one is unsafe. But we had to create a new set of rules for the sake of everyone. Our home was new to her and our rules were new to her. But some of our rules were also new to our kids. So they started bucking it a little. Emory didn’t understand what the big deal was, so he broke the new rules. And I had to punish him.

And the reality of what happened in me is that I started to resent her for what was going on within my family. I started to feel angry about the hard things I was living with them that were only there because of her. I grieved the loss of my freedom and the changes that were taking place in my home. They weren’t even bad changes, per se, but they were uncomfortable and I didn’t like that. And it would make me cringe that every time I went somewhere I got all the ooohs and ahhhs about how cute she was and inside I was screaming “I just want my normal life back!”

It was hard. Life was hard. And my heart was hard.

The number one thing I hear as an obstacle in foster care is “giving them back” when you fall in love. If I am being totally honest, I actually find that to be a pretty arrogant response. I think it presupposes that your heart is big enough to love a difficult and troubled child as much as your own – so much that you would want to stay in that difficult and troubled life forever and ever.

When it was very clear that she needed a lot less special attention and affection and a lot more attention to rules (and an understanding that the rules were the same for her regardless of her size, cuteness, or story), I played hardball. Nothing got by me. I was not going to be manipulated. You might do that everywhere else, I thought, but not here. So I enforced those rules. There was going to be no gray area around here, I said.

And I sought out support. I didn’t feel like I had a lot of it, but the ones who listened, they became my sounding board. Unfortunately, “sounding board” meant that I spewed all my anger, frustration, tears, bitterness, and resentment their way. I was too hard to receive the truth that maybe I needed to dig deep and remember why I went into foster care in the first place.

We took a trip this summer which was less a vacation and more a nightmare and we all learned the hard way that “vacation” is not a concept that a foster child understands. The idea of leaving home and going somewhere else for a short time is not obvious to someone that has never had that opportunity. So she was miserable and extremely needy the whole time. And my children were frustrated that I was tending to her neediness and not taking them to do the fun thing they were excited to do. We had pockets of fun, but for the most part, I hated that trip. And that’s when I realized why we have respite.

Respite is an option for foster parents because people need a chance to breathe. Mamas need a chance to reset. Siblings need a chance to feel like they are still just as important. The original family unit needs to snuggle and laugh and pray and remember that we are doing this hard thing for a reason. So we were able to connect with an amazing family that provided her a special week of being doted on, and we were able to get away for the first time in six months as our family.

It was exactly what I needed. My heart needed to rest. And more than that, I needed to remember that God is for me too. He loves me fiercely. From the time we left “robot mode” until our vacation week, I had grown very frustrated at the demands, the lack of understanding, and the hard. I was so focused on all that I had to “do” that I really had lost sight of the fact that he was for my good. That he gives me enough. That he loves me more than I can fathom, and with that, I have the power within me to love her in the way that she deserves to be loved.

I cried when we came home. I felt the weight of anxiety crush me when I walked back in our house because I really didn’t know if I could jump back into the hard. But we did. I did.

I’ll skip over some unimportant unknowns that came about during that time, but several of those ended with three brand new caseworkers in our life. We had a meeting with one of them one day. It was long. She was helpful. And when she left, God so clearly told me, “Natalie, you are all she has. Your family are the only ones left that can fight for her now that know her more than just a name on a piece of paper.”

We were it. We ARE it. It didn’t matter how hard it was, how needy she was, how much change was taking place in our family. God has given our family the responsibility of caring for this little girl and so our only option is obedience.

And then just as clearly as I heard him say that we were all she had, he told me “this is an act of grace that she is still here. You have a chance to break down your walls and love her with a love that she is worthy of.”

He pierced my heart and I began to pray a different prayer. I asked him to give me the capacity to love her with a love that she deserves, to look past the hard, to trudge through the mud, and to fight for this child and for her heart.

Friends, when we pray things that are the will of God, he answers. He answers quickly and astoundingly. It is obviously God’s will that I love her. It is his will that I love her well and that I fight for her and advocate for her. He has called us to her well-being, to her story, to her heart. And within days of me praying that I would have the capacity to love her, we had breakthrough moments that we had not yet experienced. We saw walls start to crumble. She became a human.

And you know what? She has begun to trust us. We have had sit in my lap while we cry and sob together moments about your fears and your past and your nightmares. It took us seven months of constant love and correction and stability for her to gain the trust towards us that would allow her to share those feelings.

She had an assessment recently that yielded some new labels. The things that are written in her files, the labels that are attached to her name…. they truly make her the least of these. New therapy and assessments have qualified her for a much higher level of foster care, one which we are not equipped to give. It gave us some understanding and brought on a host of new fears.

Am I able to love that level of care? Everything about my comfort wants to say “no way! I can’t do that! That’s too much!” But Jesus keeps whispering to me, “yes you can.”

You guys, kids need a lot more than love and structure. Your kids might need love and structure. But abused, neglected, abandoned, and traumatized children need love, structure, consistency, and therapy. Often years and years of therapy. They need advocates who will fight when it gets hard, who will keep moving when their legs can't carry them any further.

So I went back to James 1 and I remembered the promise, “if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” We pleaded with God to give us wisdom and discernment, and help us to know what we needed to do. And despite how many “outs” I wanted, he gave us our answer, very clearly. We are called to her well-being. We have no idea how long that is for, but this isn’t about foster care anymore or another product of the system. It’s about her – the tiny, beautiful, often difficult little girl that sleeps just down the hall from me.

This isn’t how we wanted the story to go. It is significantly harder than we ever imagined. But we have decided that she is worth our yes. She is worth our love. She is not the same as our other kids. Her needs are infinitely greater and there are big giant chunks missing from an important wall of building blocks that most kids have had. The sacrifices are more than we anticipated.

But she is a child. She is a child that is a product of a bunch of things that are not her fault. She comes from a background that failed to meet her most basic needs. Her hard is not her fault. And Jesus loves her fiercely, too.