I don't know how mothers of several children keep a blog! Ever since Miss B came almost a month ago I spend my days just checking things off my list, and by the time 11:00 comes I have the choice to write or go to bed. Knowing that I will be awakened a few times through the night, I have been choosing to go to bed! And I'm still tired!

Miss B is the second infant that we have fostered. Daniel was the first and only! Miss B, however is the first newborn from the hospital and it has been a fun experience. It has been amazing to watch her grow, put on weight, and become more alert.

Everyone asks me how Daniel is doing with a baby in the house.... He is not all that interested in her. He thinks her funny faces are kinda neat and her clothes are unique, and other than that he pretty much ignores her. He has been amazingly patient though with sharing attention and with the days where she has been more fussy than content.

The big question I get when people learn that Miss B is in foster care is "how will you let her go? do you just try not to bond/get attached?" My honest answer is.... I don't know. Daniel was the only infant I've fostered and I didn't have to say good-bye. I thought about the issue of bonding and I realized that yes, I am attached. I can't speak for other foster parents, but I can't NOT get attached. Sure, it might be safer for my heart to stay detached but I love to love! As I sat with her in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago I realized that God designed that attachment for a purpose--it's the only way a parent could get up night after night to feed and attend to a helpless baby. I love to sleep and I am a heavy sleeper, so being interrupted every few hours is very unnatural except that I love the baby!

I take one day at a time, enjoying each day and trying not to think too far ahead to figure out what will happen. Everyone asks how long we will have her. We don't know. I don't try to guess those things because there are so many variables. With Daniel we were told he would go back to his parents within 6 months to a year, and now he's mine forever. We thought Little N would be with us for months while his mother worked a treatment plan, and it was less than three weeks. Miss B's case is a complicated one that I don't think will be resolved easily or quickly (but I could be wrong!)

Sometimes as I'm holding her and watching her sleep so peacefully I get tears....She's so innocent, so helpless. She doesn't know of the chaos and uncertainty that surrounds her life. She doesn't know that her future is contained in a file on a caseworker's desk and that a judge will be reviewing her case every few months to make decisions that could affect her whole life. That's the part of fostering that I don't like....that's the part that makes me think that maybe I can't keep doing this....I want to protect the little ones from anything that's harmful or from a future full of instability. I don't want to see a series of broken attachments or think of a child being moved from placement to placement. Those are the times when I wish I didn't care so much and could just have a tough heart.

At night when I'm feeding her, I pray. Because if I don't I sometimes worry. As hard as it would be, my preference if I'm fostering, is that a child goes back to their biological parent if that parent is willing and able to parent well (i.e. successfully completing a comprehensive treatment plan) I would find it very difficult to see a child moved if after several months a relative came from nowhere and wanted a child. Or in Miss B's case once I found out that she had Cherokee blood I started to worry that the tribe would want to move her to a Cherokee home. I am 1/2 Native American--not Cherokee--and I have known of other foster families who have had children removed suddenly because the tribe decides they should be in a Cherokee home. So I keep casting my worries on God.

But for today we are enjoying this little dark-haired doll baby :-) and now Daniel seems so big and even more boyish by contrast!!  I just love God's beauty in creating babies and children!

life is an adventure

It's been a busy few weeks and I determined that last Sunday, April 7, I would have a quiet restful day after church. I had nothing planned for the afternoon or evening and I just wanted to read or sleep or just be HOME!

Well when we got home from church a DHS worker who was on call for the weekend was trying to call. She wondered if we would be able to go to hospital that afternoon to pick up a newborn girl. I was neither expecting nor prepared for a newborn girl. We were a boy home with boy clothes and boy toys! We said yes and my mom, Daniel, and myself went to the hospital in the afternoon to meet the caseworker and get the baby.

The early part of the week was filled with adjusting to round the clock feedings...I love to sleep so this has been pretty crazy! But I have found that the times that I get up with her--usually once or twice, although it has been more on occasion--are delightful! Other than stumbling around in the dark trying to change diapers and mix formula, I really find it quite enjoyable. And God has given the grace so that I really don't feel too exhausted in the daytime! (It's a little hard to get up in the morning but thankfully my mom takes care of the early morning feedings!)

Daniel was initially intrigued by such a tiny being. He has been very gentle and for the most part patient with sharing our home with Baby B...although he finds the flood of pink in our home a little strange!

As we have been enjoying Baby B this week, I found out through the local news that our last foster baby (toddler) Little N was brought back into custody last week for physical abuse after being returned to his original home. After he was moved from our home, it was only a matter of a few weeks before the court returned him to his mother. Now she is charged with felony child abuse after he was found with more severe injuries than the first time. I was in tears as I read the news story. I don't understand why things happened the way they did. I don't understand the pain in the world. I hate what sin does to people, especially the most vulnerable.

I can't save the world, but for today anyway we can open our home and arms to a tiny one and trust God for the future.

always reading...

I went to the Christian bookstore tonight to get my son his very first Bible, now that he is reading. Of course I had to browse the bargain book section and this book jumped out at me

I started reading the book tonight and was in tears. Not tears of self-pity but just like wow, it feels like this woman is writing to me personally. I love having a boy. He is a delight. But I struggle with so many worries about how to raise him to be a man. I highly, highly recommend this book for any single mother raising a son or for anyone to read just to get a glimpse into what kinds of things single mothers of boys face. It is definitely a book full of hope.
And I love the picture on the front! It totally captures the essence of my life!

So now the stack next to my bed is growing...!

fiddling again

I decided to deactivate my personal Facebook page for a time....maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks. I have no set time in mind. So in this time without the temptation to check it just because I have time on my hands, I decided I would take the opportunity to catch up on reading the stack of books next to my bed, maybe do some blogging, do some personal inventory about where I'm at in life, and play music!

When I first start teaching fiddle lessons I used cassette tapes as a large part of my instructing. Since several of the tunes were taught either by ear or with tabs ("music" that just showed the finger numbers but without the rhythm) I would record myself playing the tune slowly and then up to speed to that my students could listen to it during the week and be able to learn the song. After a few years, most of my students no longer had cassette players and now, many of my younger students don't even know what a cassette tape is!

So one of my students suggested that I create a YouTube channel and upload videos of myself playing the tunes that I teach. I could direct my students to the particular song that they were supposed to be working on and they could hear me playing it the same way that I was teaching it.

Last night, in the absence of the time waster known as Facebook (!), I tried my first video. I still feel a little awkward in front of the webcam. Hopefully as I do more I will loosen up and maybe do more talking/instructing.

So here it is....the sound quality isn't the best and I am highly critical of every less than perfect note! if you have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know! (Click on Ashoken Farewell below...I haven't figured out how to actually put the video on this page! still learning!)



Ashoken Farewell

productive waiting

I think I have mentioned before that I'm not a fan of waiting. I can be patient to a point, but when it is in my power to do something, I want to do it. I set goals, I make lists, I go for what I've set my mind to do. And I take great pride in crossing things off my list!

But what about when God says to wait? What about when I COULD be making progress on my goals and He is seeming to say "wait." I don't like it. I want to be moving forward and accomplishing things. Sometimes it seems like the path between my initial idea/dream/goal and seeing it come to pass is SO long and slow.

Yesterday our DHS worker called about placing a child in our home. Because of a chaotic weekend and various issues that came up during the process of thinking about it we ended up saying no to this one. A part of me was so disappointed. I was ready to welcome another one as soon as Little N left, but I have to wait.

I will give credit to my mom for speaking words that prompted my thoughts in this waiting time....
I have dreams for the future that started several years ago. I journaled about it and I could practically see it! And often I wonder "why is it taking so long?" Why do so many days pass by where it seems like I'm not moving forward and it is just the same routine. Why, when I want to make a difference, does it feel like I am in the same place and not making much of a difference?

And the word that I have been reminding myself of today is "foundation." Build on a lousy, faulty foundation and everything will come crumbling down. But build on a firm, solid foundation and what is built will last. And I'm thinking that maybe in these days...months...even years (!) of waiting that there must be some work to do on the foundation. I get an idea and I'm ready to plunge in, rush ahead, make it happen....and then I have to backtrack and redo mistakes that I made.

So what is it that God is building here exactly? I wish I knew. I felt like He gave me vision years ago, and I've seen the beginning of some of it. But I feel that there must be more He needs to do in the foundation of my life. I can ignore it and push ahead when the waiting process seems painfully slow or I can allow Him to do the work He wants to do in me. I can make the most of each day and build a stronger foundation of prayer, the Word, and relationship with Him or I can bypass that in an effort to move things along. I can spend these days with Daniel laying a good foundation for his life, working through the hard things, being faithful to train, nurture, and pray for him, or I can ignore the issues that come up and deal with the consequences later.

God is apparently not into laying hasty foundations (at least in my life--much to my dismay!) So I pray for patience to work with Him and be willing to live life with His timing, trusting that the end result will be far more solid than if I pushed on with my will in my way.

february thoughts

Three weeks after he's been gone, our family still talks about Little N and misses him. Daniel frequently brings up something funny Little N did, or talks about what he liked and didn't like. We pray for him and hope that things go well in his life. And now we're open to DHS placing another one...even though a part of me finds it so frustrating to deal with the child welfare system when decisions are made that are not in the best interest of the child. But we do it for the children and hope for the best.

Yeah working with DHS can be maddening. I have heard horror stories from other foster parents,and I have been disappointed myself with poor decisions that have been made. But I have also met those who truly care and want to make good decisions, and I am grateful for the eventual outcome in Daniel's life.

Recently I was thinking back to one situation in Daniel's case. His case was getting so complicated and difficult that his permanency worker was needing assistance. She requested that a second caseworker be put on the case to help. I remember the day that the two caseworkers came to our house to do a home visit. I was a nervous wreck! This second worker was a tall, large woman with steely gray eyes that looked as if they could drill holes into you and see your innermost thoughts. She was scary. She spoke with authority and had a stern face. The visit went well, even though every time she stared at me I wanted to squirm!

A few weeks later we were at the DHS building for a parent visit. By this point I was thoroughly stressed and it was wearing me down. I don't remember the details of what was happening but I just know that I broke down in tears in the third floor lobby and felt completely helpless and hopeless. This intimidating, scary caseworker took me in her arms, hugged me and said, "I know it's hard. But everything is going to be ok." And I realized that underneath her stern demeanor was a woman who really had a heart. She was doing a job that is not easy, that was stressful, and where she had probably had dealt with a lot of ugly things.

The ugliness that is involved with the child welfare system is simply the result of sin. Flawed humans in a flawed system intervene in messy situations and try to do good. But frequently in an effort to do good there is also pain and harm. I saw over and over again in Daniel's situation where people tried to make good decisions or were obligated to follow standard procedures but someone was hurt in the process. The biological parents of these children bring a child into the world, a child who didn't ask to be born. Often the parent (or parents) have no idea how to parent or they are addicted and have their life in a mess. So the child is born and is neglected or abused. DHS intervenes...sometimes there is a good outcome, sometimes there is not. But the root of the original problem is this sinful, fallen world that we live in. And it makes me sad to see the result of sin and the chaos that it causes in the lives of children.

I love that more Christians are getting involved though. Even though child abuse and neglect is not going to completely go away as long as we are on this earth, I am so happy when God's people do what they can to bring God's love into broken families one child at a time. Sin is ugly, but God's love brings beauty and transformation.

courage

I've had these thoughts going around in my head for at least a week now, and I've debated about whether even to post this...

Recently after church one of the older men pulled me aside and thanked me for being an example of sacrifice and courage, and encouraged me to keep going and keep trusting God. Those words blessed me and helped to give me courage at a time that I was feeling kind of...well....not courageous.

Then in the last few days as I've been talking to different people and they've asked about our most recent foster/DHS experience, again people have said to me things like "you're so brave....I could never do that....it takes a special kind of person....it takes such courage....etc." And while I say thank you, I wonder if I'm really courageous or just crazy!

The truth is that I'm not courageous. And I don't feel brave. People give such compliments--and I very much appreciate words of encouragement--but I don't feel any more courageous or amazing than anyone else I know. In fact I can think of alot of people who I would say are far more strong, amazing, courageous, sacrificial than I am!

There are many days I wake up and don't feel strong enough to face the day. And when I look too far ahead I don't feel courageous. I wonder how I'm going to do it. Like any other parent, I frequently feel like my parenting skills are less than wonderful! And like any other foster/adoptive parent I have struggled through times of trying to understand my child and know how to help him work through hard things.

And then like any single parent I wonder how I'm going to raise a boy for however long I do it alone. How will he learn to work on a car (since his passion is cars/trucks!), or fish (because I am too wimpy to take a fish off a hook), or hunt (maybe he'll lose interest in that one. Or maybe I can just learn to do it too)? How will he learn to use tools (I can use several different tools but I always forget the names and can't very well have him call them "thingys" like I do!) And what about shaving? or learning the "facts of life"? And then along with those thoughts I have all the wonderings about my own decisions for the future in regards to work, finances, and wise planning.

When I think those overwhelming thoughts too long I panic and say "God, please HELP!!" because I feel like I'm out on a limb trusting Him--or at least trying to because there's no one/nothing else to trust!  And when I want to dwell on those worrisome thoughts I have to pull myself back to one day at a time. So, today everything is ok. God gives me the strength I need for today. And He provides what Daniel needs for today.

If other people see courage in me, then it must be God working in me. I can only do what He's called me to do because He gives me the strength....just like He gives strength to every person who is doing His will. In my own strength I feel so weak, and I hope that when people look at my life that they know that I am not amazing or courageous or strong by myself. It's all God. And I'm convinced that sometimes He calls us to do things that are so far out of our comfort zone so that we know that He's carrying us. In our weakness He can be strong. I take comfort in that.