The Promise

I wanted to give you a little background into why I became a foster parent.

The story starts with a hysterectomy at age 26. I had always wanted to have children. I was devastated. I had many other abdominal surgeries as a child, and this one, physically, was not that much different. Abdominal incision, the same recovery time, only this time my life would be forever changed.

Shortly after the surgery, the man I would eventually marry, told me that he wanted to adopt children. This was likely one of the reasons I married him. (Okay, I know it was a bad reason.) We spoke of adoption many times and a couple years into the marriage we started looking into the adoption process. We went to one pre-adoption class and then things started falling apart. I still tried to pursue adoption while he kept coming up with one excuse after the other. Finally, after a couple years, it became obvious that we were never going to adopt and I would never be a mother.

I sank into a long and significant depression. My brother became a father, and he and his wife were expecting their second child. I remember that Christmas, when my sister-in-law was pregnant with her second child.  It was the first Christmas with a new baby, my parent’s first grandchild, and the excitement of a second on the way. That Christmas seemed, at least to me, to be all about the babies. Rightfully so. But I was in extreme emotional pain and my life seemed so empty. As an aside, my aunt was all about giving inexpensive, and sometimes recycled gifts. I had commented on her dish-towels a few months before and she “thoughtfully” gave me a dish-towel for Christmas. It was clearly second hand. My brother and his growing family walked out with lots of gifts for the baby, the one on the way, and the new mommy  (I truly am NOT resentful of that) and I walked out with a used dish-towel. A FREAKING USED dish-towel. It seemed to symbolize my life at that moment.

My depression continued on a downward spiral. My marriage had never been “good” and it was falling apart at the seams. At the same time, I began to feel an intense need to talk to my sister. I had a very strong feeling that she would be announcing a pregnancy soon and needed to make sure that she did not announce it in a public setting. I knew that I would fall apart. My need to talk to her became increasingly intense until I tracked her down and met with her at a business meeting she was attending. We went out for coffee afterward where she announced her pregnancy. I burst into tears. I told her that I really was happy for her, but could not stay because I was so sad for me.

I went home and had a very long cry. Then I dried my tears and decided that, since I was never going to be a mother, I was going to be the most involved aunt that I could be. I packed up the baby things I had packed away for the child I had once hoped to adopt, and took them to my sister the next morning.

I did become a very involved aunt. My world revolved around my niece. I dropped by my sister’s house on a regular basis to play in the pop up tent in her room, take her on walks, to the zoo, and anything else we could do together. When I was taking a photography class, I used her as my foreground for whatever the assignment was for the week. Ali and wheels, Ali and statues, Ali and water…. I took her to the children’s museum and took a series of picture with her playing grocery cashier and wearing a fireman’s hat on a play fire truck. Pictures of her were among the best I ever took. Oh wait, she was the focus of nearly all my photos.

I also had a another niece and two nephews, but did not have the opportunity to see them nearly as often. I greatly enjoyed the time I did get to spend with them. I did get to watch them a few times when my brother and sister-in-law went on job related travel. I so enjoyed watching them and taking them on day trips to parks, children’s museum, and other outings.

I truly loved spending time with all my nieces and nephews. I frequently said that I loved them as much as if they were my own. I really felt like being an aunt was enough for me. I had successfully, I thought, put my desire to be a parent behind me.

Several years later, after ten years in a much less than successfully marriage, we finally divorced. I was nearly 40, divorced and alone. My desire to adopt resurfaced but I kept trying to put in aside.  I spent the next few years living in rented rooms, or at best, a studio apartment. Now, I am not saying that there is anything wrong with that, but between age and not being able to support myself in more than a single room, there was no way I would ever be able to adopt. Many times the loneliness was overwhelming. I tried to cover it by spending time with friends, and drinking a bit too much.

In the mid 1990’s, my parents and I purchased a home together and I was able to spend a lot of quality time with my father during the last few months of his life. Shortly after that, my nephews came to stay with my mom and I for a few months. I was amazed at how incredible it was to have them in our home. I would rush home every day just to be able to spend time with them. It felt so good to walk into the house and have these two wonderful boys run up to give me a hug and greet me.  Oh my goodness, my desire to have children went from zero to sixty in no time flat.

When mom and I sold the house, I moved into my own apartment in Lake Oswego.  At one point, I felt an overwhelming awareness that God had a scripture for me. I would know it when I heard it but I was not to go looking for it. I truly felt that this scripture would bless my socks off. I did not know what it was, but was willing to wait.

I had a good job, a nice place to live, and for the first time, I felt that I was financially stable enough to adopt. So I began to research. Could a forty something, single woman, who worked full-time, really adopt? Internationally, no: Too old. Domestic adoption? Too expensive. What about adopting through foster care? I really did not know that much about foster care or the process of adopting though foster care. So I placed a call to the local county foster care agency. I talked to a woman named Maureen. That conversation would change my life.

Maureen and I talked for an hour. Adoption she assured me, was a very real possibility, as was being a foster parent. I would not likely be able to adopt a baby, but after having my nephews living with us for a short time, I think I had really warmed up to the idea of a little bit older children. Maureen encouraged me to attend the foster parent training classes. Was I really going to be able to do this? I was on cloud nine.

I eagerly attended each and every training session. I devoured the information. However, I, like too many adoptive parents, was wearing my special pair of filtered glasses. I would be able to state my preferences for what issues I could and could not accept in an adoptive child. If I felt that I could not handle developmental disability, stealing, lying, or any number of physical or emotional disabilities, I would simply state those preferences and they would be respected. So when I was in training  for those issues, I might not have listened as intently as I did in other training sessions. Little did I realize that most frequently, the foster care agency has little information about emotional issues in the children entering care. Even if they do know about issues, they are likely to paint a rosy picture. After all, they are trying to place the child, not talk the prospective foster or adoptive parent out of taking the child. The prospective parent is also listening with eyes blinded by love for this child. All too often, children are  placed in homes that are not equipped to handle the issues that will surface.

As I traveled through life as a foster and adoptive parent, I looked back on the conversations with Maureen and lessons in her classes and other classes I attended and wished I had paid more attention.

The 2 x 4.

Near the end of the foster parent training I was filling out my paperwork for fingerprinting and background check. It was time to decide; Foster parenting only or Foster to Adopt. I had to check one box OR the other.

That Sunday, I visited a new church in my ongoing search for a new home church. I had been searching for many weeks but had not yet attend this church right down the hill from my apartment.  The pastor was on week two of a series on Samuel.  That week, he was teaching from 1 Samuel 2. The topic was Hannah, the barren woman who had prayed for a child and her prayer had been answered. I was struck by the irony and moved by the message.

Hannah’s Prayer

Then Hannah prayed and said:

“My heart rejoices in the Lord;
    in the Lord my horn^[a] is lifted high.
My mouth boasts over my enemies,
    for I delight in your deliverance.

² “There is no one holy like the Lord;
    there is no one besides you;
    there is no Rock like our God.

³ “Do not keep talking so proudly
    or let your mouth speak such arrogance,
for the Lord is a God who knows,
    and by him deeds are weighed.

⁴ “The bows of the warriors are broken,
    but those who stumbled are armed with strength.
⁵ Those who were full hire themselves out for food,
    but those who were hungry are hungry no more.
She who was barren has borne seven children,
    but she who has had many sons pines away.

⁶ “The Lord brings death and makes alive;
    he brings down to the grave and raises up.
⁷ The Lord sends poverty and wealth;
    he humbles and he exalts.
⁸ He raises the poor from the dust
    and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes
    and has them inherit a throne of honor.

“For the foundations of the earth are the Lord’s;
    on them he has set the world.
⁹ He will guard the feet of his faithful servants,
    but the wicked will be silenced in the place of darkness.

“It is not by strength that one prevails;
¹⁰     those who oppose the Lord will be broken.
The Most High will thunder from heaven;
    the Lord will judge the ends of the earth.

“He will give strength to his king
    and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

I was moved by the message.  The pastor taught in depth about Hannah, her desire to have children, her LONG wait, and finally, the granting if the desires of her heart. Additionally the words of verse eight really spoke to me. Though I don’t see it as much today, I really felt that those words, were talking about me doing foster to adopt and not strictly adoption only. The following week, I attended that church again and the pastor again focused on Hannah from a different perspective.

So that week, when I turned in the paperwork and checked the “FOSTER/ADOPT” box. On the way home, my prayer was this. “Lord, you know how much I want this. I need to know that this is YOUR will and not mine alone. I need to know that you have placed this desire in my heart and that this is YOUR will. I want this so much that I really need you to hit me upside the head with a 2x4 so I will know for sure.

When I arrived home that day, I had a message on my answering machine. It had been left just about the same time as I had been praying that prayer on my way home from turning in the paperwork. It was from someone who was the least likely person on the planet to be one of my supporters, especially in the area of adoption. She said that in her daily Bible reading the night before she had come across a scripture, that when she read it, she knew it was meant for me.

She read, Psalms 113:

Psalm 113

¹ Praise the Lord.^[a]

Praise the Lord, you his servants;
    praise the name of the Lord.
² Let the name of the Lord be praised,
    both now and forevermore.
³ From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,
    the name of the Lord is to be praised.

⁴ The Lord is exalted over all the nations,
    his glory above the heavens.
⁵ Who is like the Lord our God,
    the One who sits enthroned on high,
⁶ who stoops down to look
    on the heavens and the earth?

⁷ He raises the poor from the dust
    and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
⁸ he seats them with princes,
    with the princes of his people.
⁹ He settles the childless woman in her home
    as a happy mother of children.

Praise the Lord

This was the passage that I had been promised. It was the third time in two weeks that I had been given this passage. The third time it was indeed a 2x4.  I felt that the Lord was saying, “you will be a mother of more than on child.” I knew that the desire to be a mother was a God given desire and he would give me the desire of my heart and would bless my socks off.