Saturday, February 26, 2011

COMFORTABLE much?

I sit here in the comfort of our warm, cozy, big house....listening to our kids watch a movie on the big flat screen while they are all snuggled in their pyjamas. They still have wet hair and they smell good after having a nice hot bath. Their tummies are full from dinner and all is well in their world. Comfortable right? yup. We are sooooo comfortable.

Road to Fostering Part 2!


Brad rushes home from work, I slam a container of dinner in his hands and say goodbye to the kids and tell them to be good for Granny...... we're off. Butterflies? yes. Not really sure what to expect that first night of our pre-service foster care training...not sure who's going to be there etc. Not sure if we are ready to hear what they are going to tell us...just not sure in general. But here we go! "Remember Dana...I am with you!" (that was God....and He has to tell me that alot!) So we take a deep breath and walk in.

This would be the largest group that the social workers have seen in years for foster training. A group of 24 adults seems to really encourage the ladies running the session. Awesome! We recieve our binder of modules to work through; everything looks good. Lot's of bedtime reading it seems....  A few sessions in; we begin to meet the real foster parents and they tell us many stories of kids in care that they have had. One incredible special woman who ran the session has had over 400 kids in and out of their home in the last 20 years. Wow-a. She is the most selfless, beautiful, tender hearted woman who saw a need and ran with it. When listening to her true life stories of children coming into care, I had to bite my lip to try and stop the tears from dribbling down my cheeks. It didn't work. Not one bit.

I know that the world can be bad and that there are awful people out there; but I have kept it at arms length....I have kept it 'comfortably' away from my heart so that I didn't have to do anything about it. I didn't want to know too much about these kids in care; because we were 'too busy' to do anything about it. And let's face it; life might become less 'comfortable' for us if we ventured down this road..... uh huh. But then she tells us about kids in her care now who are waiting to be adopted....kids who aren't given a single chance. GET YOUR TISSUE NOW - A girl who is so damaged emotionally; because she was tied to train tracks as a toddler....the same girl was hung out over the side of a bridge by her legs. This girl is so angry and sad and needs a family to love her. Or the woman carried on to tell us of two little brothers who came into care; eventually a judge ordered their home 'safe' to go back to and two days later the ministry had to pick them up at the hospital with cigarette burns covering their abused little bodies. THIS IS REAL LIFE FOR SOME KIDS! Comfortable? Nope.

This isn't the movies; this is our city....our own backyard. I could go on about stories of children; or teens who abuse drugs because that's the only thing they've been taught. I could tell you about the young woman who was stabbed with a needle before the age of ten by her 'john' so that she too would be addicted to drugs and would be forced to prostitute alongside her mom and her grandma. This too is real. This is in our city. This is unacceptable. But we are to love; we are to go beyond ourselves and take care of the orphans...take care of the teens who are just looking for someone to have hope in them; someone to encourage them and to love them. We are to take care of the babies who cry endlessly for days on end because they were just born from the womb of their mother who was addicted to alcohol and drugs. Not so comfortable sounding anymore is it? Jesus wasn't comfortable either.....

The Foster Care system in BC is all about "Fostering the Family"- meaning their goal is to help the family get their lives back together so that they kids can come home.  The ministry encourages foster homes to allow the blood parent(s) into your home to teach them how to parent....to show them what a functioning, healthy home looks like. I'll be honest. This is a part that we struggle with a bit right now. With our kids being the ages they are...we don't want to bring any risk of any sort into our home. That being said, we do have some choices as to where visitations are to be held etc. I understand the whole idea of fostering the family; and I agree that ideally we want the kids to be able to go back home with their parents to a healthy, happy and loving home. But we have some praying and decision making to do regarding this issue...not sure exactly how open our door actually is.

All in all the sessions went by pretty fast. They were jam packed with information with how the system works...how we work with the system. The social workers invovled were very open and helpful with any questions we had; pretty encouraging really.

Now our next step is to fill out a pile of paperwork, criminal record checks etc....and then the home study will begin. For Brad and I; our long term goal would be to adopt so our route might be a tiny bit more involved than a normal home study. We would go on the 'foster to adopt' list....I'll tell you more about that soon!

Thanks for reading; and I'll ask you just one more question to consider.

"How comfortable are you?"

Signed by: an extremely blessed, happy woman who sits in her sweatpants with the crumpled up tissues that dried up her tears as she wrote......still excitedly anticipating the meeting of her next child. sooooo excited. ~sigh~

Monday, February 21, 2011

The road to fostering and adoption....

A friend of mine suggested that maybe I could write on the blog about our fostering/adoption adventure to keep everyone updated; but also to inform people about what the process looks like, what it takes to get started etc.  Perhaps this would help people not be scared of the whole idea and consider it for their own families. I totally agree with her! I think this is a great way not only to inform....but for me; putting my thoughts down in writing is often revealing and clarifies things go'in on upstairs ;) So stay tuned for each step up of the way and a few thoughts from Brad and I as we walk this adventure together...I have the best walking partner by the way! Here goes noth'in.....

HOW DID THIS WHOLE IDEA OF ADOPTION/FOSTERING START? Wellllllll...for years and years Brad and I have always thought that the idea of adoption was interesting and something we would like to pursue eventually. But that being said never thought about it much lately because we are in the middle of raising our family. We felt very content with our family just the way it is. Quite frankly, 3 kids keep us pretty busy...their activities, our activities, work, play, volunteering etc. Sometimes it just feels like we yearn to stay home for an entire day/evening and chillax with the family. We often brag about starting out having kids while we were young and will benefit from that when we are in our forties. Empty nesters.....time to travel, and adventure together while we're still 'young'....sounds good right? That's all fine and dandy until you feel some prompting in your heart.

One day, in the fall of 2010 I was enjoying a discussion with some wonderful ladies at bible study. We were talking about all the good causes we could help....needs in Africa; needs in Cambodia to help young girls stay off the streets and to not be bought to come and prostitute here in North America by sleezeball 'businessmen'. (don't EVEN get me started!!) And somewhere in our discussion one wise woman (same girl who prompted me to write:) simply asked the question: "what about the needs in our own backyard??" What about the poor here in Kamloops? What about the kids who go to school hungry in the morning who sit beside my own kids at school? What about the child longing to go to school to get away from verbal and physical abuse on a daily basis?  I could go on and on. The needs in our cities are enormous....so I found myself asking "Why don't we take care of people in our own city? why have we looked beyond our 'backyard'?"

This got me thinking. Adoption came quickly to my mind and soon engulfed my heart. I kept quiet for about 2 months just continuing to think about it and pray. I didn't bring it up to Brad yet because I didn't want to scare him with my crazy thoughts! Because seriously, reality is that we don't need any more kids! Our plates are full! right? LOL

So December was soon approaching....driving around the city running errands, dropping and picking kids up, shopping for Christmas; I spent alot of time in the car listening to the radio. I kept hearing one radio advertisement for the Dave Thomas foundation for adoption over and over and over. It seemed like every time I turned on the radio; I would hear that familiar voice. I took note of the website and one day decided to look it up and see what this foundation was all about. I left it there, thinking to myself that when I had some more time I would sit down and investigate a little bit more.

A few weeks later over our Christmas holidays; Brad was on facebook and came across an interesting article that a friend of ours posted from CNN. While I was doing my hair one morning; he came to me and said "You have to read this article; it's very interesting". So I asked him if he could read it to me while I was getting ready...cuz let's face it; I don't 'wait' very well and I was now extremely curious! I am posting the article below for you to read as well. This article was one of the key things that made us think God was trying to tell us something......
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/23/my-take-why-my-church-rebelled-against-the-american-dream/

Over the holidays it seemed again like everywhere we turned there was either a special on t.v. regarding adoption.....or another on the radio. I began to look into what was involved exactly with adopting in BC. We were giggling to ourselves because it seemed so CRAZY; yet just. so. RIGHT. to pursue this thought further.

At this point adoption was forefront on our minds. We liked the 'permanence' of it for our family....but a wise friend said to me..." don't rule out fostering all the way yet; just think about it....because if a child can come into your home and be a part of your family if only for 3 months. That just might be the best 3 months of their lives and it could be something that changes them forever."                    Oh boy. How could I disregard fostering so easily when she says something like that?

So to make a loooong story a tiny bit shorter! heeheehee.....after discussing adoption with our boys, they weren't particularly comfortable with the permanence of it. They were having a hard time grasping the idea that a child (not necessarily a baby) would just come and be a Friesen just like that. But for some reason, they could see the need much easier with fostering. So we decided to look into both. I contacted Interior Community Services to find out what our first step would be to both fostering and adopting within BC. We were quickly signed up for an 18 hour information session that would help us make some decisions.

I will go into a few details of this on my next post.....thanks for reading! Stay tuned for a bit more of our craziness!

Signed: An extremely blessed woman, wife, mom, child of God who's heart grows increasingly bigger each and every day anticipating the meeting of our next child.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Do you believe in miracles? Meet one!

Have you ever witnessed a miracle? I have to honestly say that I have been ever so blessed to see tons of miracles over my 'short' lifetime. But some people would say that miracles don't exist and I am posting this to show you your first one! Lucky you:):)

Today is a VERY special day; and I'm pretty sure I'll be in happy tears all day just thinking about it! Here's the story:)

 Payton.....( by the way.... Payt is my nephew and I am one of his very lucky Aunties!) This little boy in this photo just turned three; it's actually his birthday the day this photo was taken. That little sad face breaks your heart doesn't it? He's sad cuz he doesn't feel well....he had been diagnosed a few weeks prior to this with Leukemia and was being treated with alot of chemotherapy and various other drugs at the time. He was starting to lose his hair and his gorgeous long dark eyelashes; strange things were going on with his little body that he just didn't understand (nor did his parents) but they just had to trust the doctors and let them do what they thought was the right thing to do to help him. Who knew that the road of Leukemia would be over 3 years???!!! Seriously; did you know that?
Who knew that he would endure spinal tap after spinal tap, and take chemo every day for well over 1000 days of his life? Who knew that he would require steroids that make his brain think he might be a 15 year old boy that is starving all the time; but then told he can't eat because it would be too close to taking his chemo?Who knew that at any inclination of a fever; his mom and dad would have to rush him to the local hospital for blood tests and IV's to make sure he didn't have an infection. His body couldn't fight infection at all on it's own due to the chemo killing all of his immune system day after day.  Who knew that God would scoop Payton up his big might hands and carry him through the next three years of treatment and keep him safe? Who knew that this little boy would melt the hearts of every single person he came across?? Well. We all knew that; look at him!

Along the road of treatment, Payton did amazingly well. He often had that big smile on his face; and if he wasn't smiling, it didn't usually last that long. That has alot to do with the next people you will meet!



This handsome guy is Ryan. He wins an award for being a FANTASTIC big brother. Wow. Ry has travelled this road with his little brother; being frightened for him, feeling sad when Payton didn't feel well. Travelling back and forth to Vancouver all the time. I can't even mention all the things that Ryan has been for Payt cuz the list is too long! All I know is that this family is exactly as God planned it to be for a very good reason. They are meant for each other.

Now.....meet the most amazing parents EVER!

Remember your wedding vows? "For better or for worse; through sickness and in health"? I always thought that through sickness meant our own sickness; either my husband or myself. It has a whole new meaning now. Something like this can tear people apart. These guys watched it happen to other people throughout this process; it's not an easy road and can be very stressful on a marriage. But Steve and Kerri made it! They love each other more now than they did 3 years ago.... and it shows. They are pretty darn amazing and I sure love them alot!!....(here I go with those happy tears again! ) They have endured heartache, worry, stress, bucket loads of tears. They have put their lives on hold for three years to take care of their baby. They have done it all with extreme amounts of grace and dignity. Their faith never waivered for a second. They never second guessed God; they just went with it. Trusting Him, knowing that they would be ok. "On Christ The Solid Rock I Stand". AMEN!

So today, February 1st, 2011 is A VERY EXCITING DAY! This is the last day of chemo for Payton. (happy tears again!) Our kids were saying their bedtime prayers last night and were thanking God that today is the last day. And we joked around with them saying they could take Payt to school for their show and tell. They could say "My show and tell today is a miracle. A living, walking miracle. My cousin Payton has survived leukemia!" Not only survived it; but 'laid a lick'in on it!'   AMEN AGAIN!



 (tears again!!! It's gonna be along day:)
So.....now that you've witnessed a miracle with us............ Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your thoughts and kind words. THANK YOU for taking this journey with Steve, Kerri, Ryan and Payton. Keep praying! Even though he is done is chemo today; his immune system still needs to build up for the next few months; and then we pray for no relapse of the leukemia over the next year or two.
If you haven't experienced the trust in God that I talked about above and you would like to know what that is like or know more about it; please don't hesitate to ask me or someone else you know who shares the same trust. I can't imagine living this life without God. Payton can't imagine his life without God living in his heart either; and he could tell you all about it too! It's simply a free gift......

Thank you for sharing this day with all of us! Bless you and let's celebrate together!