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~