Just Foster Mom

Last Sunday, Holger and I went up for prayer for our court visit with all our foster children, as one of our girls was very anxious and had been like that for weeks, at that point I felt if she saw that we had support and family at church, she would feel braver!  I had done my best to prepare her.  I had done my best to prepare my social worker and make sure that she had the support she needed, as she did only get our case in July, although handed over in January.   I honestly thought that it was going to be easy to move closer to my forever family after the last few years journey.  This was the court date that would change the threat and we could get on and live our family as best we could with all the challenges we had already faced!  I really believed it!

It turned out that the report that would have really helped was not there, the social worker working on our case until the beginning of the year had not even bothered to hand over to his successor well and the report written by them for our new social worker was dismal, a simple little paragraph on each child.  Our new social worker felt she could do court with out all the extra help… bottom line, it was a terrible experience and we were not at all prepared for what was to come.  I felt again that I was left on my own, when I really could and should have been helped!

I have been quite open on Facebook, about how hard last week was.  The court case was very disruptive, and my girls had to witness it all.  My one daughter is nine in a few weeks, both her and her sister understood every little thing that was said and all that was not said!  The saddest for me is what has happened to her trust in us, as we were clearly reminded that we have very little influence in this…

The most shocking part for me, was that our story of the girls and their origin story was not accepted.  The Judge said it was not a statutory report.  She only accepts the reports of the social workers and would have accepted the Psychologist’s report, but it was not there!

The Judge reminded us, as she did the first time we stood before her two and a half years ago, that Holger and I are just the FOSTER PARENTS.  Our job always is to put the children back where they came from… I am just a foster mom!

We are realising as a couple three years into this journey that our going in for FOREVER was only really going to come easier if we had gone in for “real” orphans and did the slow and painful wait at the start.  Desiring to have children who had no chance of going home, that would have found themselves in long term institutional care and fallen through the cracks if left there. We would be that home they need.  A forever home!  Going to an institution where children had been abandoned meant that we as a family were addressing children lost in a system as there are many of these in our country.  We realised now looking back that the social worker at the original home and the nursing sister there had not given us all the correct information and at the time we also had a social worker who believed with us in our forever dream.  It was supposed to be easy!  

There is no easy way to do foster to adopt and as I learnt last week… apparently it is impossible? 

So, I sit at the beginning of this new week, with all that lays ahead of me and I remind myself that the God I serve has a greater respect for these children and He most certainly does not see me as just a foster mom, or just a woman, or just anything that has been thrown at me to belittle my affect and my influence over the years, but I am His JUST foster mom!  He will back me!