I have so many mixed emotions about foster care and adoption and that has been keeping me from writing about it. I knew that it had been awhile since I last blogged about anything related to foster care but when I looked today at my blog I realized that I haven't written anything since 2 days after our little foster girl left (about 8 weeks ago).
Our family life is drastically different now. There are only four people in our house and we are able to relax. Our bodies and minds are recovering from living in extreme stress for six months. The boys behavior is getting back to a healthy state but there is always room for improvement. We still see some lasting behavior that developed during foster care but that will change with more time. The first week with the two boys was very difficult still dealing with their recently developed behavior challenges but since that week, things have steadily improved. We have now been a family of four for 8 weeks and it stills seems to soon to be healed. We are still processing everything.
Our family has been healing and I am sure the healing will continue. We accomplished something big by taking another child into our home and a difficult child at that. I thank God that He was with us throughout everything and that increased our prayer time. But I also know that we didn't succeed at adopting a child. I have a life goal list and on that list are many things including foster a child and adopt a child. We accomplished one but the other did not happen. Some may call it a failed adoption. I know there are some that are thinking that. I also know that God is bringing more good out of this than I thought possible. So I am going to keep praying that God will continue to bring more good out of this difficult situation.
I am not sure what lies ahead for our family. There are times we think that this (foster care or having 3 kids) just isn't our ministry and God has gifted us with other talents. Now we can shift our focus to pursuing other things we are passionate about. But there are other times that I think maybe these 3 kids weren't our ministry and that this just wasn't our time. I can't say that we will never foster a child again or that we will never adopt a child. I don't know what is in our future. I know that we will not intentionally be changing our family size any time soon and we will not be doing foster care any time soon. Our family needs more time to heal and our boys need some more stability. I see that more now than ever.
