fostering honesty- i could never...

This is the season of life (at least if your kids are at school in a traditional school year as we are) that we're meeting lots of new faces...  New classes, new meet & greets, new fall kick-off events, lots of new friends, lots of new parents, and if you're a mixed family like ours currently is, lots of new situations to introduce your kids (foster and non) to others and others to your present mix of a family.

Which often results in lots of questions and conversations for me.

Which is great, which I love... for so many people, orphans and foster kids aren't normally something they give much thought to and I love sparking those conversations.  I love hearing the inquiries, I love hearing the stories of friends or family members of others who might have done foster care or are maybe thinking about exploring foster care.  I never get tired of hearing it or of talking about it.  Love it.

But honestly, the one comment that still stumps me... the one that makes me stumble a bit and the one that makes me leary of whole-heartedly answering, in fear of coming off as soap-boxish... is the one question/comment that is hands down voiced most often to me;
"I don't know how you do it... the letting them go, the giving them back to their parents?"
"I could never do it... I couldn't love and care for and bond with a child for months on end and then say goodbye. I'd get too attached.  It would be too painful."

And depending on how well I know (or don't know) the person, I don't always know what to say to that.
Cuz here's the deal.
While I completely understand that reasoning; I absolutely understand the feelings behind it, and believe me I do know how hard it honestly is...
The complete bottom line answer is quite simply,
It's not about me.

It's not about my feelings.  It's not about how much I love them or how much I'll miss them or how hard it is for my kids to say goodbye to them or how I will worry for them for the rest of their lives.  It's not about how loving them and letting them go might completely stretch us or at times even feel like it might break us.  It just should not be about how hard it might be for me.

The bottom line is, it's about the kids.  It's about what they need.
How can my need desire to guard my heart, my fear of loving and having to let go, my hesitation of the unknowns... how can that trump a child's basic need for someone who is willing to offer them a bit of love and security when their world is turned upside down?

Honestly, it boggles my mind when people say "I don't know how you do that part of it", because I wonder... are we really that self-centered?
And please hear me when I say that I include myself as part of that "we"; I have the same fears and the absolute same instinct to want to avoid the pain... the same desire to just be handed a perfectly healthy, happy baby who'll stay with us forever and ever no questions asked live happily ever after...
But quite frankly, while I humanly, naturally want that, at the same time, it hurts my heart to think that our instinct to want to stop there is what is normal and perfectly acceptable in our culture.
"It seems too painful to me, so I wouldn't want to do it."
Isn't that essentially saying, It seems a little painful for me, so I don't want to help?

Because yes, of course it's hard.  Of course it hurts.
But you know what else hurts?  Way worse? And who is way less equipped to deal with and make any kind of sense of that pain?
A group of three little girls who've taken care of each other their whole short lives when their neglectful, mentally ill mother tries to kill herself, finally thrusting them into actual state custody.
Or a little boy, who's mother was murdered and who's father became clinically depressed afterward living in a fog of alcohol and drugs for way too long because of it before giving up and saying he couldn't/didn't want to parent anymore.
Or a sweet tiny baby who's the ninth in a long line of kids who's parents care about drugs and drama more than their babies.
Or a toddler who's been nothing more than collateral damage in an ugly domestic dispute.
Or a kid who's dad has to serve time in jail and has no family to turn to.
Or a baby who's mom is sick with addiction.

These kids have no choice.  They have no option to avoid the pain.  And that is real, life-changing, heart breaking -and ultimately, heart hardening- pain.
These kids get handed that; no escape, no avoidance, no choice, no "oh, sounds like it might be uncomfortable, no thanks!".

So here's what I want to say.
Before the next person tells me, “Oh, there is just no way I could ever do that, I would get too attached, it would hurt too much. I just couldn't do it...”,  I want to say this:
You could do it.
You could do it and it would hurt.
And you would cry when you have to let them go.
And you would think of them and pray for them for months and years to come.
And you would worry. You would always worry.
And... it would all be worth it.
Because I wholeheartedly believe we are given the opportunities to get to love on and know these children that God created for a purpose... He helps us love them, He helps us to attach to them, even if it's only temporarily.
Because it is what they need.
 

Because isn’t every child worth being cried over?
Isn’t every child worth the kind of love that makes it hard to say goodbye?

I believe that they are.  I believe that they all deserve at least a little bit of that.

So honestly, bottom line, that's how I can do it.