Monthly Archives: December 2018

What does Christmas Mean?

27 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in Christmas, Parenting

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I have a confession to make.  I have really mixed feelings about Christmas.

To give you a setting, I’m writing this post the week before.  All my kids are in town. (Yeah!)  Our business has had a good year, for which we are grateful.  Our granddaughter is officially adopted.  We are reasonably healthy and happy.  But I am having my annual inner dialogue about  Christmas.

Like carols.  People rave how great they are, but  I’m not buying it.  My husband will ask why, and I have no logical reasons. Those old, traditional hymns  need translation into modern English for me to understand. I learned them all as a child, but choose not to sing them now.

So it’s hard to get through church services during advent, and a relief when it’s done.  For me, traditional music puts a real damper on my enthusiasm for Christmas.

I turn off the old songs and listen to what my heart is trying to tell me.

I keep coming back to the gifts.  Do you get what you ask for?  There’s a running thing in our house.  For any gift occasion, if my kids ask what I want, I’ll say, “Obedient children.”  I’ll let you imagine if I get that.  (I DO keep asking.)

As a child I didn’t get many gifts, but enough to know I was loved.  Our church collected gifts for us preacher’s kids, and gave Mom and Dad money.  We’d have guests at dinner that added to the festivities, and gifts for each other bought with money we’d saved throughout the year.

As  adults, us siblings exchanged presents for many years until we all had kids and were more focused on THEIR gifts.  In our home my husband and I tried limiting  gifts to avoid feelings of entitlement in our kids in the early years, but it didn’t make any of us more pious.

Bottom line, I love having a room full of kids opening piles of gifts we’ve picked out for each other.

There.  I’ve said it.  For me, Christmas is about the gifts.

Which probably sounds really weird for a very grateful follower of Jesus Christ.

I love reading the historical truth of the circumstances of his birth, letting the details hit me fresh.  And I’m thankful for Jesus’ very real presence in my life. I just can’t reconcile  why the religious world in which I’ve always operated places so much importance on Christmas, and at the same time leaves me feeling vaguely pagan for enjoying the gift-giving so much.

I love it when someone knows me so well, inside and out, that they think of and find or create a something that is so perfect for me, the me they “get”, that I am ecstatic and moved and blubbering by the time I get it unwrapped and let the wonder of them finding such a perfect-for-me gift, wrap around me like a long, warm hug.

It’s not the “things” as much as the love I’m longing for.

And I love being the one who can occasionally think up that perfect gift for someone else.  I will admit I am not the best at this, because I absolutely hate shopping, but I have good intentions.

Having grown up in a family where we were poor but our needs were met, by parents who didn’t spend foolishly on frivolous things because they’d grown up with next to nothing, I have a hard time spending money on anything.  Ask my kids.  If it’s not a staple food it better be on sale.  If we need something for the house, same thing applies.  I rarely buy clothes or shoes or “toys” for myself, and it doesn’t occur to me to get them for my kids.  So I’m really bad at knowing if they have enough, and they often wait until they are low on inventory before they let me know.

Except at Christmas.  That’s when I splurge and have to stop myself from going into debt to buy all the things I’d like to get them.  It’s like I give myself permission to let my heart lead, and make my natural thriftiness be quiet for a few weeks, while I try to figure out what makes a good gift.

It isn’t always this way.  There are years when money is tight, we’re going through tough times,  when deaths tone everything down. Still there are gifts.

Matthew 7:11 (NIV)

11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

When I think of my own kids,  I have no desire to give them things that would harm them.  I often think of things I wish they would appreciate, because they could benefit from them, but they  aren’t ready yet, so I wait.  And if the day ever came when they approached me, asking for that perfect-for-them gift I’ve always wanted to give them, I would be ecstatic.

The decorations,  parties, tv specials and Hallmark movies, plays and concerts and yes, even the Christmas carols.  I don’t see anything necessary in any of it.

Except the gifts.

I’m not saying it’s all about the gifts.  But it’s at least partly about the gifts.  And the giving.

We, in the churches, often talk about Jesus being the real gift of Christmas.  No argument there.  Jesus, God in the body of a baby boy who grew to be a man who lived a radically different life and died an eternity-opening death that made it possible for us to receive the freely given gift of eternal life.

It will take to my last breath and beyond to understand the starting point for my faith.

So then to add that “then how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him” part is even harder to grasp.

You sacrifice your Son for the sin of the world, because I choose to disobey and turn away from you, and yet you say that if I come into relationship with you as Father, and me your obedient child, you will give me good gifts beyond forgiveness, salvation, being forever with you?

Am I brave enough to ask for those gifts?

Because right there is the only one who knows me.  I have spent my Christmases wishing someone would “get” me enough to give me a perfect-for-me gift, and all along God has an unlimited number of them ready.  Waiting for me to ask him for the gifts he has picked out just for me.  Seeking to know him through the gifts.  Knocking on the door and being welcomed in to open those gifts and laugh and cry and feel completely loved.

And even I, who is undeniably evil compared to God, hope that I’ve been able to give a few good gifts this year.

Baby A

20 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in Grandfostering, Parenting

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I have always been a very hands-on mom.  My kids were held.  A lot.  As much as possible for as long as they would let me.  When we got home from the hospital with our firstborn, we stopped in the doorway of the room we’d prepared for him, and I knew I could not put him down so far away from my heart.  So I followed my instincts, regardless of what any parenting expert of the day might say.  My children were all totally present with me as much as possible, waking and sleeping, breastfeeding for years, no rigid schedules, no idea how much they were eating, just the evidence of happy babies and children.  Secure, needs met, loved.

As my older children became adults, my thoughts would go to someday when they were married and had kids, what would my role be, how much involvement would they allow in caring for their babies?  Other than my husband and our mothers, very few people ever had access to ours.  Only time would tell how my kids would feel about me caring for their little ones.

I don’t remember talking with my older daughter much about how she saw my role, my duties, how much involvement she had in mind.  Honestly, I don’t think she realized how extensive it would end up being, caring for her foster baby while she worked those first few weeks.  And being a single, working woman, we’d never had reasons to “what if” about someday babies.

So that first day, meeting her first foster newborn, I didn’t want to overstep any boundaries.  What I wanted was to hold that baby girl! My husband and younger daughter got her first, taking their time learning her face, hoping for a glimpse into her eyes, into her.  It was so exciting!  We’d really had no idea that when they said our daughter would be certified by Thanksgiving, she would actually have her first placement on December 10: this three day old girl she had picked up from the hospital, and to protect her privacy had decided to call her Baby A to the general public.

My daughter loves schedules and plans and routines, and because of her nature and her schooling and her jobs working with little ones and their parents, she was eager to get this baby on a schedule, detailing when she’d had her last bottle at the hospital and what time it would be before she got hungry for the next one.  And I just had to keep quiet.

Because babies can’t tell time.

But before I had to worry about whether I was getting everything done according to the plan that would be detailed to me over the next few weeks, I most wanted to just hold this baby.

Finally my chance.

Jesus says in Mark 9:37:

“Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

I knew this child was not bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh in any material sense.  Nor was she born of my daughter.  But my arms knew how to cradle her, steadfast heartbeat how to pick up the faster rhythm of a tiny one and sense when it is restless or calm and slow the breathing and hold against warm skin, and feel the syncopation of two hearts taking each other in.

Welcome, welcome sweet girl.  How could I not know I’d been waiting for this very child?  Thank you, Jesus, for this gift.

There are no guarantees with fostering.  My daughter had no way of knowing how long this child would be in her home, in our lives.  But from that first day, there was something I knew for sure.

My heart was irrevocably, intimately connected with Baby A.

IMG_1801

 

 

My Heart’s Desire

13 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in Death of a child, Grandfostering, Parenting

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I’m not the only one.  Most of us have those days: anniversaries, remembrances, that even when we aren’t consciously marking them, our bodies remind us, our emotions cause us to burst into tears for no apparent reason.

The year before my daughter became a foster mom was full of hard things: my mom’s declining health and move to a nursing home, following advice to sell her house as quickly as possible that almost earned me a nervous breakdown, Mom’s decline and death, and my own situational depression for the months that followed.  And throughout that time our daughter was in classes to be certified to foster and adopt.

A welcome distraction from both the heaviness of life and a looming anniversary came when we threw a shower for her on December 4. Later that week she got the call for her first placement, and Baby A entered our lives on December 10, 2016.

But on the day before, my thoughts were with a different baby.

Our first two children were born almost two years apart, and we were completely open to having more, so we assumed we’d just keep having babies every couple of years and end up with eight or so.  But it didn’t go that way.  And seven years after our second child was born (that would be the one who grew up to be a foster mom), we were in a place where I felt God was promising us another baby.  My husband had given up hope.

We both wanted the same thing – more children – but our outlooks were at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Tentative conversations about possibly someday fostering came up, but could we maybe give it a little more time?  Or what about adopting an infant?  Maybe we could look into it later, if we aren’t blessed with more of our own in the next couple of years.

And there came a day when I knew before it was possible to know: I was pregnant again.

We had a whirlwind couple of weeks in which the pregnancy test was positive, the kids were ecstatic about having a new sibling, our midwife was on board to start prenatal visits.  Our son drew funny pictures of “Fred” as we were calling the baby, after my dad, with captions about his arrival on post-it notes.  Our daughter picked out new diaper pins (we were cloth only back then), and we washed up our diapers and receiving blankets.

Four weeks in,  I started having pains.  Just four weeks.  But the three days of labor I went through were as real and strong as with my first two births.  With a much different result.

December 9, 1997 I lost our baby.  Exactly one month after he or she was conceived.

So many women have had this experience.  Clinical words describe a harsh reality, but  cannot name the full impact of what happens not only to the body but to the heart of a mother.  And a father.  And a brother and sister.

It is a separate grief.

I can mark the date, say what it is out loud to those who love me, but it is still so deeply mine.  Alone.  I was the one who lost him.

Some years I have cried quietly for days, keeping to myself, finding I’m impatient with the kids for no reason, but not wanting to make them feel sad by explaining my mood.

Other years I forget until a day or two later, and feel guilty for not marking the day, for not remembering the gift that Isaac Fred, as we formally named the baby, was to our family, even for the short time we were full of expectation.

Several years after our loss, my husband got me a mother’s ring, and of course there is a stone, icy blue, for December.  And all the kids know the story I tell, how each stone stands for a unique person.  All our children are always with me, named, and known-five by me, one only by God.

Psalm 37:4-5 (AMPC)

4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart.

5 Commit your way to the Lord [roll and repose each care of your load on Him]; trust (lean on, rely on, and be confident) also in Him and He will bring it to pass.

 

That year my daughter got her first foster placement marked nineteen years of longing to hold my own little one in my arms.  So the surprise of holding a newborn the day after that sad anniversary was a healing touch.  I remember letting everyone else go first, it almost felt like a betrayal to want to hold a different baby when my heart’s desire was to hold my own long-wanted, much-loved child.

I was blessed with three more babies after we lost Isaac Fred, none of which I ever felt were a replacement for him (or her).   I had held other people’s babies over the years, but this felt different.  This connection, so strong.

Baby A snuggled right into me from the beginning.  Did it have anything to do with the timing, with my fragile state on that day?  I don’t know.  And I guess it didn’t matter.

Whatever the reasons – the deep sorrows, the pain of life – they were things God had worked through to bring about this great good, this love that overwhelmed me, when this child who was not related to my body became a permanent part of my heart.

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the desire of my heart – all my children

 

Expectations

06 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in Grandfostering, Parenting

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When I was first married, I never knew that once I started having children I would always be in a state of expectation.  For all the firsts: flutters, kicks, rolls and stretches, and that’s long before a baby’s due date.  Once they were born, there was always a next first thing.  And even though they don’t need our constant help or supervision,   our grown children keep us in a state of expectation, waiting for their next steps in adulting.

About two and a half years ago our grown daughter started yet another adventure, one we honestly sat back and watched to see if she would follow through.  Not that she doesn’t stick with things, but part of finding what to stick with involves trying things out, and there had been a number of experiences she had tried and decided to leave behind.

All that spring and summer we had been hearing about the new adventure:  taking classes that would allow her to become a foster mom.  We listened with interest, because we had gone through seven long years of infertility after our first two children were born.  We had started to talk about fostering when we were blessed with more children, so we never pursued the idea of fostering or adopting.

That fall, as her classes drew to a close, we had to start seriously considering what this would mean for our family, to have foster babies coming in and possibly back out of our lives.

This was not something we were prepared for.

My husband and I and our three teens still at home had not gone through six months of classes, hearing and seeing and reading all the ins and outs of what to expect when you get a call in the middle of the night asking if you can be at the hospital within an hour to transport a newborn to your home.  For an indefinite time.

We were, by then, living with a sense of expectation.  But I imagine that was nothing compared to the anticipation our daughter was feeling.

The classes were done, and she was told she would be certified probably by Thanksgiving.  This was getting real.

I joined with some of her friends to shower her with the practical things she would need to be fully ready to welcome a baby to her home, and the sense of expectation mounted.  Without the swollen ankles, the ever-urgent bladder, the heartburn and the trouble finding a good position in which to sleep.  This was on December 4.  A full week and a half past our “expected” ready date of Thanksgiving.

And three days later our world changed forever.

But we didn’t know it until December 10, when the call came, and since my phone was silenced,  older daughter facetimed younger daughter and we didn’t know what we were seeing at first.

A car seat.  With a baby girl, born December 7, 2016.  In my daughter’s car.  Can you run by the store and get this specific formula on your way over mom?  Yes, yes! And the mad dash to meet this wonder, this surprise.  It was really happening.

  See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland. – Isaiah 43:19 (NIV)

 

I knew we were expecting an exciting adventure.  A plunge into the world of Children’s Services, with fingerprinting and background checks, trips downtown when I had spent most of my adult life avoiding driving there, and the chance to hold and care for a newborn again while our daughter worked and the baby got old enough to start daycare.

It felt a little like venturing into the wilderness because of all the unknowns.  And we certainly hoped we would be able to provide refreshment and nourishment to a child who needed to be cared for, physically and emotionally.

What I wasn’t expecting, what took my breath away and what still undoes me every time I think about it, is this love.  This fierce, all-consuming tsunami of emotion I did not expect to have for a stranger’s child from the moment I first saw her.

Nothing had prepared me for grandfostering.