Our youngest child turned one yesterday. She’s not really ours yet, though. She is our foster baby, currently waiting in a legal limbo, for courts to open up again so she can be legally freed from her birth parents, and then the county’s plan is for us to adopt her.
It is very strange to be in this place of being joyful over a child’s milestone, and yet realize that she’s not technically mine. We’re not yet guaranteed a future together. And so we take each day, each milestone as its own special gift. I try to hold off on thinking about the future too much.
Baby E came to our home when she was just a few days old. I picked her up at a hospital in our nearby city, a hospital well-known for its substance-abuse births. There was some discharge paperwork holdup, so we ended up having a few hours to ourselves to get to know each other.
Looking back, I am thankful for that time of waiting together. I snuggled her newborn little body. I fed her a bottle. Changed her tiny diaper. Snuggled some more. She was so peaceful, content to just look towards the window or into my face. In many ways she is the same baby a year later… happy and content. She doesn’t realize the legal events going on around her.
Caring for children in foster care and adoption is a reminder that even my birth and adopted children aren’t really mine. They are with me only for today, and I’m not guaranteed a future with any of them. They could be stricken with cancer next week, or get hit by a car (both these are real possibilities, that have happened moms in my circle of aquaintaces).
My God-given task is to love them today, and teach them about their Maker. Lord, help me to really be with them all today, to really see them and hear them, and point them towards their God who loves them so much more than I ever can.
Autumn's Writing 