Oh 2013, We will never have a year quite like you.

It's the end of the year, folks.  Traditionally, I have taken time during Christmas break at my parent's house to digest the past year.  This Christmas, however, I don't want to spend my time in Keller processing such a crazy year.  Mainly, I just don't want to cry for 10 days straight.  I instead want to play board games, eat puppy chow, and hope someone else cleans up Asher's poop if he doesn't make it to the potty.

So here I am today beginning to rummage through my thoughts of year 2013.

When Asher was born, a nurse asked something like, "Are you the dad?" and Otha had this incredible moment of stepping forward and thinking, "Oh, dang- that's me!  I am a dad!".  Obviously no one asked who was Asher's mom.  There was only one lady in the room laying on a bed, who had just delivered a placenta, and looked like she just went to war with fatigue and pain... and that was me.  When the nurse handed me Asher for the first time, I thought my heart would explode right then and there.  I felt this instant connection and deep love and 1,000 emotions all occurring inside of me at once.

I share that little bit, to then say: I did not feel that same connection with Malia (name we shall use for our foster daughter since we cannot use her real name on the internet and such).

Otha and I had countless conversations the first few weeks and months that Malia was in our home about whether we "felt like she was ours".  It sounds silly now, but back then it seemed important.  I had heard so many families who had adopted, either private adoption or through foster care, say that they just knew when a kid was theirs.  1) I do not like that terminology.  2) This made us very confused and try to read into our emotions way too much.  I am absolutely not discounting what these other families felt or saying that they were wrong!  Truly, I wish I would have had a deep, wonderful feeling when CPS brought Malia to our front door... or at least something equivalent to what I felt when the nurse handed me Asher for the first time.  But instead, I kept searching for something to click in order for us to know whether we would adopt her or not.

I wish I had kept count of how many times I have been asked in regards to Malia:  "Are you her mom?".  Probably the first 152 times I was asked, I would trip over my words and say things like: Well, no... uh, but yea, kind of... it's complicated... she is in foster care... I am her mom... but not her biological mom.  It was just uncomfortable for everyone.  My answer then became more concise over time:  I am her foster mom.

Then somewhere in the midst of sitting by her bedside in the ICU when she was sick and rocking her to sleep at home when she was healthy, I began to answer that question with: Yes, I am her mom.  

I could end the blog post here and pretend that it's a happy ending that I now identify myself as her mom.  But it's just not that simple.

I do identify myself as her mom now.  Malia sees me as her mom in every way that her young mind knows how to process provision and love right now.  People that we know identify me as Malia's mom now.  And all of those things are wonderful and heart-warming.  But there is a disconnect between the moment Malia was born and where she is today.  I will choose to believe that when Malia was born, her biological mom had this amazing feeling inside her heart when she saw her daughter for the first time.  And I choose to believe that her biological mom has an innate unconditional love for Malia... because she is her mom.  But for various reasons, Malia's biological mom was not given the responsibility to raise Malia.

 So then I enter the picture, trying to muster up a love that matches the love a mom has for her biological child.  And I fell short.  Every time.  I struggled through the beginning of this year, trying to feel something identical to what I feel for Asher.  Guilt, fear, anger, and confusion swirled inside of me every day as I tried to identify and sort through exactly what my love for Malia should look like and wondering why Otha made it look so easy and seamless.  Then a wise woman who counseled me though my darkest times this year explained to me:  I am just part of the redemption process.  My love for Asher would probably look similar even if I was not a Christian.  It's a natural thing inside of me to care for a child from my womb.  But adoption, that requires a new level of dependency on the Lord.  I have to look to the Lord and ask for love and understanding of Malia that I do not naturally have.

Don't get me wrong- I love this little girl to the moon and back.  But my love for her is different than I have ever experienced before.  It's not more or less than my love for Asher.  It's not better or worse.  It's just different.  And the moment I stopped trying to figure it out on my own and instead plead for help from the Lord, I felt a beautiful layer of love for her that I never could have imagined.  Expectations can wither my heart if I am not careful.  I had expectations to love Malia instantly and fully the moment she came to our home.  But I had to learn to throw those expectations away and have a blank canvas for what our relationship would look like.  It took time... and I love efficiency, so a slow process of anything is not my favorite.  But it seems like the best things take a lot of time.

In the scheme of mothering Malia, it's still not just about me.  The moment I received news that Malia's foster case was complete and we would now enter the adoption process, I cried.  It did not take me long to realize that my tears were not just tears of joy.  They were tears of sorrow.  I wept for a good hour that afternoon then off and on for several days.  I cried because I was so incredibly sad that Malia's biological mother would be missing out on the beautiful little girl that Malia is and the beautiful woman she will become.  I grieved on behalf of Malia that she would not have the opportunity to grow up with the woman who gave birth to her.  I sobbed for the brokenness of the situation and so many situations like it happening every day.

We are relieved and excited to have made it through a crazy year and to be legally adding Malia to our family in the coming months.  But we do not want to take lightly that our gain is someone else's loss.  So before you congratulate us on beginning the adoption process or say how great it is for Malia to be in such a loving family, please know the joy we feel is a result of a journey of pain for others.  Because in the end, if someone asks both myself and Malia's biological mother: "Are you her mom?" we can both legitimately say: Yes, I am her mom.  Just only one of us gets the chance to raise her.

Lesson learned from 2013: things are not as black and white as I want them to be.  Ever.  Things are not what I expect them to be.  Ever.  And both of these things are probably for the best.

"I'm just a penny on the train track, waitin' for my judgement day..."

You know why I love this picture?  It's cute.  And we are young and in love.

You know why else I love this picture?  Because we are walking on a train track.  Boldly.  Hand in hand.  You know what comes on train tracks?  Trains.  We are walking into the abyss as if to say "Bring it on, Train.  We are going to keep walking this path even if you come.  Even if we get flattened, we are going to keep walking forward."

That's how my life feels right now.  It feels like Otha and I grabbed each other's hand and decided to walk the track of foster care, following God's call in our life.

And we have been hit by trains.

Multiple trains.

Our little one is back in the hospital.  Again.  Round three.  Her body is fragile, mirroring the fragility of my emotions.  As she physically struggles, I struggle to cope with the unknown that we have invited into our life.

I want to step off the track to process our new life.  I want to scream "I need more time to figure out how to mother this little one who came to our family so unconventionally!".  I want to sit and pout like a two year old.  But there is no time for that.  We are pushed forward by a calling to fiercely love this tiny girl.

I wish I could take another "train track" picture, but one reflecting the state of our life right now.   Imagine tattered clothes, dirt, blood, and bruises covering my body, and a serious limp...mmm, like a double limp... and my hair is torn... and I am missing an arm (my left arm, so I can still hold Otha's hand with my right arm)... too much?  You get the picture?  You would look at the picture and say- "Those gross, nearly-dead people got hit by a train, and they are still walking on the obviously dangerous train track.  Crazies."

You are right.  We are crazy.  But I would not go back in time and make a different decision.  This has by far been the most challenging season of my life, yet the most rewarding.  The kind of rewarding where the Lord comforts me in the darkness where I am sobbing and questioning His plans.  Where I learn to receive from the Lord and others because I have absolutely nothing to give, nothing.  Where I have to face the ugliest parts of my soul, and still somehow believe that the Lord loves me unconditionally.  I am experiencing kingdom life, or in the words of my dear friend Lisa... Real life. The kind of life that sometimes (always) looks like dying.

And that's how it feels- like dying.  Like getting hit by train after train.

Yet we still move forward because the Lord is good.  And He gives life.

If I hear one more person say "I could never do what y'all are doing, that's way too hard", I may or may not punch them in the face.  We are not super heroes.  We are not endowed with special foster care parenting abilities.  We did not run out of all other easy life options and foster care was the only option left.  Did you not just hear how I am bruised and bloody and broken??  I cry all the time.  I wrestle through horrible thoughts and emotions everyday.

Just because something is hard doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.  The true, life-giving kingdom can be found in the most uncomfortable and challenging places.  I am not saying: everyone should do foster care.  I am saying: don't avoid what the Lord is calling you to do because you are scared.  As I have learned all too well the past nine months, fear is a terrible companion when trying to follow the Spirit. So kick fear in the gut and really ask the Lord what He wants from you.  

Then grab the hands of your people.  Step on that train track.  And walk into the unknown, for that's where real life is waiting for you.

Our People

Our foster daughter is in the hospital...again.  We have been here for three solid weeks.  Due to legal boundaries, I cannot give any more information about what hospital, what she is diagnosed with, etc. all you need to know is that we are not in Bryan for this ordeal.

What I really want to talk about is how we signed up everyone in our life for foster care when Otha and I said "yes" to taking in kids through the foster system.  It seemed like a decision that just affected our family.  Boy, was I wrong!  We truly committed our entire community to doing foster care with us.  And I cry thankful tears that none of them have protested, complained about new burdens to help us carry, or flat out punched us in the face for making their own lives busier.

Our family and church community did not begin participating after we received our first placement, they dove in months before that.  Who watched Asher during the twelve nights we did foster care certification classes?  Who logged a lot of hours putting our house together to help us pass all of our house inspections?  Who filled out recommendations and sat through interviews to prove that the Grahams would not murder foster children?  The most annoying of all the tasks, who had to get the impossible fingerprints done and deal with worst-mood-ever-fingerprinting-receptionist? (special shout-out to the Marions and Lisa; Michelle you got lucky). Our family and community.  They have been there since step one and have not skipped a beat since.

Fast forward almost a year since we began the process and we are still continually surprised and overwhelmed by everyone's love and support.  Otha sent out an email asking for people to watch Asher all week while Otha is at work and I am at the hospital; within 24 hours every single hour was covered.  One dear friend made me a CD of songs that spoke to a part of my soul that had previously been filled with hopelessness and confusion.  People gave us a crazy amount of money to cover expenses like hospital parking ($12 bucks a day!  Who wants to run for mayor and get that changed?), food, and gas.  We are staying with a friend's parents for free and have multiple other offers of free lodging offers.  Two moms traded days watching each others' kids so that they could each come visit me.  Another friend drove down just to watch Asher for a few hours so that Otha and I could be at the hospital together.  My mom spent a whole week here so that I could spend time with both Asher and our daughter.  We have received many phone calls and emails from people encouraging us, some whom we don't even know very well.  That is a small fraction of the ways people have come around us and said with their actions "we will do foster care with you".

Needless to say, we have been taken care of on all levels.  I don't have many tears left after these few  weeks, but I never fail to tear up when I reflect on how people have loved us.  Sure, we believe in taking care of the orphan, but more importantly so does our community.  We believe suffering comes with following Jesus; our community believes they should function as the Body of Christ and carry each others burdens and suffer as one.  We believe that God can heal our little girl and thus our people pray incessantly for her.  They do not treat her or our situation any differently because she is in the foster system or because she technically is not "ours".  They are treating us with the same fierce love that they would have if it was their own flesh and blood.  One day, I hope to tell this little girl 
how deeply she was loved by this group of people when she was struggling for her life, the deepest love she could ever imagine.  And it's all an outpouring of their love for Jesus.  

If you don't have a community of people like that around you, you are missing out.  

I am thankful that everyone said "yes" with us to be foster parents, whether we actually asked them or not.  By committing to our community, we commited to support each other through joy and suffering for the sake of the gospel.   I can only hope to follow everyones example and say "yes" with my actions to others people's journey of spreading the kingdom.  

Unspoken Question

"So... how's the whole having two kids thing going?"

I get that question often.  At this point, I am fairly rehearsed in my answer and feel good walking away from a perfectly normal conversation.

I sometimes wonder if people want to ask this question instead: "So... how's the whole having a kid in your home whom you not only didn't birth, but have no idea whether she will leave tomorrow or be in your family forever thing going?"  Or maybe that's just the question I am wishing people would ask.  For everyone's sake, I am glad that I am not asked that question on a regular basis.  But tonight I want to talk about it.  Tonight I am going to pretend that someone just asked me that very question.


Our baby girl has pneumonia.

I hate that she is sick.  Hate it.  I wish I could just make it all better.  She has been sick for awhile now, but today we got the new diagnosis.  Now she seems even more fragile, which I did not think was possible in my mind.

But you know what I think about when want to hold her more because she is sick?  "Would I hold her even more if she was Asher?  Would I stop everything else to tend to her if I knew for sure she was going to be our daughter forever?  If I had given birth to her would I just not have let her cry that extra 30 seconds while I finished loading the dishwasher?"  These kinds of thoughts swarm through my head daily.  Daily, people.  All day long.  I am constantly calling into question whether the amount of attention she receives or doesn't receive is due to her being the second child in the family so I am naturally split two ways now OR is it because I don't know if she is my forever daughter?

When I think about her being in a forever family with her biological siblings, I am excited for her life.  But I also become emotionally numb when I get in the rational mindset of rooting for this reunification with her siblings.  Because if I let my emotions get involved, I feel crushed.  I know that with some foster care cases, it's a difficult fit and therefore you honestly are ready for the kid to move on to a life beyond your home.  However, this is a tiny, precious baby.  I am not dealing with a kid bringing in attitude due to heartache, or violence due to a lack of feeling safe.  I am dealing with a sweet girl who is starting to cry if I hand her to another person because to her - I am her mom.  She associates my smell, my touch, my voice with having her needs met.  If or when she is put in another family, I know that she will be fine reattaching.  But selfishly it sucks.

I wish I could have breastfed her from day 1 and built up her immune system better so she could fight off things like pneumonia more quickly.  Or I wish she had not been born so prematurely so that her body was not at such a risk for illness.  Or I wish that she didn't have any trauma in the womb that will have lasting consequences affecting the rest of her life.  Or maybe I just wish I didn't care so much.  Because caring hurts.

I love this girl a whole, whole bunch.  Thirty years from now she maybe calling me to check up on her aging mother... or she may just be an entry in my journal about our foster journey.  And either one of those has to be ok.  Either way I will love her now.  And either way I will struggle to know how to do this foster care thing well.

 Thankfully I have a God who is gracious in the midst of my mistakes and a constant peace in the midst of my craziness.  I truly only know how to take this process day by day, begging God to help me.

That's how the whole having a kid in your home whom you not only didn't birth, but have no idea whether she will leave tomorrow or be in your family forever thing is going.

I am so glad you asked.