The Emotions of Foster Training

Our foster care training class usually meets on Monday and Thursday evenings, but tomorrow we're scheduled for seven hours of "non-violent crisis intervention" training. We were told to wear athletic clothes and that we'll have pizza for lunch but don't know much beyond that. After this course, we will be halfway through our training!

With each passing session, it seems that I am experiencing more emotions. There is so much to learn, so many preconceived ideas to break down, lots of excitement but lots of fear, a desire to plan ahead, the need to wait and learn more, wanting to psych ourselves up for this journey, but feeling beat down by the weight of all the trauma foster care brings.

In a perfect world there would be no foster care, no adoption, and no abortion. In a perfect world every child would grow up knowing the love and care that Stephen and I have been blessed with. In a perfect world drugs, abuse, neglect, selfish decisions, and crazy situations outside of anyone's control wouldn't wreck families. But we don't live in a perfect world.

It hurts to hear the things we are learning, to realize that these sweet kids don't just know these things, they LIVE them every single day. I don't feel strong enough or brave enough or wise enough for what we are going to do.

But the one thing I do have is Jesus, and He is who these little ones need. They need Him just like I need Him, and we're going to get to share the hope and forever home that He offers! He is the solid foundation we must build our shaky emotions on.


We're finally feeling some progress too! This week we've seen several milestones:

Our background check paperwork and fingerprints are DONE! Stephen was on "break" this week but has stayed so busy taking care of things at home and tackling these training items. It feels good to have turned in a big set of paperwork, our profiles, this week as well!

We also have our first real kid items in the kids' room now! (I mean, outside of our toys.) Our sweet friends from small group sent us a changing table along with lots of toys, stuffed animals and books!! We're feeling a little more prepared for that first call now and definitely excited to do some shopping for other necessities!

Donkey tested out the new carrier ;)

Yay for toys!

Next Monday night we have our first home visit, a relatively short meeting with our licensing specialist when he'll check out our house and give us suggestions on what else we can be doing to prepare for a little one. That's the first of three home visits, and the other two will be three hour-long interviews (as if allll that paperwork didn't get personal enough...) so we're just wading deeper into the process as each day passes.

Life has been busy the last couple weeks, with a long weekend trip to DC celebrating our 4th anniversary and Stephen's official transition to a 3rd year dental student (!!!), but now that it's settled out some more we'll be blogging more regularly! Stay tuned for details on our super-awesome DC trip!

~Buckwheat