Eleven years ago, she came into our lives.
It was a Friday night around 6 pm.
We had 12 hours to prepare.
She was three years old and on the hip of the Safe Families for Children Director. Her blonde golden locks were tied up like a palm tree on top of her head, a thumb was stuck in her mouth, and a small white stuffed kitty cat was perfectly placed underneath her right arm.
After the director put her down on the floor of our foyer, I showed her around while Dan reviewed the paperwork. After we signed, he left. Dan and I looked at her as if to say to each other, “Now what?” Up to that moment when she walked into our home and our hearts, we had six other children come and stay with us for weeks, sometimes just days, within the program. But they had all been boys.
Not knowing what to do, I handed her a baby doll tucked away with the toy trucks and asked if she wanted a chocolate chip cookie I had pulled out of the oven. She took one bite of the cookie and never picked it up again. To this day, she doesn’t eat chocolate chip cookies.
Soon, we left to eat dinner at McDonalds. She was three but challenging to understand. So when we sat down, her in a highchair and Dan and I on either side of the booth, she kept asking for something, but that something she wanted, we couldn’t figure out. Finally, after bringing her salt and pepper packets, extra straws, and ketchup and moving around her cheeseburger, I realized she wanted a napkin.
Of course. A napkin. I still giggle at this.
Funny how she wouldn’t eat without a napkin back then, but now I can’t get her to use one.
She was only supposed to stay with us as a family of three for two weeks. But two weeks turned into a month, and a month turned into the Safe Families for Children Director telling us she would need to leave the program as the Department of Children and Families would need to get involved. Since we were a licensed Host Family with Safe Families for Children and not a licensed foster parent, she needed to move. And suddenly.
Thankfully, at her mother’s request and a signature making us godparents, she could stay as long as we became licensed with the State of Illinois.
It feels like it was just yesterday when we all endured 1,273 days of the ups, downs, uncertainty, heartache, and fears that come with fostering children. But at the same time, it feels like we’ve also experienced a lifetime of laughter, vacations, trips to the Library, dinner around the table, and movie nights on the couch that were free from the fears we all once had and the uncertainty that kept us up at night during the long days of foster care.
I’ll never forget when I picked her up from kindergarten, and she asked when her last name could be the same as mine and her daddy’s. The disappointment on her face when I told her, “I don’t know,” is etched into my heart. But I’ll also never forget her clapping and squealing as her tiny six-year-old frame jumped up and down in our laps when the judge declared her forever ours.
As someone who has a degree in social work and spent years working with children in the system, and as a once former foster mom and now an adoptive mom, it will never be lost on me all that happened to her so that together we could stand in this moment. She lost so much, but as she often reminds me, she gained so much in return.
God does make beauty from ashes.
In fact, her favorite song is “I Thank God.” As she belts out the lyrics, she often reminds me that He picked her up, turned her around, and placed her feet on solid ground.
She thanks her Master. She thanks Jesus.
The same Jesus who never wanted her to endure the pain of her early childhood. He didn’t want her mother or father to experience the loss of life within their home either. But this world is fallen and broken. There is sin and addiction. There is an enemy of our souls. And there is also the free will of man. But God steps in and works so beautifully to redeem it all.
The enemy tried to have her.
But God said, not today.
Here’s to 11 years with our foster princess, now teenage daughter.
I’ll love you forever.
