You can’t withhold your heart: Making sense of my year as a foster mom

As many of you know, about six months ago, I finished out a one-year stint as an emergency foster parent.  Over a span of 12 months, I had 12 different children come in and out – and sometimes back in again – ages 9-17, staying anywhere from one night to several months at a time. It was chaotic, exhausting…and the most meaningful thing I’ve ever been a part of.    

I think most people have some understanding that fostering is not an easy thing to do.  In fact, I have to laugh at how many times people would respond by saying: “It takes a special person…”  And it’s true, fostering is hard.  Children coming to your doorstep with only hours’ notice.  Building trust with kids whose lives have been shattered by trauma and loss.  Addressing each one’s unique needs – whether it’s that they can’t calm themselves to sleep at night, or that they run away or pursue unsafe relationships.  Hard stuff, for sure.  But you know, even more than all that, the hardest part of being a foster parent is that to do it well, you can’t withhold your heart.

I learned this right away because my very first placement was only going to stay a few days, and yet before I knew it, he had won me over.  Maybe it was the way he talked about life with me – 17 years old but in many ways, too wise for his years.  Maybe it was how he kept his bedroom door open, even when he slept.  Maybe it was when we binge-watched Stranger Things together or the way he got me to buy all his favorite things at the grocery store.  Like most all of the kids who came to live with me, he simply appreciated that I cared, and I knew right away that the best thing I could give was not my meals or even my wifi password…but my very self.

Yet, that is so much easier said than done.  It may be that we offer ourselves and are open to relationship, but the child isn’t ready.  Or, we build meaningful connection, but it ends in loss. I experienced this most poignantly when a 10-year-old stormed into my life last winter. She was fierce and loving…and never went halfway.  She could throw a tantrum like the best of them, and she loved so big, she would bulldoze-hug you right to the ground. Every amount of progress made was a lot of work.  Whether it was bedtime, baths, or homework, it was often a fight.  I became a pro at creative compromises and decoding what she was really saying through her behaviors.  All the while, I could see that this relationship was different than what she’d experienced before.  I could see that we were bonding in a real and meaningful way, even though we both knew this wouldn’t be her forever home – and I couldn’t be her forever mom.  I will never forget the day she left, a few months later.  The loss was so great, I felt like I was hit by a truck. I cried for my own loss, and I cried for hers too.  I laid in bed at night, wondering if someone told her a bedtime story and knowing that I couldn’t be the one anymore who helped her feel safe and loved.

Was it worth it? I wondered, when all was said and done. But I knew in my heart it was.  I knew that the right thing, as usual, was not the easy thing.  That even though the loss was real, our relationship helped create a new and better mold for her relationships to come. That now she knows, better than before, what it feels like to be loved and cared for.  That love poured out is never wasted.

There are so many things I wish I’d done differently in that year.  There are so many questions I still have about the best way to help a hurting child.  But the one thing I really don’t regret is giving of myself.  Maybe it doesn’t take a “special person” after all, but a willing person who’ll enter the mess and not withhold their hearts.  Someone willing to be uncomfortable and learn from it.  Someone willing to invest in something they can’t keep.  I am so thankful for each of these children I’ve had the privilege of knowing.  They are truly the heroes in all of this.  They taught me so much about life, loss, and resilience.  They taught me what it means to keep an open heart in a broken world.  They taught me about Minecraft, and Ariana Grande, and the best Costco snacks.

And they taught me how to love a child…and how to let one go.