Friday, March 20, 2015

I can do all things....

The other day, I was talking to one of my friends on the phone and I told her I thought I needed to email my resource worker and tell her that we could take a child for a short time if they needed us to.  Not respite, but a placement.  Doing that is always tricky because they may or may not move them!  If you are doing respite, you know they are only there for a set number of days.  However, with the influx of kids coming into care, I just felt like we should do something.

That was Wednesday morning and in typical Tamra fashion the day went on without me emailing.  I didn't think much more about it and at 4:15 my phone rang.  It was DHS needing a placement for a 1 year old Hispanic girl.  I said yes, but we could only keep her through the weekend.  This lady was thrilled and told me the caseworker would be calling me.  Well, this caseworker was great.  She showed up at my house at 6:30, with her kid in the car too, and sacks of clothes, boxes of diapers, wipes, socks, shoes, etc.  It was so nice.  She handed me a TINY baby and headed home.

J. O. got home about this time too and got to work on the crib and I gave her a bath, got her things sorted and tried to get her settled.  She was a mess, bless her heart.  She had literally just come into care and little did she understand how much her life had just changed in a day.  She didn't sleep well, she didn't feel well, she wasn't used to so much stimulation and quite frankly life was just tough for her.  But, I loved this little girl immediately.  I thought of various ways to make keeping her for a placement work, I thought of ways to fit the crib in our closet so we could all sleep better, I thought of it all.  But, God told me that wasn't the plan.  The plan for this placement was for me to truly do what I said.  Help out until a more permanent foster home could be found.  So I did.  I rocked her, I held her, I cleaned her, I dressed her cute, I fed her until I thought she might pop, I played with her and today, they called, and I packed her clothes and sent her on to house #2.

I am no different than you.  Wednesday night, Trey and Addison were with Cecily watching a movie and J.O. and I had actually planned a quiet night at home with the little girls.  I was looking forward to an easy night and it quickly turned into something more.  I am no different.  J. O. is no different.  However, when Addison walked in that night and came in our room and saw a new baby crawling on the floor; she went crazy.  She screamed, she squealed, she took her to her room to show her the toys and she understood she wouldn't be with us long.  They learned part of her story and I can promise you even though she was only with us for 2 1/2 days, they will talk about her for a long time.

In Bible study one of our weeks was on the fact that we can do all things through Christ.  We can.  You can.  I can.  We can change our focus so quickly when we are driving home and get a phone call. Our focus can change from what's for dinner to wondering if we need to stop and grab formula.  Please pray for these kids.  As much as I wanted to keep this baby until she either went home or moved to someone else, we couldn't.  Please pray for these workers. They are tired.  Please pray for the foster families.  The families who ARE taking placements even though their house is full, their lives are hectic, and their time is short.  We are all busy.  We are all running on fumes, but when Christ is our strength....we can do all things through Him.