This post is from Moms Take Ten episode 135, “Foster Care and Adoption–Grief and Hope”, which you can listen to wherever you listen to podcasts or at https://sites.libsyn.com/403493/foster-care-and-adoption-grief-and-hope
A week ago, I met up with other foster and adoptive mamas for dinner. We were sharing about our families, updating on case statuses, and discussing the general goings-on of our lives. Foster and adoptive families know some really high highs and some very low lows. And what I was reminded of that evening, is how sometimes something that to others seems like a high can actually feel like a low. How big moments in the court case or just in family life, can raise up a whole host of emotions including grief and fear and even anger, and maybe catch us off guard. I think that we have been trained to look for that in our children. Our trauma classes teach that our kids might not experience things as we expect. So we watch, we prepare, we do our best to support through. I don’t think that we have been trained to look for that in ourselves. We don’t know what to do when some of these feelings come up. Sometimes we don’t even know if we are allowed to feel them.
It has been just over a year since our case moved out of foster care and into adoption. For over three years, our lives had been guided by the courts, by the judge, and the attorneys and guardian ad litems and case workers. While we went about our daily life, there was always this cloud hanging over us. We never knew when something would happen. We never knew what that something would be. Even if we were told that such and such a thing would happen at the next court date, there was never a guarantee that it would. Most of the time it didn’t. Lots of postponements. Lots of waiting on zoom to be called into court an hour after the supposed start time just to be told that for some reason we’d do it all again in six months.
For us, the case could go one of two ways–she could be reunified with her mom or she would join our family through adoption. As the case went on, it became increasingly apparent that adoption would be best for her. The goal of the case was changed from reunification to sub care pending TPR in fall of 2022. TPR means termination of parental rights which has to happen prior to petitioning for adoption. TPR was supposed to happen in March of 2023. And then it was moved to July. And then it was moved to September where it did indeed take place. I share all those dates with you to show that we were waiting a long time. We knew it was coming. We knew what it meant for her and for our family. We had lots of conversations and said lots of prayers leading up to September 2023.
And still, the emotions of it caught me off guard.
For many, that day in court is a high. They are one step closer to being a forever family. The advocacy they have been doing on behalf of their child paid off and safety and permanency is more secure. So they rejoice and look to the future.
For me, it was a low. I grieved the brokenness of her first family and the loss for her mom. I feared the future and all the unknowns with caring for someone from a broken place. I had to lay down some hopes I had for my future and the way I thought our family would look in order to say yes to her. I’d been laying them down for years but still it was hard.
And those feelings didn’t just go away when the adoption happened. I hid in my room after and cried. I called a friend and asked how I was supposed to do it. I had made the decision, along with my husband, to say yes. I accepted responsibility for it, and still felt trapped by it. The weight of what we committed to was too much for me. The grief was too much.
I shared some of that at dinner the other night. They aren’t feelings I voice very often. I still feel some shame over them. Honestly, I surprised myself a little by sharing. But after I did, someone else felt comfortable and moved to share some of her own struggles, and we had a really beautiful conversation. Vulnerability, honesty over hard feelings, can create spaces of safety for others to share theirs.
Moms Take Ten has been a space where we talk about some of these harder things and we point each other to Christ. In the interviews throughout our foster and adoption series, mamas have been so incredibly vulnerable in sharing the both/and of their journeys. And every once in a while, I pop on and share some of my own journey to say that I’m right here in this too. I get it.
Kayla Moffitt is an adoptive mama, her instagram handle is @makingthemoffitts, and she recently posted a two part post titled, “We listen and we don’t judge. foster/adoptive mama edition.” I want to read a few things she wrote because they give words to some of my own thoughts:
- I’m honored that I get to be my children’s mother..but I deeply grieve the circumstances that took place in order for us to be together.
- I’m confident that this is the calling the Lord placed over my life…but I deeply struggle with accepting, understanding, and navigating it.
- I believe in the purpose behind this life in this space..but I wrestle with the weight that comes from carrying it.
Do you resonate with any of that also? You are not alone.
In her book Foster the Family, Jamie Finn says, “Your grief may be a lonely place, but this stranger wants you to know that I understand, that I’m there with you in it. And so much more than that–more important, more real, more comforting–God is there with you. When you sit with a broken heart, you sit in a beautiful place because–though you may feel alone–it is there that He is closest.”
Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is near the brokenhearted; he saves those crushed in spirit.”
We talked a bit about grief in last month’s episode of Moms in the Bible. The situation that the two mamas were facing, the death of their child, is one where grief is expected. What a horrible thing for any of us mamas to face! And we saw in their stories how the Lord met them in their grief while also providing a way forward for them. Moving to the New Testament, we find the apostle Paul writing to the Thessalonian church about death, specifically the death of a believer. He says in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, concerning those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.” He goes on to talk about that great and glorious day when Christ returns and we enter eternity with him.
Death is not the only situation, though, where we ought not grieve like the rest. All of our grief should be informed and guided by the person and work of Jesus Christ. When I mourn the brokenness in my children’s families, I can hold hope that Jesus redeems and restores and repairs. When I am reminded of dreams for my family that will go unfulfilled, I can hold hope that Jesus has new dreams for us to take hold of and different good gifts to bestow on us. When I feel the grief of the hard that we will face as my children sift through what it means to be adopted and wrestle, in their own ways, with the implications of their parents’ choices, I can hold hope that Jesus is right there with them, loving them in it and through it, and he can work in them to find their identity and anchor themselves in him. When I feel weary and wrestle with the weight of this life, I can hold hope that Jesus gives strength, shoulders our burdens for and with us, and gives us his light ones.
We are not ones without hope, Mama.
And when we struggle to find that hope, to feel and believe it, God is right there with us, carrying the hope for us until we are ready to carry it ourselves.
I can testify to this. For even as I still wrestle at times with being an adoptive family, I have seen the Lord working in my heart so much. He has brought delight where there was none. He has built a relationship up where once it was crumbling. He is bringing healing and new life where once there was much darkness and despair. The very things that I was fighting to hold hope for are already happening and will continue to.
“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13
Lyssa Stoyko 