What I Hope for Your Heart

Dear S,

We’ve had a hard week. We dropped J off with his Grandma on Monday. She was very nice and excited to see him. She also seems interested and engaged in taking good care of him. It was easier to leave thinking that Grandma was nice and wants him to be happy and healthy. Our hope and prayer is that this is true.

You gave him a big hug and kiss. We all cried a little (J was crying a lot) and then we met Mae Mae for ice cream. It was nearly supper time and the ice cream ruined our dinner but our appetites were mostly already gone and the ice cream helped.

We’ve talked to you about what’s happening with J since we’ve known he was leaving. You don’t seem to really understand but that’s ok. You’re just 2! You do ask about him often. Every time I hear your sweet voice say “Where JJ go?” I cringe and catch my breath. I tell you every time that he went to live at a different house. Usually you’re satisfied with this answer for about 20 minutes and then you ask again. “Where JJ go?” A couple of times you’ve said “Me different house” and I know you want to go with him. I wish we could see him, Sweet Girl. I miss him too.

The reason it is hard and that it hurts is that we loved him well. He is a part of our family and it always hurts when part of your family isn’t with you anymore.

You’re just a little girl but I wonder about how being a part of a foster family will affect your heart. Even though you’re not officially our daughter yet, you’re our daughter in every way but one. I can’t wait for the day that I can promise you that you won’t ever have to leave our house and go live somewhere else. For now, I can just promise we are doing everything we can to make that happen. (And we’re excited we can adopt you together thanks to the Supreme Court Ruling this summer.)

I can’t imagine doing anything that would hurt you on purpose. Bubbie and I try to make decisions together that are good for our whole family. I don’t want continuing to foster to hurt you. Foster care hurts our hearts and minds sometimes when we have to say good bye or we don’t understand but we’re grown-up and can choose that. Is it fair to choose that for you?

Here’s what I hope being a part of our family does to your heart. I hope that you get to love all kinds of people. I hope that your heart learns how to open up and welcome others in. I hope that your heart learns how to feel deeply and care about the needs of others. I hope that you learn how to guard your heart against things that will hurt, but not against love. I don’t think we should ever guard our hearts against love.

I don’t want your heart to break, but I know that’s a part of love. If we don’t care about people it is easy to never feel sad. We are sad now because we love JJ so much. But I wouldn’t trade back one day with him even if it meant we wouldn’t feel sad now. I am glad we opened our hearts to him and knew him and love him.

I hope that as you get older we can talk about this more and more. I want your heart to be ok. I want you to be able to talk to me about how you feel. I want being a part of a foster family to be a healthy thing for all of you – not just your heart. Your Bubbie and I will keep thinking about you as we make decisions about what’s good for our family. There are a lot of things in the world I want to shelter you from, and the situations that could bring kids into our home are some of those things. BUT, I want to you know that for every bad or scary thing, there are good and hopeful things. There are days that will break our hearts – but there are also days full of love. And those days and that love is why we do this. We all need love.

We love you Sweet Girl,

Mama

P.S. I know your world has turned upside down - but please...you've got to start having sweet hands more often than not at school. Even when we're sad, we can't hurt our friends! I think mostly you just want to boss everyone around and make them play with you but that's not love and that's not how we make friends. We talk about this too, but hey - you're just two.