we've got a due date! :)

Vermon and I have been saying "sometime in November" for a few weeks now, but when exactly has remained up in the air. Back in August when we made the decision to become parents again, November felt a long time away and I thought we would say "November 1st!" But the closer we get, the more room there is for nervousness and questions like, "are we SURE we're ready?" Vermon and I joke that God has pregnancy last 9 months, because if it was any shorter people would never have the confidence to try to get pregnant in the first place. Somehow having a baby come almost a year away gives this illusion that even though you aren't ready now...you can get there, but if we were all honest, weeks leading up to new baby there is probably an uneasy questioning about how this new little person will change our lives.

  But it is up to us when we want to "be ready"...we could put it off another week, another month, or change our minds entirely...so how exactly do you pick your own due date? If I let things on our calendar determine when it would be the perfect time, then this baby would never come... Instead we're going to have to clear out our life for the end of the year while we adjust to life with a newborn and a 4th child.

So, we got out our calendars and looked at the next 3 jam packed/full months and decided to circle, Monday, November 28th...so I guess that is sort of our due date! Our names will go on the CPS registry and that day (or within a few days) we will get a phone call...

I've been busy re-organizing the house, finding space for new baby clothes, and trying to read what I can about helping newborns heal who have been exposed to drugs. I've begun to clear out our calendar for December and started thinking about how to get our family to survive on Spaghetti for 6-8 weeks. So, I guess "nesting" isn't just something that happens in pregnancy...it must be a God-given instinct to expectant adoptive mamas too. :) 

where does a beginner start if they are thinking about foster care, but hesitant?

I had a great question posted on a post I wrote a few weeks about about the need for foster families. If you ever have a question that you'd like me to answer, feel free to leave it here and I'll do my best!

 It was such a great question I felt it required an entire new blog post! The question was...

“My husband and I have been considering foster care but are worried about the impact it will have on our very young children. Do you have resources you’d suggest or ways to start looking into working in foster care for the beginner?”

  

    I completely understand that fear! Our family has had different opportunities over the years to have different children (various ages) a part of our family for short (or long) periods of time…we have had to say "no" more often as our family has grown because we didn't feel we had the capacity to meet that child’s needs while at the same time meeting the needs of our current family.

    When we started our foster parent classes, our agency told us that it was vital to know your current family well before fostering. It is important to make sure that you (and everyone in your family) are in a position to expand your role as mother, father, brother, or sister. 3 years ago we were in a position to bring a 4 & 7 year old sibling set into our home, but right now we could not do that. There have been certain teenagers we have let join our family and live with us for a period of time, but we couldn’t say yes to just any teenager. With each choice we have to examine the impact it will have on our family unit, our marriage, and our children. We want to make sure we can disciple each child and teach them, by God’s grace, to fear and love the Lord above all else on this earth. That being said, if you waited until it did not impact your current children at all  then you would never take a child into your home. Caring for the orphan will cost all in your family and that is okay...because it will also be life-changing.

    What resources would I recommend for a beginner? There are some great books I would recommend for parenting children who are coming from traumatic pasts, but I think those books are more helpful once you have a child already living with you. For a beginner who is leaning toward foster care, but is worried and not sure if they could do it, my BIGGEST suggestion would be to start getting around other foster families and foster kids. You will see some things that scare you and look overwhelming, but you will see MANY more situations that you will think, "we could do that! We could love and meet that child's needs." You could do this through attending a foster care support group, asking to spend time with families in your church who foster or have adopted, or volunteering at a local shelter for children. The more you are around children who need families, the less scary the faceless “foster kid” will be.

   I would also suggest attending an orientation class. The orientation class is the "first step" toward becoming a foster class. It is about one hour and is usually done by a foster parent who shares their experience, explains the process, and tells you what to do next. Then, even if you have not decided to foster yet, I would suggest you go a head and take the foster parent classes (a 10 wk, 30 hour class) through a local agency (families in our church have used ChristianFamily Care and AZ Baptist Children's Services and spoken highly of their experiences with those agencies). I think the scariest thing is the unknown. These classes fill you in on ALL the "horror stories" and potential scary things of foster care, but also provide training, resources, and encouragement. 

   Hope this is a helpful start!

Open doors, permanent walls

Marcel attempted to explain to my dad what our family is like. His explanation went something like this:

    "Grampy, our family is kinda like a house that always has open doors. The Pierres are the walls, so we're permanent. No matter what, we will always be family, because we're forever family. But we always have our doors open, that way people who need to barrow a family for a little while can come and make our home their family while they need us."

   I think this is such a great analogy for what we want our family to be. Our children have lived here for 2 and a half years now and have seen many people "join" our family for periods of time. We've had older single people who have shared our table and been "family" to them and foster kids spend weekends with us. There is a steady flow of neighborhood kids coming in and out and half their "aunts and uncles" are in no way related to Vermon or myself (except through Christ!). We've had teenagers live with us, children needing family spend weekends or weeks with us. We truly have a home with open doors. (in a future post I'll write why this is!)

   Our kids love this about our life and Marcel often tells me how fun it is to have so many people who are "like" brothers, sisters, grandpas, aunts, and uncles. But when there is a change, it is challenging for our kids. When a temporary friend moves out of our house (or off our couch), or a kid we provided respite care for a few days goes home... Marcel and Mya both talk about how sad it makes them and how hard it is. But I am always amazed and proud of how their little hearts process through their feelings and come to the conclusion that we are blessed to be able to be family to people who need families, even if it is for a short period of time!

    One thing that is on my mind a lot with our upcoming new baby is how it will affect our kids to have babies living with us who we potentially won't be able to adopt. We have no way of knowing if we will foster 1 or 10 babies before we can adopt, but we know we want to love each one as though it were our own. Many people have already begun to talk about how challenging that will be and no doubt it will be very painful!

    I am praying constantly that God would bring us a baby who will need a forever home, but I also know that although my heart has many plans, it is the Lord's purposes that will prevail (proverbs 19:21). I know that if God plans for us to have ten babies, it is because he planned for us to adopt that tenth baby before the baby was ever knit together in her mother's womb. I know that each child we have in our home we will have because God has ordained for us to cross paths with family members and case workers that we never would have crossed paths with. I know that each baby we have, even if it is for days, is because we are to love and nurture and care for them as though they were our own.

So loss will be hard, loss will be painful, but as a mother, what worries me the most is the loss and pain my kids will go through. I have begun to prepare them that we do not know if this baby will be in our forever family, but that God has called us to love her. Mya and I have been talking a lot about what it means to "suffer for Christ" and how this is a suffering that will be hard, but will bring such blessing because we will be able to love a baby who needs love desperately. I know I cannot shelter my children from difficulty or pain and so I talk with them and teach them how to "count it all joy" when trials come, and how we can truly "rejoice in our sufferings."

Missionary: Who I am, Not What I Do

My new post is up @ Together for Adoption: http://www.togetherforadoption.org/?p=11939

Loving Your Friend Through Infertility

Just read this series of blog posts called: Loving Your Friend Through Infertility I appreciated so much about the series and encourage you to take the time to read it. It is grounded and rooted in the gospel, honest, and helpful if you have friends struggling with infertility.


I worry sometimes that I might be the last person that a couple who faced infertility would talk with because I am so passionate about advocating for orphan care. While I do believe adoption is an AMAZING way to grow your family, it still doesn't cure the pain and heartache that comes with infertility. It would be terrible if couples struggling with infertility were fearful to speak about their suffering because they were worried they'd be expected to "cure" it through adoption. Adoption should be seriously and prayerfully considered by ALL Christian families (yes, I said it...ALL!) in the church, not just ones who struggle to get pregnant. 

Angry.

Imagine being a child or teenager, covered in bruises from your most recent beating, hungry, cold, and all your belongings in a grocery store bag. You are tired. Your parent was just taken away in a police car and you are scared. But you don't get to go home to a safe family who will at least give you a clean bed to sleep in...instead you will spend the next few nights sleeping on a cot in the office of child protective services...until they finally find you space in a homeless shelter.

I have been trying to focus on the positive aspects of adoption and lay off my ranting and raving about all the problems with how few people actually adopt and foster. But tonight I am just angry...angry to tears and discouraged by the fact that for every 10 Christians in Arizona (or maybe more like every 100, or 1000) there is only 1 child who needs a home, but still Christians are not answering the call. Actually, if 1 out of every 5 churches in Phoenix took in ONE child, this problem would be solved. There is ONE single church in Phoenix that has more members in the congregation then there are children who need a family tonight. Yet, tonight, the churches of Phoenix are failing to care for their orphans. If we cannot meet the needs of the few thousand "orphans" in Arizona, how are we going to begin to address the much more complex and desperate situation of the world-wide orphan crisis?

The Arizona Republic today posted an article about the CPS squeeze and talked about the strain on the foster care system. Less foster families + more children= huge problems. They ran out of foster homes, group homes, homeless shelters, and now children are sleeping in the child protective services offices.

When I worked in the domestic violence shelter, I had a first hand experience of seeing CPS workers come to evaluate children who had marks/signs of abuse and the caseworker often dismissing clear signs of danger and abuse because it wasn't bad compared to other cases. What is going to happen now that a CPS caseworker knows that if she opens a case on a family of 6 children, she will have an impossible time getting them a home? They will be less likely to open cases, quicker to overlook signs of danger or abuse, and children will be hurt as a result.

Who is going to care for the orphan of Phoenix? Could it be possible that God is calling SO FEW people to foster care/adoption that there is the abundance of children in need...or could it be that some of God's church is disobeying?

New addition to the Pierre Family!

It's official! We're expecting!!

In November we will be re-opening our foster license. We will be a foster family to a baby girl 0-3 months old. Of course we would love to adopt again, but it doesn't typically happen as quickly/easily as it did with our older 2. We are looking forward to this new journey! We do not know how long we will get to keep each baby girl, but we are thankful for the opportunity to love and care for some babies.

When we told Mya, she spent ten minutes dancing around the house in her underwear singing, "We're getting a baby girl! ooohhh yeahhh! oooo yeahh! Its a girl! A baby girl!" and today I overheard her reassuring Judah that he'll always be her favorite baby, even though she might be a little busy now helping mommy with a new, smaller baby. She also begged me to buy Judah a potty so that she can start potty-training him. "Mommy, we don't want to mess with two babies in diapers at once, so we should get to work and make Judah use the toilet." And every night she's been praying, "God, please bring us a baby girl who was getting abused so badly so we can love her and help her get better."

Marcel on the other hand has been having "conversations" with Judah as well. He's been trying to teach Judah how to resist girl germs and told Judah it's time to get serious and start praying Mommy and Daddy change their mind and get a boy instead...otherwise, the women won't outnumber the girls anymore. His prayer a few nights ago was, "God, please have CPS drop off a boy by accident."

And Judah is clueless about how his world is about to change...but is excitedly saying that we're getting "a babay" :)