Moses and Foster Care

When we finally took the leap and started our paperwork to become foster parents, Chris and I realized that we needed to explain what was happening to our kids.  We needed them to understand how our family was going to change, who the new kids would be, why they might leave and never come back.  Because foster care is not just my job or Chris' job...our whole family participates.  And while Chris and I spent 36 hours in training classes just to get licensed, James and Winston spent four weekends playing with their grandparents, oblivious to the upcoming changes.  I thought and thought and researched and researched, trying to find a clear, simple way to tell our four and two year old sons that they were going to become siblings in a non-traditional way.  Finally, one night during our story time, I found what I was looking for.  I turned the page in the Bear Bible to the story of Moses.

 

"Moses was in danger, he was hiding in a stream.

A princess came to take a bath, and heard a baby scream.

She hugged that tiny baby, and carried him back home,

And loved that tiny baby, as if he were her own.

Just like Baby Moses, we are always in God's care.

He will love and keep us, now and always, Tiny Bear."

 

It was perfect: simple, to the point, and Biblical!  It even rhymed.  And I was struck for the first time that Moses was kind of the first recorded foster kid.  He saw his mom, he knew who his siblings were, but he was raised in another home to keep him safe.  That's exactly what we're doing, I told the boys.  There are more baby Moses' out there, and Mommy and Daddy want to help them be safe and grow up big and strong, just like you.

 

Then we got our first placement, and it was a baby boy.  A real, live Baby Moses to complete the explanation.  I held him when he cried.  I gave him medicine to soothe his aching body.  I bathed him and changed him and bought him clothes.  And I came to a wondrous, surprising realization about parenting:  he is not mine.  Of course, it was very literal at first, because every other week, I dropped him off with the social worker to visit with his parents.  But even after they stopped coming to see him and the judge rescinded their rights and we moved to an adoption, I knew that he wasn't mine, any more than the boys I gave birth to.  My children aren't my property.  They aren't an extension of myself or my husband.  They are little people, little versions of the self they will become someday, and I'm given the chance to be their mom, to watch over them and care for them, for a while.  I'm not perfect at what I do, I yell and lose my temper and forget to bring the diaper bag (always when a huge poop is imminent, too).  These boys came from God, and they are always in his care.  And when they no longer need me to wipe their tushies or rock them to sleep, they'll start to pull away and eventually leave my home.  This realization made me cherish our time together.  It made me stop trying to do, do, do, to push them to enjoy the things I enjoy and dislike what I dislike.  I started looking at who they really are, and finding ways to cultivate, rather than dictate that.

 

The story of Moses stuck with me.  It was the lesson in the 2s class I taught the weekend we took custody of Michael.  It was the sermon preached the first Sunday we came to church with our new placement.  Its the story I try to impart to all the foster kids I meet.  He was just like you, I tell them.  He could have been killed as a baby if his sister and mother hadn't made arrangements for him, and his new mom hadn't had compassion on him.  But that's not the end of his story, and its not the end of yours, either.  Because when he became a man, capable of making decisions for himself, Moses came back to his people, and he spoke for them and he cried out to God for them, and he led them out of slavery.  You can do that too.  You can come back to this place of hopelessness and confusion where you live right now, and you can lead other kids to safety.  You can break their chains because you know exactly where they are bound.  Your childhood doesn't determine the rest of your life.  I know this, because its my story too.