Loss

With foster care loss is inevitable. You keep kids for weeks, months, and sometimes years. You raise them, you laugh with them, you clean up there vomit, you kiss their boo boos, you cuddle them when they are scared, you make memories with them, you bond, you get attached... then they go. Often times you hear nothing of how they are doing, you never see them again. It is abrupt. It is hard. It is heart breaking, gut wrenching pain like I have never experienced. When the girls (our first placement left) I collapsed on the floor under the weight of it. Then I cried out to Jesus. It looks as though the two children we are fostering now will be going home soon. We are struggling to complete the work with these children, because every time they do something funny it stabs at my heart, my chest tightens up because I know the memory of all of this will break my heart. People often ask "Do you get attached?" I have no idea how I could do this effectively and not get attached. I am parenting little amazing human beings. I knew when we were called to foster care that it would ultimately break my heart. But I wouldn't trade one second I have with the children that come through our house to wipe all that pain away. All that being said it is a strange life one that sometimes feels heavy. I read this quote by C.S. Lewis the other day and it comforted me about my impending grief.

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

Yes it is definately better to have a broken heart than a hardened heart.