A Day in the Life

It’s quite fitting that I’m catching you up on the J man’s story today because 6 months ago today, we brought our sweet little man home! I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone and how much he has changed. Here’s to 6 more months with our guy!

So, last you heard we were communicating with J’s aunt who is out of the country. She is still requesting placement and planning to adopt him when the time comes. She currently has had her home study done and is just waiting on a few more things for her side of the deal to be complete.

DHS has (not surprisingly) done a horrible job of keeping us informed. Every time I ask where we are with the placement process they tell me “we’re working on it”. We really hadn’t heard anything for several months until the middle of August. I was sitting in our noon conference at work when our day care called and said that DHS was there to pick J up for his passport photo. We had not been told they were picking him up that day and had no idea he was getting a passport already. I flipped out. In my moment of insanity, I worried that he would be leaving any day. I called everyone I knew at DHS to try to find out a.) why we weren’t informed of him being picked up and b.) what this meant for us. After finally getting a hold of several people, I spoke with his worker’s supervisor who broke it to me that J would probably be getting moved in the next month or two. (Yes, if you’re doing the math, he should have been gone by mid-October at the latest.)

I was an absolute wreck. I couldn’t talk I was crying so hard. Looking back, I realize that nothing changed about our family in that instant. I was still going to be picking J up from daycare later that day. I would still bathe him, put his pj’s on him and rock him to bed that night. I’d be the one to wake up in the morning to his smiling face. But, up until that moment we’d had hope. Hope that all of this would turn out the way we’d been praying. Hope that we’d be the ones throwing him his first birthday. Hope that we’d take him to his first day of kindergarten. When this woman told me that he was going, pretty much for sure, I felt like our hope had been taken away.

I really couldn’t work all day. Later, our secondary worker (who has been really great) called to see how I was doing. She knew that we had gotten some news that we didn’t want, nor were we expecting and she wanted to know what she could do to make it better. I told her that nothing could make it better. We were literally grieving. I felt as if someone told me that my baby would die in the next month or two. That may seem dramatic, but that’s how it felt. Regardless of how much a part of his life we’re allowed to be later on, he won’t be our baby anymore. I told her the one thing that could make this more bearable is to give us as much notice as possible. After a child has been placed for three months, DHS is only required to give families a 5 day notice prior to a move. Up until three months, they are required to give no notice. So, my fear was that they would call us on a Monday and ship him off on Friday.

Looking back, I needed that day. I can now talk about J going without crying. I needed a big slap in the face, reality check that this was what likely would happen. I still have no idea how I’ll survive the day that it does happen, but knowing that it’s probably inevitable has made it easier to handle.

Of course, up until now, we’ve still just been waiting. I feel like every day, starting at 9:00 a.m., I fear that at any second I will get an email or phone call giving me the news I’ve been dreading. Once 5:00 hits, I can breathe a sigh of relief that we’ve made it another day. I do this every.day. It’s exhausting. As you have seen, we still have J. It’s been 2 1/2 since that horrible day and we’ve still really heard nothing. We figured surely he would be gone by Halloween so we didn’t plan a costume for him until the last minute. We’ve been telling people not to buy him Christmas presents because he won’t be here. But, honestly, we don’t have a clue.

We actually struggled for awhile trying to decide how much we wanted to fight this move. A part of me thought we should just let it be and see what happens. Having two little ones under the age of one is tough. Going from no kids to two in three months is even tougher. Knowing that life would be easier with just one, I wondered if we should let him go. I know now that I partly thought that to cope with the fear that he would be taken away. Losing J would be easier to deal with if I wanted him gone. But, of course we’re going to fight for him. He’s our baby. We would be devastated if he left and we didn’t do everything we could to keep him.

So, at this point, we’ve requested a Permanency Planning staffing meeting, which takes place tomorrow (Monday) morning (please pray!!). We’ve put together a letter requesting that J be kept in our home. My aunt, who is a child therapist, has also written a letter including some research as to why J should not be moved, and she also will be attending the meeting. We really have no idea what to expect. Since the meeting has been set up, I’ve spoken to a man who has worked with DHS for over 25 years. He wasn’t very encouraging. He pretty much said that DHS will likely never choose a foster placement over a willing, suitable family member, regardless of how long the child has been in that foster placement. He said our best bet was to email the aunt and ask her to consider allowing us to adopt J and her remain a part of his life as his aunt. So, we’re going to do just that. I’m not sure how to even start the letter. I try to compose it daily in my head, but it never comes out right when I put it on paper. So, please pray about this too. We plan to write the letter tonight. Pray that God gives us the perfect words to say. That He works on the aunt and opens her heart to the idea of allowing us to keep J. We’re terrified of what moving him will do to him. We are worried it could be very traumatic. And, of course, we’re sick at the thought of losing him.

I’ll post tomorrow about the meeting. I’m not expecting anything dramatic or exciting but hopefully DHS isn’t too mean to us when they hear our proposal.

This post waaaay longer than I expected, yet I feel like I’ve left so much out. So, if you’ve read this far - thank you! Thank you for being invested in our story and for all of the support and prayer. We feel like we’re only at the very beginning of this journey and really have no idea where it will end. We are trying to find a balance between being faithful and patient, but also being realistic. Our emotions are raw and we’re exhausted from this roller coaster, but so grateful to be on it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.