Wednesday, June 17, 2009

the bad, the ugly & the good.

according to strengths finder 2.0, positivity is my #3 strength. now, whether or not my dear husband, family and friends would agree with that, is a different story. anyways, there's a lot going on with us right now so for the purpose of maintaining my positivity, i am going to give you an update in this order: the bad, the ugly & the good. *i like a little positive punch to end things on!*

the bad.

sam's day at court did not goes as we all hoped. to our dismay, little sam and sean have been ordered to be reunified with their bio-mom. while i think we all knew that this was a very likely possibility, we prayed this day would never come. with that being said, i know that God has a sweet plan for our little guy's life. sam has been given a great start by my sister and jas, and all our extended family, which should help him better handle whatever circumstances he's now thrown into. at first there was talk of extending the boys' visitation with their bio-mom over a process of several months, but after much discussion, everyone is in agreement that that's not in their best interest. instead of shuffling the boys back and forth from different homes all summer, they are going to reunify them on july 3rd once and for all. as hard as it is, i am glad that baby sam won't have to endure the confusion caused by the limbo that was first planned for him.

the ugly.

me. yep that's right - the ugly part is me. my attitude as of late has been less than becoming. the fallout of everything with sam has left all of us in shambles, but i have had a particularly hard time making sense of it all. while i can easily verbalize that God is in control, i have a hard time buying into it. unfortunately, one of many signs of my own ugliness has been lashing out at my husband just for breathing. i am just so angry. i can't understand why the system would give these boys back to such an undeserving mother. i also can't understand how anyone could give birth to 2 precious boys and then throw them away like last year's flip flops in the first place. while i know this mother is young, naive, made mistakes, etc. i still do not feel as though she deserves a second chance with raising her boys right now - not enough time has passed, not enough true changes have been made, and not enough plans have been implemented.


the uglier truth is that i am having an even harder time trying to decipher what all this means for ryan and me. i can't help but to keep coming back to the timing of all this. here we are about to finish our steps to becoming foster/adoptive parents and then this happens. everything they teach you about reunification and letting a child go, does not compare at all to the heartache of actually going through it. *now i know that sam was not my foster child or in my custody, but if you know our family, he might as well have been. we are extremely close, and i look at my nieces and nephew as my own.* i feel so guilty thinking about putting my family through all of this pain and heart break again if we foster a child who gets reunited with their birth family. BUT (*yes, mrs. positivity is checking in here for a brief moment*), one the other hand, i know my sister and jason would say that the heartache is totally worth knowing that they got a chance to love sweet baby sam every minute that they could. i just wish it was easier to know when obstacles and trials come up in my life, if it is God teaching, growing, and preparing me or just satan distracting me from doing God's Will. we have spent a lot of time in prayer over the last 2 days so if anything, i know that He is using this time to draw us nearer to Him and i am praying that he would "rid me of myself" more and more. this song has been my prayer through all of this:

the good. *see, aren't you glad i ended on a positive note now?*

ryan and i still feel that God has not give us any indicators to stop this journey. He has still been faithfully guiding and opening doors for us as we jump through all the necessary hoops. in fact, after a night of non-stop bawling on monday, yesterday we faced our final visit for our home study. i was a nervous wreck because i have barely been able to keep myself glued together the past few days. as an admittedly over-emotional person, i was scared that the mention of reunification or other related topics, would trigger a tear-fest right in front of our social worker. *i've heard the process of fostering and adoption is full of enough of those, so i don't won't to use up all my cry time in front of our worker before i needed to.* anyways, our worker came and we were able to finish up our interview questions and do the safety inspection of our house. we thankfully shared a lot of laughs instead of tears and yet were still able to talk candidly with one another about our expectations, fears, hopes, etc. from this process. i must say, i think we got one of the good ones!! i cannot sing the praise of our SW highly enough. she's great, and she clicks with us more than we expected. (she even uses lots of sports analogies, which ryan of course loves!)

anyways, i thought for certain that once we were done with the classes, this process would only get easier. i mean, come on, sitting in a hot classroom for 3 hours, one night a week for 9 weeks...i thought that was torture enough! i guess once again i am learning that my plans are not His plans, and His are the only ones that matter. please continue to pray for sam's future, for peace for my family, and for guidance for ryan and me.

much love~

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