My Ebenezer

You are breaking my heart.

It’s 1:15am and I just got home from un unexpected visit to the foster home. Where I talked with an emotionally distraught Stella, witnessed an unbearably emotional exchange between foster mom and another foster daughter who had been with her for THREE YEARS, spoke with three different police officers and spoke with a heart broken foster mom.

Needless to say, Stella is moving yet again. Through sobbing, she told me she “just couldn’t do it anymore” – that she didn’t want to have to start all over again with meeting new people, new parents, new school, etc… and on top of everything else, she has a boyfriend she is leaving behind this time. Someone she describes as “so sweet” and who makes her whole face light up when she mentions his name.

All four kids in this home are being moved because of some very bad choices on the kids’ part. I’m sad for Stella. I’m shocked that the foster parents are so shocked about what was going on. And I am absolutely heart broken that a girl who has lived with this family for THREE YEARS is being forced to leave by the foster parents because they are hurting. And I know they are truly hurting – I could see it in their eyes. But it’s just not about them. I can see them sending three away because they aren’t as emotionally invested…..and although every move is bad for these kids, for the three it is just another move. For the fourth, the one who has been there so long, this is abandonment – from someone she loved and trusted.

So now I’m curious. Put one boy and three girls – all teenagers, all serious issues of neglect/abuse/abandonment by birth families, at least two with a history of se#ually acting out, all in foster care – put them together under one roof and leave them unsupervised for any amount of time whatsoever…..what do YOU think is going to happen? When you go to sleep at night and the kids are all upstairs, what do you think is happening? When you leave them for even just an hour to run an errand, what do you think is happening?

Why are you so surprised?

As a foster parent, is it okay for you to put kids out of your house because they have disappointed you in such a big way? Granted, there is no way they could continue to have both the boy and the girls in the home. But the one who’d been with you for three years? What message are you sending that poor child? I love until….. I love you unless…. At what point does a “foster parent” have to face up to the same accountability as parent? I guess what really gets me about this is that these really are good foster parents. And they truly are heart broken right now. Devastated. They did treat these kids as if they were their own….. I’m just wondering, if this one girl in particular, if she were their biological child and the same thing happened, would they put her out?

Maybe it will make more sense tomorrow. Pray for Stella. Pray also for these foster parents to find forgiveness in their hearts. Pray for the one girl who is losing her family all over again.

Edited to add: The girl who had been with them for so long is back with them again.