Happy (ecstatic) Interruption

I just HAVE to interrupt our series on Foster Care so I can freak out a tiny bit.  

GOD IS ON THE MOVE!

GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS!

GOD LOVES THE ORPHAN MORE THAN WE COULD EVER IMAGINE.

In the Fall of 2010 we first discovered Reeces Rainbow.  Before that we had no idea about the plight of special needs orphans in Eastern Europe.  We just didn't know.  Well, after we found out and our eyes were opened we knew we had to act.  We began to ask the Lord what we should do about it and the first thing we felt led to do was to pray.  One morning during our school time I had each of the kids browse through the pictures of the children on Reeces Rainbow and pick out one special child that they would be faithful to pray for.  After much deliberation (I mean, how can you pick just one with all those sweet faces looking back at you?) they each made their decision, we printed out the pictures, decorated them, wrote prayer requests on them and posted them up on the wall of our dining room where we could see them every day.

Months passed and we prayed.  My little ones asked Jesus to bring families to their special children.  I asked for parents' eyes to be opened.  We asked God to work miracles.  

Well guess what??  

God answers prayers!!!

A few months later, one of my choices (because I couldn't pick just one) was adopted!  Yes, that was our sweet "Jonah", our love that we committed to, and hoped to bring home.  God had another family for him, long story that you can read here.  There was sadness, followed by great amounts of joy (once we got some God perspective on things!).  Answered Prayer #1!

Then later on that year Ezra's pick "Dmitriy" was chosen!  Now that one I didn't see coming.  Dmitriy is blind and had been listed on Reeces Rainbow for three years.  I honestly thought Ezra was going to be disappointed.  Well look who was wrong!  Dmitriy has a family working very hard to rescue him.  You can follow their blog here.  Answered Prayer #2!

Addy had two picks like Mommy.  She just couldn't decide.  Her first choice was a little girl just 2 months older than herself.  "Kate" has Down Syndrome and had been waiting so long for a family of her own.  Her second choice was a girl named "Alexis".  Alexis was 11 years old when Addy picked her and wheelchair-bound.  Although she is cognitively normal, Alexis would be sent to an institution for life if not adopted.  Oh man we prayed like crazy for Alexis.  Guess what happened this week?  That's right!  Kate and Alexis were both chosen this week!!  Oh man the shrieks of excitement filling our house was something to behold!  Answered Prayers #3 and #4!

Kate

Havalah chose a little boy who is no longer listed on Reeces Rainbow.  :(  I'm not sure what happened, but she has taken up praying with me for my little one I chose along with Jonah.  My other choice was "Aiden". 

 

 Oh my dear, sweet Aiden.  How I love this boy.  I love him so much my heart literally aches.  Aiden is the last one left on our wall.  I see his picture every day and I pray.  My prayers range all over the place.  I pray for him to have peace.  I pray for him to feel Jesus' arms holding him and loving on him.  I pray for his family's eyes to be opened, wherever they are, to see him and come to him.  I pray that his family might be us.  :)  I'm not so sure how Jed feels about that last prayer!  Heehee.  Seriously though, I so wish we could be his family.  I know right now though we have clear direction and it's not leading us to Aiden.  So, we continue to pray.  I tell you what though, I have HUGE, GINORMOUS faith right now.  Our prayers are being answered right and left.  Tomorrow all the kids will choose new children to join Aiden on the wall and I can't wait to see who God sends a family to first.  

Nothing is impossible with God!!!  

Foster Care Ponderings: Part 2, Our Story

Years from now, when we're done fostering I know I'll be able to vividly remember the feelings that rush through me each time we leave a hospital with someone else's baby.

Excitement!  This is what we're made to do.  We're off on a big adventure.  This should be pretty fun.  We're helping a really bad situation get better.  Who doesn't love babies?

Sadness.  We've just left a hospital with someone else's baby.  That means there is a mommy and daddy somewhere nearby without THEIR baby.  That means we have a baby in our car who is being separated from the most important person/people in it's little life.  To that baby, to those parents, we are not heroes.  We are just strangers. 

Dread.  Let's be honest.  Taking care of babies is not easy.  I'm a nurse, so we take "medically fragile" babies.  That could mean a baby that is born addicted to drugs, it could mean a preemie who doesn't feed well.  It could mean a baby with a head injury...you get the picture.  I'll be perfectly transparent here and say I have often left a hospital with a baby, got in the car and thought "What have we done?  How are we going to do this?  We are gluttons for punishment."  Apparently dread isn't the emotion that wins out....because we keep on taking those babies!  :) 

Determination.  I'm excited by a challenge.  I like doing things that look difficult, and succeeding.  I like puzzles.  I like figuring out what makes a baby tick.  It's the competitor in me I guess.  "Gosh darn it I WILL get you to gain weight or I'll die trying!"  I like taking a broken, tiny, helpless baby and seeing him or her transform before our very eyes to a smiling, chubby, babbling little person.  There's no feeling like it.  I'm a fixer, Jed's a shepherd- so I tackle the practical, medical side of things and Jed provides the heavy dose of lovin' with a cherry on top.


When we got the call to take baby #1, who we'll call Baby Y, months earlier than we had planned and left the hospital with her we felt all of those emotions.  I remember sitting in the back seat of the car with her while Jed drove- just like we did with each of our biological kids.  I also remember she screamed the WHOLE WAY HOME.  Ha!  Any sense of heroism or romanticism flew out the window about 20 miles down the freeway. 


I've heard from many different foster parents that your first placement (foster child) is special.  I'll have to agree.  Baby Y holds a very special place in our hearts, as do each of our babes.  But there is just something extra special about your first.  We learned with Baby Y what it feels like to love a baby so much it hurts, and at the same time know deep down she belongs to someone else.  Her beautiful cheeks, her smell, everything about her will forever be imprinted in my mind.  She was our first love.   

That foster babe love is a hard thing to describe.  The number one line I've heard from others when they hear we're foster parents is "I could never do that.  I could never give them back.  That would be so hard."  Let me tell you something.  It IS so hard.  It is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.  But that's what these babies, these children need.  They need someone who will love them till it hurts and keep on loving, all the while KNOWING that you have to give them back.  Are you kidding me?  Of course it hurts when they leave.  To me, at different times it has felt like a death.  Most of the time we know we will never see that child again.  Like Baby G, one of our boys.  We had him for the first 4 months of his life.  We picked him up straight from the hospital.  We swaddled him and walked him at night while he shook from withdrawals.  We were there to see his first smile, to give him his first "at-home" bath.  We were his world, and he was our sweet little boy, and then "poof" he was out of our lives and we've never heard about him again.  I know he will probably never know about us, but we will never forget him.  He is a part of our story forever.  So, yes, we mourn when they leave.  We cry, we talk, we cry some more.  We find a teeny stray sock in the wash and we cry some more.  We have pity parties and watch sad movies alone in the dark on the couch (okay, so yes, I did that once....not a moment I'm proud of...anyway....)  I always think somehow it should be easier because we always know it's coming.  But it's never easier, not if you've loved them right.  

But,

"I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."

 Alfred Lord Tennyson

     

Foster Care Ponderings: Part 1, Our Story

We decided to start a series here on Foster Care.  When we first became foster parents I tried to find stories of others who had gone before us and found the pickings were slim.  It seemed not many people were sharing their experiences, and boy I sure could have learned a lot from they had to say!  I know that fostering looks different for every family, in every state, but this is our story, our experience, and if it helps even one person along the fostering path than I think it's worth spilling my guts.  :)

Think back to spring break of 1993.  What were you doing?  I can tell you exactly what I was doing.  I was in Chihuahua. Mexico on my very first missions trip.  I was the youngest of the group, but just made the age deadline and there was no way I was going to miss that trip.  I honestly don't remember much about that that time, except the enormous amount of Noxzema I had to apply to my face to get all that mime make-up off my face.  (Oh Teen Mania!) I may not remember much in the way of specific encounters and experiences, but I do remember that it changed the course of my life.  I saw the world was bigger than my small town, and my worries over entering high school were nothing compared to the trials others around the world were surviving through every day.

 After that trip I was hooked.  I proceeded to go on missions every single summer through high school and then through college.  One thing you see a lot of when you do any kind of short-term missions, is orphans.  My heart broke for them.  I had forever dreamed of being a mommy anyway, so the plight of the orphan has always hit me right in the center of my gut.  I decided straight out of high school that I knew exactly what I was to do with my life.  I was to become a nurse so I could care for orphans.  BAM.  There you have it!  The goal was set, application was accepted for nursing school, and I was off to the races!

Fast forward a few years and I'm back in my home town working at the local hospital as an RN and married to the fabulous, amazing, unbeatable Jed.  Okay, I know it's Valentines Day and I may be gushing a bit, but seriously.  Jed is THE BEST.  If you haven't met him you'll just have to take my word for it, and if you do know him I dare you to argue with me.  :)

Jed and Havalah.  One of Jed's infamous self-portraits :)

 Anyway, it's 2004, Jed and I have been married for a bit and we both know our desire is to live overseas.  We both have a heart for orphans and we are just eagerly awaiting our chance to get the heck outta' dodge.  We wait....

and wait

 and wait.

We have two squeezable kiddos of our own and pray.  We look for the opportunity, we pray for God's will and no matter what we do we always get the same answer.  "Stay put".

"Huh??  What was that God?  I'm pretty sure we didn't hear you right because we really want to love on some orphans and we know you feel pretty strongly about them...so what's the holdup??"

Nope. That's a negative.  He definitely wanted us to stay put.  So sadly, we put our dreams about orphan care on the shelf until later.  Then I happened to have a chat with a friend at a party and I moaned and groaned to her about our hearts, and being stuck in the US.  She then piped up with the words that forever changed our lives.

"You know, foster kids are America's orphans.  Have you ever thought of fostering?"

What the???  Why no, we had not even considered that!  I mean no one else we knew fostered, it just didn't occur to us.  Here was one of our answer as to why God had us remain here in the States.  Not so we would just hang our dreams up on a shelf- no, the fulfillment of those dreams was just going to look a lot different than we had imagined.

We were about to embark on one of the most difficult and wonderful journeys of our lives; one that we are still on today, and one that I don't regret for a single second.

We contacted the State immediately, attended trainings, filled out massive amounts of paperwork, locked up any medications, picked up some fire extinguishers, installed smoke detectors, passed our home study- and lo and behold- we were foster parents!!  The process was long, but not excruciating.  Ezra, our second, was only 18 months old and we had told our certifier we weren't going to take any babies until he turned 2, so we figured we had some time to get things ready for whoever our "new arrival" would be.

We should have known not to get too comfy, because 2 weeks later I got a phone call from the state.  "We have a baby who was just born and is in the NICU.  We feel we definitely need a home with a nurse.  Are you really wanting to wait, or do you think you could take one a little early?"

Deep breath.  Oh boy.  Are we really doing this?  Heck yes we are!

Let the games begin!! 

 To be continued....


 P.S.  We plan to cover several different topics concerning foster care in the next couple of weeks, so if there is something in particular you are wondering about please feel free to leave a question in the comments or you can email us at johnson commune @ gmail dot com (no spaces).   

   

Rockin' Week!!

Oh my goodness this has been an AMAZING week!!!  God is showing us again that we are heading in the right direction and He's got it all under control.  I'm amazed by Him.

Back up to August when we first decided to head to Eastern Europe for a "scoping it out" trip, we decided that the best time for Jed to take time off work would be in April.  April became our aim.  
Our local church here is a Vineyard Church, so we thought it would be cool to see if there were any Vineyard churches where we are heading.  We googled it, and low and behold there are 5!  We saw that there is a Vineyard church here in the US on the East Coast that has a partnership with those churches overseas to help shepherd them and send mission teams and such.  Cool!  We contacted a man named Vitaly, the church leader on the East Coast who is in charge of the partnership and found that he's a native of the EE country and has lived in the States for 12 years.  Jed and Vitaly have been playing phone tag and email tag off and on since September! Jed wanted to find out from him if any of the churches there are doing orphan care and if there's any church in particular we should try to visit.  


Well time passed and we were never able to really connect with Vitaly.  So, we booked our tickets and decided to just find those churches on our own once we arrive.  We knew of one particular city that looked like it had a thriving Vineyard church, so we planned to make that the last stop of our trip.  Fingers crossed someone there speaks a bit of English, right?  :)  We already had our appointments set with orphan care organizations, so it wasn't imperative that we find the church, but it would be pretty cool.  


This is where things get GOOD.  On Thursday Jed gets a call from guess who?  Vitaly!  They talked for a while and totally connected.  I love that about the Body of Christ.  Strangers are instantly brothers when they share a common heart and passion.  Vitaly shared his heart about the local church in EE taking ownership of the orphan issues.  He shared that mission teams are great and do amazing work, but if the local church doesn't buy in the work doesn't continue.  We totally agree!  Jed and I are local church people all the way.  We understand that we can bring our gifts and talents, but until it's culturally relevant it's only partially effective in making a long-lasting difference. 
So, Vitaly asks what dates we will be in EE, and guess what??  He arrives there the exact same day as us!  SHUT UP!!!!  Yep, he'll be visiting from the US because starting the last day we are in county they are having a nationwide Vineyard conference -get this- in the exact town where we planned to be for the end of our trip! 
WAHOOOOOOOO!!!  God amazes me.  Apparently all the churches there have orphan care as their main outreach as well.  Sweet.


I contacted our travel agent right away to find out if we could change our departure date so we'd be able to be at the conference.  She said yes, there is availability, but it will cost about $640.00 to change our tickets.  Ummmmm never mind.  Jed says if God wants us there, He'll let us know.  What's $640.00 to Him when He's provided so faithfully for the rest of the expenses for this trip?  


Then yesterday I get a text from a wonderful friend: "Change your tickets, I'm going to fund raise for the extra money, oh and if I can't raise it all I'll cover the rest myself".  Bingo!  We have such a wonderful group of friends around us.  God comes through once again.  Seriously, how many signs and reminders do we need to show us that He is up to something big?  Just when I was starting to panic "What are we doing?  We don't even know anyone in EE!  I don't speak Russian!  We are really leaving our kids for over 2 weeks while we fly across the world to 'check things out?'  We are nuts!"  Just then, God kicks in with awesome acts of faithfulness.  


He's just plain good.  There's no ifs ands or buts about it.