Waiting

I think when you're a foster parent, you do a whole lot.  Some of it is just regular parenting "stuff":  you give baths, play on the floor, read stories, teach life skills and lessons, discipline.  Some of it exceeds the bounds of parenting birth children.  (Some of the "regular" parenting requirements also exceed the usual limits.)  The list is exhaustive, and varies greatly from one foster family to another.

But I think one thing all foster parents would agree on is that there is one thing we do more than anything else: waiting.

And that's what we're doing right now.  In so many ways.

For starters, we are waiting to see if a letter gets signed by a judge by Tuesday.  If it does, then the snag is resolved and our K4, who arrived again on Friday, is here to stay.  If it doesn't, she has to return to the previous foster parents on Tuesday and then come back on Tuesday.  This constant back and forth has been hard on her and made it very difficult to get her into a routine and help her start to understand the boundaries.  So we pray this letter makes it to a judge to be signed by Tuesday, so that this time, the progress she has made will not be undone.

Secondly, we are waiting for K2's new TPR paperwork to be filed.  It could have been filed in May based on the legal timeline, but the CW is not on the ball, and doesn't seem to care that this child has been in the system for over 2 years now.  I realize CWs are overloaded and extremely busy, but I would think that a child who has spent so much time in limbo and who KNOWS it, would be at the top of the priority list.  As of Thursday, the paperwork had not yet been sent to the DA's office, so now two additional months have passed in the life of this little girl who regularly asks me, "Are we gonna adopt me?

Thankfully, we know that everything is in God's hands.  It's hard to believe there's Someone who loves my babies more than I do, but there is, and I have to trust that He is going to take care of them, while praying that He sees fit to place them in the earthly care of the family that they truly belong to.