Like I said in the first post, this was only supposed to be three weeks! So how did it turn into 10 months? Well this is the answer: the summer.
We told the agency we couldn't keep them into Summer Break because I had a class I had to take, we were going to visit my family for a few days, we were going on an anniversary trip, and we had a church conference in July. We just didn't have time for them and we didn't want to ship them all over the place and have them resent us.
The time was coming for them to leave. I was exhausted, excited, guilty, all sorts of emotions and feelings. One night I casually mentioned to Ben, "I wish we were able to keep these kids." Knowing of course we can't, remember. They were finally starting to open up to us and trust us and we had some fun times. Not all of it was chaos lol. Plus, they were starting to settle in and make friends and we didn't really want to take that away from them. Ben and I talked about possibly keeping them and agreed to pray about it and consider that possibility.
Long story short we never really told them, "Yes, we will keep the kids." But that's what happened. They never found anyone else to take them and we didn't kick them out. So we were in it until the end now. Our first caseworker warned us that that might happened and we laughed naively.
Thankfully for some of the times we were away the other families who were fostering with us agreed to take our kids. This occasionally happened between the three families. Unfortunately for the two weeks we were gone the kids were taken to Lakeland and separated. For the most part they seemed to have fun though.
There were a couple of great things that happened in Summer. One was that we joined a new family. Honestly, we couldn't have survived without the Holton and Bledsoe families. Not only had they been doing it longer than us, but they each had their own children so they had way more parenting experience than us. Seeing as we had no parenting experience. We would have weekly family dinners and the children would play with each other. I became an aunt for the first time. (Hence the name "Titi" which means "aunt" in Spanish.) And we were a support to each other. Even just the rest of our kids playing with others so we could hang out with other adults was greatly appreciated. Our kids loved seeing their other siblings an extra day a week and I think seeing them in a home made a huge difference. It wasn't a park or a room in an office, it was a home. I hoped they saw how godly families interacted and treated each other. And since our two were the oldest of their siblings, they kind of got a break from having to take care of the younger siblings. There were more children and more adults in this family unit, and they could be themselves.
The other thing that happened was that our children met Jesus for the first time. They went to our church's Day Camp in Summer and grew a passionate love for the Lord. Shoutout to Rebekah Eshelman and the rest of the Ignite crew for changing lives. Their transformation was not wholly us. There was a large amount of people who invested and continue to invest in their lives. The Wheelocks, the Leasures, the Fredericks, the Schroeders, the Bells, the Daileys, Jesse Brown, Zoe Jones, Carrie Russell, Andrea Farley, Anna Miller, Larissa Smith, and many more. I'm most likely forgetting people and I'm sorry if I did. I could probably list the whole church because they all came around them to make an impact. We could not have done it without these guys helping us out with babysitting, training in the Word, praying, and even just spending time with them and listening and understanding the hard things they were going through. We saw our kids grow and change and develop a hunger for the Word. They would sit and highlight in their Bibles they were given and learn Bible verses. By the end of Summer they were different children. They were not as angry, aggressive, petty, mean, etc. They refer to the time before they came to us as "the time before they knew Jesus". Recently, Bud has asked about this. He asked if Ben had always known Jesus. If the rapper Lecrae had always known Jesus. I'm wondering if that has been a fear in his heart lately. But I'm hoping he was encouraged by our answers because I know he looks up to Ben and Lecrae as men of God.
This was not a Ben and I accomplishment. Many people praise us for our sacrifice, our flexibility, our strength, but this was not a journey that the two of us took. It literally took a village to raise our children. We would not have made it without them and strength from the Lord. I wholeheartedly believe that. Because there were times I wanted to give up. Times I doubted I could make it through. That's why we value our local church so much. It's a community. It's a family.
Here are some photos from that summer.
Teaching JJ piano.
Bud loves to play Checkers. He's actually really good!
Collage of pictures from a family dinner.
Picture of the children from the three families at Bud's 7th birthday party.
