Curbside Service

After nearly a year of silence, I am resurrecting my blog.

I started this blog as a way of processing life and our adventures as we moved to Chicago. Now we've been here almost two years. This southern girl definitely doesn't have city-living all figured out, but I can say that I'm learning. Life here is beginning to feel normal in a new normal kind of way.

Time for the next adventure.

This adventure is not like the previous adventures that my adventure-loving husband has taken me on in the past. Did I mention that he loves adventures?

No, we are not leaving our full-time paying jobs to be missionaries and raise our own financial support.

No, we are not taking all of our little children and a gaggle of college students to a foreign country for the summer.

No, we are not moving from my Old Kentucky Home to a metropolis.

Been there. Done that.

No, this next adventure is of an entirely different variety. It even comes with its own title: foster parent.

In January, we began the licensing process through the state and in conjunction with an agency to become foster parents. According to our social worker, we moved through the licensing process at record pace. Two months after beginning the process, the official license arrived in our mailbox. We were approved.

After that, we settled into the waiting period. We were warned that the age range we specified was in high demand, so it could be six months or a year before we received a placement. We readied the extra bedroom and then put thoughts of fostering on the back burner for awhile. I even scheduled an oral surgery that I had procrastinated for two years.

Tuesday morning I had my surgery. For me, the satisfaction of getting my nerve up to do this surgery was like running a marathon. That afternoon, I was basking in the satisfaction of completing my surgery

(You'd think I performed it myself instead of just sitting in a chair with my mouth open for an hour and forty-five minutes. While someone used a drill and a wratchet to place a titanium pin through my bone. With that awful drilling sound. Enter dental anxiety...)

when my cell phone rang. I answered.

It was our social worker. He had a potential placement for us and wondered if we were interested. I said that we were interested. He kept asking me to repeat myself. I think it was because my mouth was still numb.

A few more brief phone calls, and that was it.

Two hours later, a precious one year-old girl was delivered. We met the social worker on the curb (no driveways around here). She handed us a duffle bag, a stroller and a toddler. She didn't even come inside.

So now our adventure has truly begun.

This is night three at our home.

I feel the need to record all these details, kind of like a birth story. I don't know the future of this little one. I don't know how long she will be under our roof. I'm not in charge of that. What I am figuring out is that, for now, my job is to love her like my own child. Surprisingly, that really isn't hard to do. Even my other kids feel that. My seven year-old summed it up yesterday when she said, "Mom, I think I love her already."

I can't explain it. And I won't fight it either. I love her, too.

I'm not naive. I know this whole situation could go in lots of different ways. There's a high probability that I will get angry, disappointed, frustrated, maybe even heartbroken.

But, as John Piper says in Don't Waste Your Life, safety is a myth. There is no safety this side of heaven.

I think children are worth the risk, so here goes nothing!