"Thank you for bringing me here"

Post from September 6th, 2016.... Just publishing it later:

Our two littles ones have been living in our home for nearly 10 months.

Once a month we have a home visit with the county caseworker.  She is the same person who dropped the kids off here back in November.  "Captain" has not spoken to her since then.  Each time she comes over he either hides or just gives her the stink eye.  He has been clear in saying that he is worried she is going to take him somewhere new.  We are their fourth foster home... going somewhere new is not a foreign concept to him.

This month when the caseworker was leaving, "Captain" approached her and said "thank you for bringing me here."  I wasn't in the room, so the caseworker came to tell me.  It took a little while for the significance to set in.  That statement is simultaneously the most heartbreaking and also most incredibly reassuring thing I have heard.

Overall, we are usually pretty sure that we are failing at this parenting gig.  It is hard to be patient with 5 little kids.  It is hard to have 3 little boys who are in the 4-6 year age range.   I'm never going to be good enough or feel like I am parenting well enough to say "I got this!  We are definitely great at this gig!"  Never.

We have a clinician who we see twice per month to provide our family with support.  I generally use my time with her as a confessional of all the times that I could handled intense situations better.  I have read countless books on parenting kids who have experienced trauma and accessed so many great resources (mainly as part of our required 32 hours of annual training hours).  While I have gained a lot of great tools, none of them have made me the perfect parent.  Stink.

As I was sharing some our recent failures and my enormous room for improvement with a friend, she told me that maybe I need to stop trying to be perfect and just start trusting Jesus to fill in the gaps.

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Throughout this past week, this phrase has resonated with me over and over again.  This season of life has been difficult in many ways, but I have rarely doubted that this is where we need to be.  I can think through the changes and the sacrifices and all I keep thinking is "Jesus, thank you for bringing me here."

Our schedule with therapies, visits, and just 5 kids is hard.

"Thank you for bringing me here."