I love to fly. I always choose a window seat right over the wing, near the jets so I can best hear the roar of the engines and watch the wing shape change as we take off and land. Yesterday I was flying, and even though I have flown many times, when the plane was sitting on the end of the runway waiting to take off, I found myself doubting this would actually work. I doubted that it could truly launch itself into the air. There is too much weight. People. Baggage. And it starts too slowly – those first few feet of movement were painfully slow. But the thing about a plane is, it was made to fly. It was shaped a specific way, and it was outfitted with engines that are capable of producing tremendous thrust, if they are fueled properly. And when the engines were powered, the plan moved faster and faster, and eventually, in a few hundred feet, those jets were able to move the monstrous piece of metal fast enough that aerodynamics took over and it lifted off the ground. In a few seconds, the ride was so smooth and easy that it seemed like we could stay in the air forever.
I sat back in my seat, and my mind wandered where it usually does, to foster kids. They too are often heavy, weighed down with a lot of baggage.
I was molested, so now I don’t trust men. Or I use my body to get what I want. I was physically abused, so now I believe that I deserve what I get, and move from abusive relationship to abusive relationship. My emotional needs weren’t met, so I suck the life out of others, desperately trying to fill up my own soul. I wasn’t provided for, so I steal whatever I want.
It is easy to believe that a kid carrying that kind of weight won’t be able to get off the ground. But the truth is, they, like all humans, they were made to fly. Born for it. Born to be something greater than just highly organized collection of carbon and water walking around surviving.
They need fuel. They need us to provide the thing that powers them. Encouragement. Expectation. Opportunity. Love. Hope.
Without it, they are grounded. With it, if they can get off the ground, they might just fly forever.
Are you willing to fuel someone’s hopes and dreams? Willing to mentor? To tutor? To set expectations and encourage/assist a kid in reaching them? Are you willing to help someone fly?
Spending the next couple of days putting someone else’s project ahead of my own. If you haven’t ever done that, you should try it 
We are not morning people. No one enjoys getting out of bed – not even the dogs. Because of that, getting everyone dressed and in the car is filled with emotion.
Stress. Anger. Anxiety. Frustration. 
In the middle of that mess, my kids have adopted a morning tradition. Once the car is rolling, they want to hear music. Not just any music. They want to hear “Mighty to Save” by Hillsong. They want it turned up loud. And they want to sing at the top of their lungs, even though neither of them can carry a tune in a bucket. And they want to pretend to be part of the band. One plays the keyboard, the other an air guitar, and me? Drums, of course! I have to keep my hands on the wheel, after all. Plus by that time I am usually ready to beat on something. As we sing and “play”, something amazing happens.
Stress disappears. Fighting resolves. Anger dissipates.
She was 14, and she really couldn’t have cared less who I was. She was simply here because her case worker had dragged her in to get a physical. She gave cursory answers to most of my questions. She had been in 10 placements over the past year – she was difficult to care for, she guessed. She could make straight A’s when she managed to stay in school long enough to get a report card. Yes she smoked – 2 packs a day. Even though she had asthma. Yes she drank alcohol, any time she could get her hands on it. Yes she slept with boys, mostly when she was lonely. But then I asked something that struck a nerve. ”What do you enjoy?” Her face fell. “I don’t enjoy anything.” I didn’t believe her. “Come on”, I said, “there must be one thing that you enjoy doing. Even if you don’t get to do it very often. What is it? Reading? Writing stories? Playing ball? Watching movies?”. “Music”, she said. “Music calms me down, helps me to not get into fights, and not be depressed. I have had CD’s and even had a boom box before, but I have moved around a lot, and have lost it all.”
The medical treatment she needed was fairly straightforward. Take your asthma medicine. Stop smoking, drinking, and sleeping around. Go to school. But the question wasn’t WHAT did she need to do to be healthy. The question was HOW to be motivated to do it. In the face of overwhelming stress. When you have been abandoned and are hopeless. When you have very little control. The answer? Music.
We made a deal – come back in a month in better shape. You can define it. If you are better, I will get you your music. Two months went by, and I wondered if she had moved again. Then, she came. Stopped smoking. Taking her asthma meds. Hadn’t slept with anyone new this month (I counted that as an improvement). Only 1 new placement in 2 months. In school, making A’s and B’s. Her case worker smiled and agreed. And I went to the store to get her some music.
When you turn on your radio, or plug in to your iPod, pause and be thankful that you are alive, that you are safe, that you have food in the fridge and relationships that are meaningful. Let music be a gentle reminder that not everyone does.
When I was a kid, one of our family Christmas break traditions was working on a jigsaw puzzle. We would always get a new one with some beautiful landscape or cool collage, and we would start putting it together on the kitchen table. Anyone who wanted could take a turn at finding just the right location for each piece, until the puzzle was completed.
That all sounds like a nice family project, but the truth is that I stink at jigsaw puzzles. I can get the border together, and maybe figure out some small patches with bright colors or unique objects, but by and large, the middle of the puzzle escapes me. I get frustrated. And I start jamming together pieces that don’t always fit. Thank goodness for my mom, her geometry skills, and her patience. She could see the shapes better that I did, and could figure out how to connect them. And when she was done we all got to share in the glory of a finished piece, one that we had done together.
A dozen years ago I saw a picture in my mind of what a world without child abuse would look like. Since that time, I have been working my tail off to put the puzzle together and see that again. I found gaps in the system – needs that weren’t being met, and I met them in the best way I knew how. Health care. School supplies. Training. Hope. But the truth is, the border is barely together, and there is no way anyone can tell what the puzzle looks like yet.
And yet the pieces are coming together. Many people who hear my stories about foster kids want to know where to plug in, how to help. I have some basic answers, but the truth is that I am not very good at the details of connecting people. It is the middle of the puzzle for me. I have desperately needed to find those with different eyes, with different skills, who could complement my story-telling and connect people to needs.
The Spero Project may just be one of those. Spero’s prime objective is to connect – to bring together groups and individuals with a heart to change the world in some specific way, and to put them together so that the puzzle is complete. One of those projects is Spero:Legacy - connecting those who are interested foster kids as well as adoption. Tuesday evening Spero is hosting a meeting to discuss foster/adoption and to help individuals and groups who can see the struggle of foster kids, but don’t know what to do about it. Spero can help – you will leave the meeting with specific “next steps” for how YOU can impact the world of foster kids and change lives. You are a piece of the puzzle – it can’t be completed without you.
Avenue Class for Foster Care/Adoption – Tuesday, February 23, at 7:00. Location – 4646 N. Santa Fe, OKC, at the Spero:Resource center.
If you can’t attend, check out the website and contact them: www.thesperoproject.com
It has been a bumpy morning. Literally. I bumped my leg on the end of the bed, tripped over a shoe, and stepped on a lego – it’s a wonder I didn’t fall and break my neck! My middle name has never been “grace”, but that wasn’t so much the issue today. Then what was my problem?
I couldn’t see.
Sometime in the night I knocked my glasses off my bedside table and couldn’t find them, so when I got up this morning, no glasses. No glasses, no vision. No vision, and suddenly the thing I was trying to accomplish, getting dressed, became dangerous, with lots of collateral damage. Broken things. Bruises.
The foster system is sometimes like a blind person lurching around in the dark. We know what is supposed to be accomplished.
Safety. Permanency. Family. Opportunity. Life.
But in the crisis of each day, sometimes we can’t see where we are going. There is always another form to be completed, another report that is due, another legislator to meet, another complaint to calm, another news reporter to answer. There is always another urgent referral, another court docket, another foster kid needing a new place to live.
Sometimes it is hard to see. And there is collateral damage. Broken families. Bruised kids. Damaged community relations. Hurting case workers.
We must find our glasses. Or we will fall and break our necks.
Where there is no vision, the people perish. Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)
ca-pac-i-ty – [kuh-pas-i-tee] – noun – the ability to receive or contain
I tend to think of capacity in physical terms. The ability of my washing machine to hold one more towel. The ability of my refrigerator door to hold one more “work of art”. The ability of my bladder to survive one more meeting…well, you get the idea.
But capacity can also be applied to other things – relationships, emotions, knowledge. I learned something about myself recently. I learned that I have more capacity than I ever thought. More capacity to receive assistance and encouragement from others. More capacity to ask tough questions and listen to the answers. More capacity to focus on what is most important. More capacity to be hurt, but also to heal. More capacity to trust.
This awareness is changing the way I conduct myself. I am more likely to spend extra time with a foster kid – hoping for an opportunity to connect, understand, and encourage, even if their story keeps me awake at night. I am more likely to query foster parents on why they open their homes and their hearts to the children of a stranger. I am more likely to allow others to see my own dreams and discouragement, in the hope that they too will find the story of foster kids irresistable.
But in the world of electricity, capacity has a different meaning.
Maximum possible output.
I don’t know what my maximum possible output is. What I do know is that there are still kids in foster care. And until there aren’t, I will keep pushing, keep stretching, keep putting out more. More vision, more hope, more stories, more opportunity, more resources.
What would the world look like if we were all willing to increase our capacity to receive – to relate and to understand each other, and at the same time increased our capacity to pour out – to reach out beyond ourselves and influence others?
I have this lamp that sits on the side table in my living room. It puts off a soft, yellow light, and for many years it was the light that I left on at night to help me see in case I needed to get up and move around the house. One day it quit working, and I assumed it needed a new light bulb. Eventually I got around to changing the bulb, but it didn’t work. I was sad – perhaps the lamp was broken. I really liked that lamp. In the middle of my sadness, my husband leaned over the end table and plugged it in – magic! It, and its old bulb, worked just fine.
In case you didn’t notice, I love telling stories. It is how I communicate. As a story-teller, I can use language to help you understand the struggles of kids in foster care, and if I am really fortunate, I might even be able to stir up some emotion. I’m glad – I would be worried about whether you were alive if you weren’t a little bit stirred. But emotion will not change the lives of these kids. It will not bring light to darkness – to do that, you have to plug in. So today, I am going to tell you about an organization that is committed to foster kids, and it is a place you can get involved.
Citizens Caring for Children was created in 1984 – it was the brain child of George and Rose Harper, a couple who had taken in foster kids. As children moved through their home, the Harpers realized that while foster kids may come with some social or emotional baggage, they don’t come with any physical baggage. In fact, some of them have only the clothes on their backs. So, the Harpers decided to do something about it. They enlisted the help of the First Presbyterian Church of Edmond, OK and began providing basic necessities to foster kids – clothes, school supplies, etc. Now, 26 years later, the organization is still going strong. It is a quality place to pour your resources and your time, so if you are moved at all by the stories of foster kids, and you are looking for a way to help, Citizens Caring for Children is a place to start.
Loss is a common part of the human experience. Some days it is closer to us than others, and this week it has been uncomfortably close. Two friends grieving – one over a life fully lived and another barely begun – both abruptly lost. In the quiet darkness of the early morning, as I think about my friends, my mind drifts where it often does – to foster kids. Physical death in children is thankfully rare, even among such a high risk group, but I have come to realize that there is more than one way to die.
She was 15, the eldest of four siblings. Life had not been kind – her parents had died unexpectedly when she was 12, and after living with a couple of different relatives, her aunt had reluctantly taken them in. The basics were provided – food, shelter, education – but there wasn’t much emotional connection, so at such a young age she took on the responsibility of “mothering” her younger siblings.
I remember the first day I met her – she had just arrived at the shelter and was very upbeat and smiling. Seemed strange. When I inquired why she was there, her eyes got more serious. Her aunt had gone on a trip and left them alone. She had tried very hard to get her brothers and sister up in the morning, fed, dressed and off to school, then had met them in the afternoon, prepared supper, helped with homework and tucked them in bed. But they were beginning to run out of food in the house. She was worried, and asked their neighbor for help – the neighbor provided them some food, but also contacted the authorities and the kids were picked up.
She was OK with being at the shelter – OK with not having to stress about providing for her siblings. She was hopeful about the future – she wanted to be a pediatrician and hammered me with lots of questions about college, med school, and what it was like to work with sick children. It was impossible not to fall in love with her spunk and her hopefulness.
She came frequently to the clinic while I was there – at first just to hang out and talk, which we both seemed to enjoy. Then with some minor complaints – an occasional headache or stomachache. Then more serious ones. Weight loss. Sleeplessness. Depression. Her siblings left the shelter, one by one, each to a relative.
But no one wanted her. And her soul died. Her hope died. Right in front of me.
We cry when the body dies. But who cries when the soul dies? Who cries for foster kids? Who cries for her?
I hate moving. When I was a kid, my family moved every year or two, and it always made me sick. Hugging the toilet sick. The whole time the U-Haul was being loaded.
I didn’t really get any pleasure out of seeing my new bedroom or exploring a new neighborhood. Mostly I spent the first few days worrying. Wondering if anyone knew where I was. Would I be able to get on the right bus at school? And off at the right stop? I didn’t even know my address – how would the bus driver? Would my grandparents be able to find us for my birthday party? And how would Santa know where we were?
Those nerves could be largely settled by one simple thing – getting mail. Not mail for my parents, mail for ME. Mail meant that someone knew where I was. Mail meant I wasn’t lost. Mail meant I was thought of. And, if I was lucky and the mail was from my grandparents, it usually included stuff – stickers, toys, activity books, crayons – you get the picture.
Foster kids move a lot too – an average of 4 times in 20 months, and of kids who age out of foster care, 1/3 of them moved more than 8 times while they were in custody. Each move means a new house, new neighborhood, new school. Each move means you lose stuff that matters to you – stuff like pictures and drawings and stories you have written and favorite CD’s. Each move means new rules – new bedtimes, new chores, new ways to fold towels and make your bed.
And, they wonder if anyone knows where they are.
I wonder how much difference a piece of mail would make to a foster kid. A birthday card, a random note, a care package. How much does it matter to you to not feel “lost”, but rather “found”?
Beginning next week, my office will be sending birthday cards to the foster kids who see me for health care. What can you do? Look for opportunity. Teachers, coaches, kids pastors/church workers - take special notice of the foster kids who cross your path and send them a word of encouragement for no particular reason. Foster parents – teach foster kids your address and phone number.
Still hurting from yesterday’s post. Honesty is powerful, but also painful. Will tell new stories soon, but not today.