Application Approved

I received an email confirmation today telling me my application and background checks have cleared and to call to schedule one of three available PSMAPP classes. In the hour between when I received the email and called the coordinator the first available class filled up. Apparently foster care is popular around here. So October 20th it is, unless they decide to open another class between now and then. Here's to 6 more months of waiting!

It finally happened...

I have read many foster care blog posts that talk about people who say "oh that's such an amazing thing to do but I would just be devestated to let them go..." in response to news that you're fostering. Until yesterday no one had responded to me that way. Maybe it's because my family knows better, or maybe they thought it but never said it, yesterday, however, I was talking with a DHS representative and she asked why I had chosen to register my daycare. My response was "I'm in the process of registering to be a foster parent and it's a requirement that all inhome daycares be state registered." To which she dropped the inevitable line. I honestly didn't think it would affect me until after I had had a foster child leave my home but I was wrong. As soon as she finished her statement I smiled at her but on the inside I was offended. I do plan on it being hard when children leave my home, I plan on loving them as much as she was insinuating she would. It doesn't make me less of a person for choosing to make the hard decision to walk this journey. I'm well aware that it's going to take me to places I never wanted to go, to have conversations no one should have to have with a small child, and to see the kinds of evil I would rather pretend don't actually exist. But the alternative is not being positive that the children I will love would've been safe and cared for during their time in this system. The sad truth is that there are bad foster parents just like there are bad birth parents. There are people who foster for alterior motives, but if everyone who has a heart that is able to love a child that isn't their own choses not to foster because they are afraid of heart break, it allows an already broken system to be catastrophic to its innocent victims. It leaves children to only see the evil we as adults choose to ignore. It removes all hope of improving our society or breaking bad life cycles. It would produce more horrific news stories for us to shake our heads at and exclaim "what is the world coming to?" It's coming to a place where personal convienence has become more important than improving the life of a child. I'm sorry fostering would break your heart, I'm not sorry your heartbreak would make a world of difference in a child's life.

Reality

I've been talking to anyone and everyone in my life about doing foster care for the last 7 months. At first it was awkward for me to bring up but the more I discussed it with my family and friends the more natural it became. I thought I had fully grasped the reality of the journey ahead of me, until last Wednesday when I was standing there with my application in hand waiting for the guy behind the counter to stamp it for me. All of a sudden this journey that I have been talking about for so long really became real. It's something I'm actually doing not just talking about. The probability that my life will not look the same as it does today by winter is high; the excitement that had felt up until that moment was still there but now it's paired with a healthy amount of fear. Here's to walking into the unknown, eyes wide open.