Love Is Sacrifice

Exploring the complexities of foster care and the adoption of older children, my story exemplifies serving the Lord and trusting him even when darkening circumstances crush hope for a happy ending. This is my testimony of love, loss, conflict and restoration. All names and locations have been changed to protect the identities of the foster children who were in my care. My husband Brian and I had our first brother and sister pair move in with our family July of 2015. Christina was 13 years old, and her brother Andrew was 9 years old. Christina and I bonded immediately and intensely. I bonded with Andrew as well, but despite trying everything we knew how to love and parent Andrew, his depression, low self-esteem and trauma were beyond what we could overcome. After multiple incidents where Andrew hurt our 7-year-old son Evan, our cat, and destroyed property, we made the painful decision to ask social services to remove Andrew, but we wanted to keep Christina. Understandably, DSS did not want to separate them, and the Lord led the children to a family that was willing to foster and potentially adopt them both. What ensued was a struggle to preserve my relationship with Christina. Just before Christina moved in with her forever family, she became deeply depressed with thoughts of suicide. She begged me to visit her and stay in contact with her. I made a solemn promise to her that I would always stay in touch. The new foster mom, Cheryl, slowly but unequivocally cut off my relationship with Christina because she felt it interfered with her ability to bond with Christina. The external fight was a war of words pushed back and forth through email and documented in this book. The internal conflict was unanswerable questions such as, “Who was right and who was wrong? Is it true that if a foster child stays connected with a previous caregiver, they can’t bond with their new foster parent? Does Christina know her new mom has instructed me to stop all contact? Or does she think I abandoned her and broke my promises?” While grieving this loss, the Lord restored my heart by bringing our family a 16-year-old foster child named Vanessa, whom we ultimately adopted