The girls moved in on a Sunday afternoon. They had toys and clothes and games, all of the things that had accumulated over the course of the last year-and-a-half, packed into the back of their foster dad, K’s, truck. We helped unload it all, piling the boxes and bags into our living room and stacking them haphazardly against the wall. I couldn’t believe the amount of stuff they had, and I found myself becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it all as the pile grew and grew.
“We’ll put some of this in the basement and bring it up little by little,” I told myself hoping that having a plan about something tangible would help me maintain some type of control over a completely-out-of-my-control day.
Looking back, I now realize that out-of-control thing is a universal feeling. “Welcome to motherhood, Christina. Control isn’t happening, unless it’s self-control. And you’ll be working on that for decades, I presume.”
The truth was, our girls were entering our home with more stuff than they needed. They had been provided for and loved well for the last year and a half, and we were incredibly grateful.
At the same time, they were lacking so much. The very fact that their life was being shifted to a different location with an entirely new family indicated this harsh reality. They got to bring all of their stuff along, but they were leaving behind everything that was safe and stable.
From an outsider’s perspective, I’m not sure anyone would have been able to tell what an immensely difficult day that was for them. Their behavior was fairly typical for little girls who were doing something new, and they were pretty much caught up in the excitement of the day.
But when I look back on that day, I’m filled with mixed emotions. There was so much joy that afternoon as Dustin and I put the final touches on the girls’ room. I felt confident in our steps toward building a family, and we felt God with us.
And because it’s such a joyful turning point in our lives, we celebrate the day annually. We call it our Family Day, and the girls love the celebration each March. We make a really big deal out of it, giving gifts, planning special outings, and spending time reminiscing about our family’s story. It’s a beautiful day that speaks to redemption in many ways.
Yet there is also sadness intertwined into the fabric of that day. Those little girls, who are now our now precious daughters, were dropped off at our home, once again hoping to find a place to belong. They lost their family, again. And this time, they’d be leaving their brother behind as well.
For the first few minutes, their brother was excited to see our house, and the girls were thrilled to show him. Yet being a little older, it soon became clear that he understood enough to know that the day wasn’t just exciting. I could see it in his face and hear it in his questions. He wanted to know more about the circumstances. Why couldn’t they just stay together? If the girls couldn’t stay at S & K’s, couldn’t he just join them now at our house?
I wasn’t sure who was supposed to take a shot at answering his questions, and there were no simple answers anyway. I figured this was something his parents needed to talk to him about, and I didn’t know if this was the time to do it. It broke my heart and made me so uncomfortable. In a weird way, I still felt like I was breaking up a family. I knew the reasons and they all made sense, but it was just so, so hard.
The reality was, that he didn’t have to leave the parents he called Mom and Dad. They wanted to give him the attention and structure that he needed to thrive, and they knew with just him at home, they’d have much more to give. With all of the factors in play, this was the best solution for everyone.
But having to be separated from one another is always going to be a difficult part of our girls’ stories. There’s just no way around that.
The three of them had weathered the harshest of storms together and had relied on each other through those early years of turmoil. I imagine that their brother protected them and provided for them the best he could during those years when their parents’ weren’t able to.
And on that day, their stories diverged, creating separate lives in separate families.
After all of their stuff was brought in and the girls had taken everyone on the full tour, I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. There was no manual, no plan, no guidance, in this transition that was in front of us. The caseworker wasn’t there overseeing the transition to make sure we were doing it correctly. And as someone who likes things to be done the right way, this was unnerving to me.
It was a hard enough situation to get through. The least we could have had was someone who had experience which such things, there, encouraging us or helping us in some way. Is this the best the system could do? Connect two families, and then give them the responsibility and freedom to come up with a plan on their own? There has to be a better way.
But there we were. Two families, forever-linked, fumbling our way through a transition that none of us knew how to navigate. S & K were saying goodbye to their girls, and we were becoming those same little girls’ parents, right then.
We walked S, K and their brother, to the door. They reminded us about a few more things that we might need to know, hugged and kissed the girls, got in their truck, and headed back to their house.
And while I felt like we had done a decent job of slowing down the process over the prior few weeks, that moment still felt so abrupt.
Just like that, we were a family of four.
Christina Hite 