We lost my other grandpa, Cookie Grandpa earlier this week and are celebrating his life later this afternoon. Not sure what to do with my morning off, I started pricing stuff for our "Too Much Stuff Sale" (more on that later).
I put a $5.00 price tag on a Graco car seat and that's all it took to unravel me. I'm not sure if it's because we are in the midden of (another) loss, when we haven't really dealt with losing my other grandpa, or if it's because this is what the loss of foster care will always feel like for me, but my goodness it's hard. I remember buying the car seat with Austin before we knew who we would be using it for. We were so excited and yet completely unaware of how incredibly hard and at the same time worth it the journey we were starting would be. There are hundreds of memories to follow with this stinkin car seat. Honestly? Most of them aren't great memories, epic battles to get Mr. T into the car and get to school/work on time and a stand out memory where T broke the back off the car seat because he was so angry and I didn't know why come to mind first. We had just finished an awesome day at the Children's Musuem and on our way home something flipped. My mom and two others kids were in the car and I felt like such a failure. But hours later T and I sat across from each other at Steak and Shake and I can say I loved him just as much if not more than before the incident. Our drives home from visits were hard, what do you talk to a 5-year-old about who just saw their parents for the first time in 2 months and he's confused and hurting? How do you convey all the love you have for him as you're praying he will be yours forever but also wanting his parents to be forever because T looks identicle to his dad, A and you see the love they have for each other too? There were good memories too. When we went to see Austin's old Camry be smashed at the junk yard and T couldn't believe how "whoopie doopie" strong the machines were. "Hulk smash!" When Bear would try to lick T from the backseat, when we would listen to his favorite YouTube songs, or take a quick trip to the park. I miss Mr. T. I miss his talks about eyeballs, watching him help clean with his cowboy hat on, playing with the neighbor kids who loved him despite his inability to "normally" love back, bed time shenningans, shooting his bow and arrow, and seeing him in the review mirror in his Graco car seat. 2 years later and I'm still trying to figure out where foster care fits into our story. I'm always shocked at the comments made about "now that we have our own kids..." like it doesn't fit anymore or like foster care/adoption was a second rate option to biological kids. I know foster care fits again, my "everything right now" personality would accept a new placement this second, but my "working on almost 15 years of grief" mindset knows there's a lot to sort through and rebuild before it would be healthy and right for us again. I'm still not sure it would hurt any less though. Im thankful for the Graco car seat, sure there would have been a lot of heartache saved if it never was, but I would have missed all the lessons on love, grace, and forgiveness it brought as well. I'm so thankful for those who are stepping in the gaps and in the trenches day in and day out to bring God's kindgom here by loving his kids and their parents well. Right now, my way of stepping in looks like a lot of prayer. Foster love. It's so worth it.
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Hi! I'm Haley. Archives
May 2019
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