Heart Stretchmarks

 

 

I can visibly show my three oldest children the stretch marks that each of their nine-month vacancies have left upon my body.  I call them my “love marks”, and they’ve each sketched their own faint pattern upon me forever.

But there are invisible stretch marks that cannot be so easily pointed to or explained.  Parents can all relate with these times, when our hearts our stretched seemingly faster and bigger than we can handle.  Unable to sleep when we first bring them home from the hospital, staring at their uneven infant breathing—something within aches and stretches. Watching them roll on the floor with pain as they experience their first earache, feeling helpless— our hearts are pained, the lines etched.  Seeing them bullied at school, struggling to make friends, or not accepted by a teacher—we again lay awake at night, fighting their battles with prayer... our insides altered.

Parenting changes us, inside and out.

Fostering has left me with more heart stretchmarks than I could ever begin to describe.  Maybe, from the outside looking in, it looks like we’re nailing it. Like we’re getting this “fostering thing” down.  But just as my third pregnancy depleted my body and mind on an entirely new level, this third placement has stretched my heart to new limits.  I don’t feel stronger and more equipped, though admittedly there’s now a familiarity to the system and the life of a case.  Rather, I feel tired.  Heart-tired.  Like I just don’t know how many more hellos and goodbyes I can handle.  

Three biological kids in three years, and I was ready to call it.  My home was full of joy but I had reached my body’s limit.

Four foster kids in three years, and I am reaching my love’s limit.  Only,  my home may not be left fuller.  There’s a void.  Where I said hello and my heart was stretched, then they said goodbye and the absence is gaping.  

In bearing children, it surely depletes you of vitamins and sleep and energy.  But there’s a tradeoff: no one would trade those back for the precious lives you’ve welcomed into your family!

In fostering children, you are depleted of emotion, sleep, and energy.  But then they’re gone.  It’s insanity, right?!

Why do we do this??

I know why we do it… 

I know these precious children are worth the stretch marks.  The sleeplessness.  The ups and downs of a case.  
I know their pain is much greater than mine.
I know they are not my children.
I know that reuniting a family is the goal.
I know we lay our lives down because Christ has given us all we ever need in him.  

But I also know that it hurts.  Real bad.  It’s an unnatural sort of pain.  

Pregnancy was designed by God.  And while the curse has undoubtedly touched our bodies and our parenting, the miracle of mothering is undeniable.  You were meant to grow, birth, nurture, attach and raise up a child.

Fostering is not designed by God.  It is USED by God, and absolutely BLESSED by God.  But it is a result of something being broken.  It is only present because something was absent in a child’s life: safety, nurture, security.  

There is no way out of fostering that will not entail grief and heartache and trauma.  


And sometimes…. Sometimes, I think it’s important to just acknowledge the pain.