False alarm

There are three main reasons why I started writing this down. 1. I find it easiest to process my thoughts by writing them down. 2. I want to remember what happened and how it felt for my own sake and perhaps down the road when I can remember and empathise with someone on a similar journey. 3. If anyone wanted to know what was in my head then here it is.

I didn't realise how many false alarms there would be. When I say 'how many' I mean two, but that's all we've had so far so the current record is 100%. After a month on the vacancy list we had two calls in five days. Different children, different stories and on both occasions a judge decided to make a decision which meant there wasn't a baby in our house that night.

The second time was much better. Although I still thought about the baby a lot and it was pretty distracting for the day that we were waiting to hear, I didn't have to go to bed for the afternoon and I only feel the occasional pang rather than a constant knot! It sounds a bit dramatic to sound like you're grieving for a child you haven't met and I don't think that's what it was. A part of me is desperate to get on with a job that I'm so passionate about and feel so much for but I think it's also that a placement means that the crazy number of questions we have about our immediate and medium term future slowly get answered. What will our life look like with a baby of x age? How easy will it be to go away next month? etc etc.

I'm not an especially patient person (that is potentially an understatement) and I've found that in the two days since our last phone call I've expected another purely on the basis that we had two close together before. It doesn't work like that. A fact that I remind myself of whenever I feel like sitting in the house and looking at my phone waiting for it to ring! It could be tomorrow, it could be in three months, just like before.

Getting a call again did make me think of a couple of things - we don't know how the carseat works and the car is a total mess. It's hard to walk the line between being totally ready if we needed to pick up a baby in an hour and spending so much time trying to be ready that your life is consumed by it (being simultaneously ready for a child anywhere between premature and 18 months old is a bit tricky).

So even though it feels like we've had a week focussed on fostering we're still where we were at the beginning. That's ok. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'd love to have a baby to care for but I'm choosing to treat the time as I have as a blessing. I went out to lunch with a friend and then shopping yesterday afternoon and I made and posted brownies to my sister doing exams, significantly trickier to do if I had an infant on my hands ;)

The first time.

This weekend a year ago we decided to call up the fostering team in our local authority. A lot has happened in the last year; we bought and (partially) renovated a house and we went through the assessment process to be foster carers for infants. We've been on the vacancy list for four weeks now. Four weeks of accumulating all kinds of baby stuff and swimming around in a sea of unknowns. We don't know when it will happen; how old they will be; a boy or a girl; what their story will be. Two minutes or two months away or anything in between.

Yesterday we got a call. A potential placement she said, a baby boy. If it happened it would be tomorrow. Tomorrow suddenly seemed very soon. A mixture of excitement and sadness - the potential to do what we've spent months talking about and preparing to do, crossed with the deep sadness of hearing the story of a real baby who needs to be in foster care. Even though we've spent months speculating about what it will be like to be new parents to a foster baby, it turns out I hadn't thought about a lot of things that much. I suddenly started to think about this little boy - I didn't know his name and what he would be like. What does he look like? What is his temperament? What will he make of meeting us and living in our house?

Having this new piece of information didn't really make the unknowns any better. It could be tomorrow, or it could be months. It could be a boy, three months or it could be no baby at all. Should I be excited? Could I be excited? Should I hope that this baby would come our way? I prayed that the right decision would be made for him - that he would go where he was meant to be.

It was a warm night and I didn't really sleep. 6am and I'm wide awake. Looking at the crib next to our bed and wondering if there'll be a little person in it today. I think about the irony of being awake at 6am on potentially the last day I could have a lie-in for a long time. We'll find out today if there's a baby coming, today.

Whenever I've been waiting for news, the time frame of 'sometime today' is excessively long. With one hour delivery windows now the norm a whole day is hard to wrap my head around. 9am comes and goes (I'm ready - house tidy and bottles in boiling water before potential first use). I fidget. There's some washing to do and a floor to mop. I think about the last minute jobs I'd need to do if there was a baby at our door within the hour. 

Somehow I spend the time - a cup of tea and some green and blacks at 12pm and I feel calm not knowing. 13:40 and it's unbearable. I have the same feeling in my stomach as waiting for exam results or a job interview I really wanted. Thinking about it, I know it's not my suitability as a foster carer that's in question. But I'm nervous waiting for this news because it involves a person, a little one and I feel invested in his life already.

14:25 and the phone rings. It's her and it's a yes. The placement will go ahead and he's coming today. We'll get another call with more information and a time he'll arrive. I can think about him now - a real baby coming to live with us! It's exciting and suddenly I think about the three of us and our strange situation. We'll have to get to know each other. He's been in the world three months and he hasn't met the people who will be his primary care givers at least for a while. I move the tiny baby stuff out of the nursery along with the cot mattress and some other bits and pieces. Everything else is ready to go. I text a few people - it's actually happening! It's beginning to sink in.

We get another call - our social worker can't get in touch with his social worker so we don't have any more information. I don't mind. When you know something's happening it doesn't matter if you have to wait another hour. It's happening today.

A final phone call at 15:25. The case went back to court and the baby isn't coming to us after all. Oh.

That's ok. I haven't met him - I don't even know his name! Hopefully the right thing has been decided for him. At least we can go to the festival this weekend as planned. Nice to have something fun planned, I'm not that disappointed. Win, win.

But that knot in my stomach hasn't disappeared. It hurts, I hurt. I'm confused because I don't know this kid yet I really wanted to meet him. I crawl into bed and stay there until Steve comes home. 

This evening and it's back to normal. We're eating dinner and watching a film, just the two of us and nothing feels amiss. I'm ready to go again, to wait again.

Abundance

Today as I was worshipping I was struck by the line 'Your love never fails, never gives up, never runs out on me.'

The concept that the love of God does not run out has come up a few times recently. Someone remarked 'When someone gets a blessing, that does not mean they've taken something you otherwise could have had. God does not work like that.'

I think this point is illustrated in the feeding of the five thousand. In Matthew 14:13-21 Jesus takes five loaves and two fish and turns it into dinner for five thousand people. The disciples collected twelve baskets of left overs! Despite illustrating that this wasn't just one meal cut up really small, the leftovers, I think, demonstrate something of the abundance in the heart of God. With Jesus, we needn't worry that there won't be enough, we can expect Him to deal with us abundantly.

This is so contrary to the way I think sometimes. I've spent a lot of my time hosting worrying about whether I've made enough food and if I'm honest, anticipating the shame I would feel if I hadn't. 

I've often worried that we wouldn't have enough money to do the things I dream of. Sometimes it feels like my dreams are just out of reach. That there isn't quite enough. My own experience of how the world can work means I can project this onto God. Not often consciously, but I'm only just starting to learn how to pray with the expectation that God won't leave me high and dry, just short of the mark. How many of us won't take risks for Him because of this mentality?

As I wrote this, I became unsure of my conclusion. Does God really deal with us abundantly? Praise God for the internet (for real), a quick google search squashed any doubt I had.

John 10:10
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Ephesians 3:20-21
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!

Psalm 23:5 
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Romans 15:13 
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Psalm 65: 9-13
You visit the earth and water it;
    you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
    you provide their grain,
    for so you have prepared it.
10 You water its furrows abundantly,
    settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
    and blessing its growth.
11 You crown the year with your bounty;
    your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.
12 The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
    the hills gird themselves with joy,
13 the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
    the valleys deck themselves with grain,
    they shout and sing together for joy. 

Matthew 7 - 7-11

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Got it? I'm going to spend a bit of time thinking on these passages, and then I'm going to ask my heavenly Father to help my life be affected by the truth that they bring. I'm praying that He'll do that for you too.

Rach