February, 2008-- Lent a desert? Not with this snow

The analogy of lent as a desert has never worked for me. I was born and raised in Wisconsin, and except for a year spent in Chicago, I’ve lived here my whole life. The closest I’ve come to a desert is the Arid Dome at Mitchell Park Conservatory. February and March in Wisconsin — the lent months — are about as far as you can get from hot and dry. Lent to me has always been cold and soggy. When lent arrives in Wisconsin, winter is only half over.

            Lent is blackened snow in the streets and muddy boots in our hallway. Lent is wondering if maybe we’ll just skip spring entirely this year in favor of freezing rain until June. Lent in Wisconsin is leftover Christmas wreaths on too many houses because owners missed the one forty-degree day when they could have taken them down.

            So, with the analogy of the desert not working for my lent, I found it extremely appropriate that lent in Wisconsin was brought in by a blizzard this year. The snow that closed the city seems to me to be a fitting beginning to what our lent should be about.

            Lent, when done right, should begin by shutting everything down. This Ash Wednesday, the blizzard closed the kids’ schools and my husband’s and my workplaces. It changed our plans. It turned what would have been a typically complicated day — driving kids to school and practices, attending meetings, running errands — into a very simple one. All six of us home together, shoveling and eating vegetable soup. It can be hard to determine what in our lives is essential if we never take time to step away. Lent provides the opportunity to take a spiritual snow day. It is a time of “closing” some of the non-essentials in our lives.

            The interminable snow and ice of Wisconsin’s February can be a spiritual analogy just as surely as sand and cactuses. Theologians often talk about the “desert times” in our spirituality — times we feel alone and disconnected from God. But to me, there’s something appealing about any time that’s warm and dry. A spiritual desert doesn’t sound so bad— God may be quiet and you may be alone, but at least there’s no danger of frostbite.

            In contrast, when I struggle to see God’s presence in my life, it is usually because I’m in the middle a situation that seems impossible. It seems that if I turn one way, there’s cold wind whipping on my face. If I turn another way, there’s sleet. Four times, I have spent lent as a foster parent. The first time, we had just received 1-year-old Teenasia, and the whipping wind was the complete uncertainty of her situation. The second time, T had been with us for a year, and the sleet was giving her back to a situation in which we had no confidence. The third lent was Jamie — a lent that included a thaw and the promise of spring-- we adopted her shortly after Easter. And now, this lent, we have Teenasia back with us again, and the bitter cold of the court system feels unrelenting. I know spring will come because it has before, and I believe in summer and warmth and life without mittens. But from where I sit at the beginning of this lent, it is so hard to see the sun.

             But if the desert analogy of lent is about being alone, a winter analogy of lent has to involve people. Winter makes you want to huddle. Winter is about cozying together around a fire or cuddling on the couch, under an afghan. While it’s easy to imagine Jesus spending 40 days in the desert by himself, I doubt that if he lived in a different climate, he would have gone into the cold, snowy forest by himself for the same amount of time. Winter alone can be dangerous. Lent alone can be dangerous, too. Perhaps in no church season is the community as important as it is during lent. In looking into ourselves and seeing our own brokenness, we need to be around people who are doing the same. Jesus himself recognized that he shouldn’t be alone in his most difficult hour — and desperately asked his disciples to not leave him by falling asleep. The icy winds of lent require us to find people to huddle with. The prayer, fasting and almsgiving of lent underlines the importance of this community huddle. We pray and fast with our community, and then we give alms to those within the community who need our help.  Though Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation, we turn out at church in great numbers. We know we belong together on this day. We know we cannot be alone in the cold. 

            We are warmer together. We share heat. And even if together we still cannot quite see the sun, we can remind each other of the times before, when the winter ended. We can tell each other stories of the coming of spring. Together, we can await the resurrection.

            

February, 2008-- Teenasia's return to Foster Care, a third time

A Return to Foster Care

            Three weeks ago Wednesday was a “sit by the phone” day.

            The day before, Bill and I had completed the licensing process for receiving a foster child in need of adoption. Wednesday was the day that our family was to be presented to the social workers in charge of placement. Our licensing worker would explain to the placement workers the type of child we thought would best fit in our family and the placement workers would look at the children in the system and match us with one of them. We had requested a girl under four with minimal physical and mental limitations. Her bed was set up in Jamie’s room.

            For the past month, after our usual dinner prayer, one person in the family would pray for the child who would be sent to us. We prayed that it would be the right child — a good fit for our family. We prayed for whatever that child had gone through that landed her in foster care would be something we could help heal. We prayed that we’d be given the wisdom, insight and patience we needed once she came. 

            As I waited for the phone to ring that Wednesday, I considered the possibilities. I wondered if the little girl would be more toddler or preschooler. I wondered what her ethnic background would be, and whether she’d be quiet and reserved or lively and outgoing. I wondered about her birth parents and whether it would be a smooth transition from foster care to adoption, like Jamie’s was, or if extenuating circumstances would drag the process out or send her back to a relative.  My mind swirled with the both the worries and the joy of foster care — the possibilities of attachment disorders and fetal alcohol syndrome; the amazing miracle of an abused, abandoned or neglected child being given a fresh start.

            As I waited for the phone to ring, I remembered waiting for past foster children. My mind went to Luchita, our first foster daughter, who was sent to live with her grandma after a month with us. I remembered when the phone rang for our second foster child  Teenasia, who came, at age 1, just a few days after Luchita left, and stayed until she was a little over 2. We didn’t feel good about the situation she was being returned to, and our hesitations proved right. Two years later, she was in our home once again as a foster child. Teenasia stayed with us just five months the second time before being returned once again to her biological father. That was almost exactly a year ago, we had not seen her since. My mind tried to close the door on T in favor of happier foster care moments. I remembered the fuzzy faxed picture of smiling toddler Jamie that we received the day before we went to meet her. My mind settled on the Jamie memory.

            I was hoping for another Jamie.

            But the phone didn’t ring. It didn’t ring, and it didn’t ring, and it didn’t ring. Our house had never had such a quiet day. Finally, at four o’clock, unable to stand it any longer, I called Anna, our licensing worker.

            “Annemarie, I’m so happy that you called,” she said. “I have amazing news for you. We were just going to place you with a child when one of the social workers looked at the computer for the display of the children who entered foster care today. Teenasia was just detained five minutes ago. The social worker remembered her name from when she was in foster care with you last year and knew that you’re licensed again. T is at Children’s Hospital now, being checked. She’s back in foster care. She needs placement tonight.”

            Teenasia needed placement tonight. Not two days ago, when we would not yet have been licensed. Not tomorrow night, when we would have been matched with another child. She needed placement tonight.

            After a day of waiting for the phone to ring, five months of working on being licensed again, so many late night talks, it was T who would be delivered to us again?

            T was the girl we had been praying for without even knowing it. My mind kept bumping into things as I struggled to understand the news. We weren’t receiving a pre-adoptive placement. It wasn’t a toddler or preschool mystery girl. It was T, who we knew, and loved. And who we had let go of twice before. The magnitude of God’s timing overwhelmed me.

            Bill came home from work, and together, we wept, then pulled ourselves together and quickly straightened up the house so the social worker might think we were a neat family. We ordered pizza so that it would be hot when T arrived. Cheese pizza-- her favorite. 

            About 30 minutes later six-year-old Teenasia was on the porch with a social worker. She bounded through the door, into our arms, then dashed off with Jamie to see the toys she remembered from last year.

            As we filled out paperwork, the social worker told Bill and me that she had waited until she was driving to our house to tell T where she was going. Despite what they’ve been through, she said, not all foster children react well to the news they’re not going back to their parents.

            “What did Teenasia say when you told her?” I asked.

            “She said that God had answered her prayer,” the social worker said. “She said she had been praying that she could stop being hurt and go to live with you again, and now it was coming true.”

            We were praying for each other, Teenasia.

            Welcome back.

November 2007-- Will you accept children?

Will you accept children?

About 14 years ago, I was a bridesmaid in a wedding for a very young couple. They were still in college and I was a few years older. At the exchange of vows, all the bridesmaids and groomsmen stood on the altar as the priest asked the couple the traditional questions.

            “Will you accept children willingly from God and bring them up lovingly according to the law of Christ and his Church?” he asked.

            “We will,” they answered. The priest turned away slightly, and as he did, the bride turned to her maid of honor, rolled her eyes, and shook her head ever so slightly.
            “No kids,” she mouthed, as her maid of honor suppressed a giggle.

            I remember being so struck by the bride’s response that for a moment I even forgot about the metallic green dress with the balloon skirt she was making me wear.

            It wasn’t that I believed everyone should have children, or even that she, specifically, should have a child. Rather, it was her blatant dismissal of the question. The priest wasn’t asking the couple to start their family right that moment, but was rather asking whether they would accept children. At age 20, the bride and groom had at least two decades to think about having children. To make a point of saying absolutely no seemed to me to be a rejection of the sacrament.

            Just two weeks into my own marriage at the time, I saw the questions and vows as the Church’s way to encompass just about every possible event that life could throw at a couple. Good times and bad. Sickness and health. Rich and poor. Young man and young lady — none of us knows what the future holds, but will you promise to stick with this other person as you find out? 

            The couple has been divorced for about five years now, but the bride’s firm shake of her head is still with me. I think about it whenever I’m tempted to make an absolute statement about the plans I have for my life — especially one that starts with the words, “I’ll never…” or “I will always.”

            Bill and I have once again become licensed to foster and adopt. I feel surprised about this decision — not in a shocked-to-be-pregnant kind of way; more in a I-can’t-believe-I’m-parachuting-from-this-airplane kind of way. After Jacob, then Liam, then two foster children, then Jamie—who we first fostered, then adopted, then Teenasia, who we fostered for a second time, I had thought we were done with the “accepting children” part of the vows. The children had been sent by God, were accepted, and were in the process of being raised lovingly (at least most of the time). Wasn’t it time to move on to something else? A part of the vows, perhaps, that would not involve the addition of 14 more socks to our family’s laundry each week?

            Our surprise decision to adopt again came to us early this past summer. We were admiring the foster baby of a couple from church. As the baby grabbed my finger, her foster mother said to me, “Did you know there’s a record number of foster children in the system and that Children’s Service Society is desperate for more foster parents?”

            I had not known this. I glanced at Bill. He hadn’t known it either.

            In the weeks that followed that baby’s finger-grab, Bill and I talked about little else besides whether or not we should foster or adopt one more. Could we be good parents to four? Were we good enough parents to the three we had? What would another adopted child mean for Jamie, not to be the only adopted one in the family? What would it mean for Liam, who sometimes already felt squished in the middle? And what about the emotional toll that foster care invariably brings— we had been hit hard by the system when the court ruled that Teenasia’s father’s anger management classes were enough to warrant Teenasia’s return to him. What if we had to go through that again?

            As we talked, however, signs from God started showing up, just as they had the first time we were thinking of fostering. We’d go to church and the homily would be on welcoming the stranger. We’d visit our favorite prayer Web site and the reading of the day would be Jesus’ admonishing the disciples, “Let the children come to me.” Newspaper and television stories on foster care and adoption seemed to appear on a daily basis.

            But mostly, what caused us to fill out the paperwork to once again be licensed for foster care was that we really couldn’t think of a good reason not to. There were too many kids out there who needed a good family, and for all of our faults and foibles, we knew we were a good family.

            And maybe too, it was that question a priest asked us 14 years ago as we stood on the altar.

            “Will you accept children willingly from God?”

            We said we would.

            Even if it means 14 more socks each week.   

December, 2007: My daughter, the Virgin Mary

I am living with the Virgin Mary.

            Mary, in case you were wondering, is three feet tall with tangled ringlets pulled back into a ponytail, tied with a bow. Unlike traditional portraits that show her in blue, my Mary tends to wear her St. Monica uniform jumper, which is red plaid.  On weekends, though, little Mary has a more relaxed look, with jeans and a t-shirt. While for centuries Mary has been known for her serene, patient smile, my experience is that she is alternately sweet and sassy, and we are working on curbing her bossiness. Most importantly, though — and this is what makes her Mary — is that she rarely, if ever, is without baby Jesus.

            My daughter Jamie, 4, announced she was Mary last week after her kindergarten Christmas program. Her K4 class had sung Mary Rock Your Baby, My Lord, and all the little girls in the class were given baby dolls to hold and rock during the song. Jamie came home from the program, picked up her own doll, told me it was Jesus, and has been in character for four days straight. This has made my Advent.

            Jesus’ manger is a light blue plastic rectangular laundry basket. Jamie lined the basket with every baby blanket in our house and drags her manger around behind her, baby Jesus wrapped snugly inside. Anyone who comes to the house is invited to visit the manger.

            “This is Jesus,” she told her older brother’s friend Mac, as he watched the Packers game at our house Sunday. Mac, who is 12, and has no little sister at home, didn’t quite know how to respond, but being the polite kid he is, he nodded, reached into the laundry basket and patted Jesus on the head.

            Jamie believes “Bethel” is a verb, and uses it as such. “I will Bethel him, Mom. Don’t worry baby Jesus, it won’t hurt when I Bethel you.”

            This morning, while I was working on the computer, Jamie tapped me on the elbow. “Baby Jesus needs a bottle,” she said. “Will you Bethel him while I go get it?” I glanced at baby Jesus lying in his laundry basket manger in the hall.

            “What exactly does ‘Bethel’ mean, Jamie?

            “I’m Mary, not Jamie,” she corrected. “You just carry him. That’s how you Bethel-him.”

            I picked up Jesus and brought him into the office. Jamie nodded, satisfied and went to get his bottle.

            Baby Jesus comes with us everywhere. At the post office, Jamie had the good fortune of having the woman in front of us ask her what her doll’s name was.

            Jamie told her. I’ve never seen so many people smiling in line at the post office. Jamie sang him Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on the way home in the van.  As she sang, I decided that there was no reason the star of royal beauty bright couldn’t also twinkle.

            There are some theological inaccuracies to Jamie’s days with her little Savior. For one, Jesus’ gender is relatively fluid. Some days, he’s a boy, but when Jamie wants to put a dress on her baby, Jesus simply becomes a girl. This agitates Liam, 9, who has no problem with Jesus sleeping in a laundry basket, eating plastic food or being brought out in the cold with no jacket (or even swaddling clothes). Hearing a feminine pronoun applied to Jesus puts him over the edge, though.

            “Jamie called Jesus ‘she’ again,” Liam hissed to me before dinner yesterday. I looked at him. It was clear he thought his sister was being heretical. Long college discussions about why we should use inclusive language swirled in my mind. I had no response for Liam.

            “Jesus is a girl,” Jamie bellowed from the next room. “You can see that she’s wearing a pink bonnet!”

             Another moment I couldn’t bring myself to correct occurred one evening, when Jamie curled up with baby Jesus and told him that soon, when he got a little older, he would be adopted. Jamie, who was adopted out of foster care at 20 months, thinks that adoption must be the high point of every toddler’s life. What could I say? Even if I could have broken the news to Jamie that Mary didn’t adopt Jesus, how would I explain why Joseph is called the foster father?

            While Jamie has mastered the main points of the Nativity story, some of the subtleties still elude her. While holding Jesus and talking to him yesterday, she tried to explain the story to him.

            “And, guess what, baby Jesus. God is your . . .” she paused, unsure. “God is

your. . . special friend. Is that right, Mom?”

            “God is Jesus’ Father,” I said.

            Jamie’s eyes widened at this news.

            “Jesus!” she squealed, holding the baby up so she could look right into his eyes. “God is your Daddy! Yes, that’s right, honey, God is your Daddy!”

            Jesus looked pleased.