May I Have A Redo, Please?

     There are a lot of things in life that you can get a redo on.  For instance, say you want to renovate your house and as you are working hard and perfecting the place you realize you picked the wrong color for the walls. Well, after working all day, you can redo it and change the color.  If you are working on a big project for work and come up with a new idea, then you can redo it to make it better. But what happens when you can't really redo something? You can't take back words that were said, you can't take back days you've lost, you can't reraise your kids differently. 
     So what do you do? You learn from your past.  You try your hardest to not repeat those mistakes that were made. You find something that was good in all of that and you move forward. You take those missed lessons and you apply them.  Sometimes hard choices have to get made, in order to preserve what's already in place.  Parenting is hard, easy, joyful, painful, hurtful, and everything in between. It's not always sunshine and rainbows, but it's also not always dark rain clouds and thunderstorms.
     Over the last 6 weeks, we had been foster parents.  In the beginning, before placement, I had an unrealistic expectation of what life was going to be like. I had the huge heart that was going to allow me to change the world, one child at a time.  No matter how difficult, we were going to do something spectacular.  Well, after 6 weeks we did not even come remotely close to spectacular.  I was told my strong assertive side was going to be good. What they didn't know was that my "strong assertive side" of me being a mother was my darkest side.  It was a side that I've been trying really hard to hide from my parenting style. It wasn't my best but all I wanted to give was my best. I felt like my hands were tied from the beginning.
     I was overcome with stress, frustration, exhaustion, failure, and negativity.  Over the 6 weeks we fostered I had lost over 10 pounds, someone affectionately called it the "foster diet".  I woke up with dread and went to bed mentally exhausted. I wasn't the best parent I could be, I was merely breaking up fights, screaming, feeding kids, keeping them clean (for the most part), and keeping them safe. Days were lost, then weeks were nowhere to be found. I found myself wandering around numb on the inside.
     So what's next? Not really sure at this point. The foster we had has moved on to something that will offer him way more help than we ever could.  It makes me feel like a failure like I wasn't good enough, but I also feel that is just the enemy speaking those lies into my heart.  Proverbs 4:23 says "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it".  Those are easy words to read, but putting them into practice proved to be difficult for me.  When you've heard the voice of the enemy louder than your own for weeks on end, you begin to believe what you hear. 
     It's going to take me a bit to get back to beliveing that I was NOT a failure and I WAS enough.  I've slowly but surely pressed into God and what He has to say about me. The last 6 weeks was a series of unfortunate events that ended rather poorly.  I continue to pray for our foster and hope that he finds the true heart of Jesus one day.  I hope that he gets the help he needs and becomes an amazing and wonderful young man who going to do mighty things for God!
   The next steps we are taking is a few meetings with our foster care agency to see what's next.  We didn't really have a great start to our foster care journey, but also know that it is far from over! Whether it's with our current agency or a different one.  We were called into foster care for it to be over right now.  We will continue with prayer and follow God's will in our lives.