One night during my training to become a foster parent, a couple of existing foster families came into the training to share their experiences and answer questions. I don’t remember all the stories, but one brought me to tears that I never forgot. A woman about a year into fostering and 6 placements later shared a story about one of her hardest placements. She reminisced on the day she attended the child’s “termination hearing”… The court date that terminated the rights of the biological parents after all efforts have been exhausted to help reunite the child with his/her bio parents. For this child, she was heartbroken because she was the only “parent” present. The whole training class was silent and saddened as she tearfully said, “how do you tell that child one day that no one showed up?”…
Tomorrow is Lil Baby G’s termination hearing. I never guessed that day in the training class that my story would be almost identical… I never thought that burden would be mine. God knew long before I did what this journey would hold and I know that was just one of many steps he took to prepare my heart for this step.
While tomorrow will be a step closer towards Lil Baby G becoming a legal member of my family, it is also a tragic day of loss in his life. Even though he is too young to know what’s happening, I know that one day he will ask and wonder about his biological parents. I fear that day and the lack of information I will have to help him understand his heritage or even simply his race. I pray that he will know that despite all his trauma pre and post birth that he was prayed for and the much awaited with so much hope and love.
It may sound crazy but there’s a part of me that wishes one of his parents would appear tomorrow just so that we could meet and I could tell him about them one day.
If I could tell them one thing it would be “thank you”… Will they ever know how truly grateful I am for the gift of being his mommy?
Tomorrow will be a day of mixed emotions…. One thing is absolute, it will be a day I will never forget. Lil Baby G and I will be there “just in case” for the final opportunity for a chance to meet his birth parents. We will show up and he will at least have one “parent” there holding him with love and with big hopes for his bright future.
You can tell him what wonderful people they were to allow him to have a wonderful life that they would never have been able to give him. We hear every day about children being miss treated, starved and killed. They spared his life so he could be with you.
Bless you for giving and caring and loving..all babies need that chance..they need to have someone love them and be good to them.
I wished I had had that chance when i was younger..never had any children and many times I wonder what it would have been like to have a baby or adopt a baby that we could have made a difference in their lives. The gift of love is the greatest gift of all.