foster
But Aren’t We Supposed to Like…Like Them?
It seems only fair to explain why I am comfortable with claiming publicly that I’m not really a ‘kid’ person. I’ve said this for years, and it always evokes odd looks and maybe some awkward giggles. Everybody knows exactly what I mean. But are we supposed to say that, aloud?! There is a general feeling of shame or ‘mom guilt’ in admitting (even to ourselves) that children tend to be truly challenging for the majority of their existence.
There’s also I think a generally held belief that Christians must view and portray parenthood as sweet, heavenly joy in order to correctly follow Christ. After all, He said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.” He also said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Clearly He loved children and valued their superior ability to believe the truth quickly and easily.
And please don’t mistake me. I love children, too. I love everything lovable about them. Hope, love, joy, innocence, energy, the literal approach to good and evil and people and truth. There is no adult that understands the natural world or basic principles of living better or more easily than the average uncorrupted child. This is fun. The delight of child-raising, if you will.
What I’m talking about, and what I intend this whole project to serve as a vehicle to help process, is the trickier bits. For me at least, the vast majority of the time I spend with my children is not what I would call fun. Maybe this makes me pathetic and terrible, I don’t know. Another uncomfortable thing I tend to say too often is, “if you like kids, you probably don’t have enough of them.” With this many kids in our home, throwing in the close ages and the myriad delays and traumas they have experienced and will continue to work through, there is constantly someone in trouble. Someone is in need of correcting. Someone is in need of help with something that they could probably do themselves. Someone is in need of….well, anything. Someone is ALWAYS in need.
This is simply and overwhelmingly disheartening. And I think it’s healthy to admit that. I don’t like the helplessness of children, ignorance, inattention, foolishness, or heartlessness. (Maybe you have all sweet juveniles, but each and every one of my six boys tend to often hurt their siblings accidentally or on purpose and really not give any cares at all, maybe even is proud of it!) I don’t like willfulness, disobedience, selfishness, inconsideration, or general slovenliness. I don’t like disrespect, arrogance, clumsiness, drama, whining, self-pity, stealing, destructiveness, dishonesty and untrustworthiness, cowardliness, lack of self-control, etc., etc. The unavoidable fact is that parents are expected to not only bear all of these odious qualities in our children, but to improve each and every one of these behaviors whenever and however they appear, through both example and overt correction. We are asked to embrace and assist with every power of our being, other beings who do their regular best to make complete fools out of themselves and us. This is sometimes (often), to put it bluntly, a nearly intolerable task.
See, I don’t really think Paul was a kid person, either. After all, he did say, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” The whole chapter is about qualities that children really do NOT naturally have, at all, and then he mentions how much he considers childish things to be in his past. He wasn’t called to this path, the one where we must bear with childish things 24/7 and inhale them with every waking breath. But I do think he would have had a lot of understanding for those of us who are.
This calling is the best thing I have ever done, or ever hope to do. Especially the fostering and adopting part. It’s the closest we can possibly get to the heart of God: loving a soul that is unlovable for so many reasons, before it can ever be expected to love us back. Loving that soul through shadows and valleys and dips and lows and every other appealing word we can come up with to describe hell. Loving them in spite of themselves and their sometimes expressly stated utter lack of love for us. Loving them one. day. at a time. in spite of never knowing for sure what the next day will hold or how long we will get to love them in person. THIS. This is love. The depth and glory of it rends my very soul. Shame it’s so gosh dang hard.
It’s ok to be discouraged! It’s ok to feel like it’s all too much sometimes, to stumble and tremble. The only thing we have to do is get back up one more time than we fall. And that’s why Jesus’ mercies are new every morning. Your kids, and mine, are His first and only ours on loan. He loves them even more than we do, and He is the source from which we can find more love and grace than we could ever come up with in our own strength.
Here in the pages of this site, I wish to present an unvarnished view of the hardest thing I think anyone can ever do. It’s just a version of taking up one’s cross daily. Part of why I don’t offer up my full identity is because I don’t have any pride at all in this; in fact I believe that I fail miserably at the task most if not all days. He must increase, but I must decrease. I don’t expect it to be a particularly popular message, and much of what I think, feel, and write isn’t very mainstream.
But if any of my life, any of my struggle, any of my roller coaster in all its harsh realities can be encouraging to you, that will make it worth it to me. You are not alone. When you feel defeated, just remember that you are one of so many unsung heroes. Facing the darkness each day and staring it down, with the most vulnerable of our race firmly tucked behind you. Your ancestors watch you with silent pride and your descendants will rise up and call you blessed. You call down with each small act of love the greatest power in the universe, the power that conquered death and took captivity captive. You have limitless courage because you have limitless access to the heart of the Father. You are storming the gates of hell and defeating the principalities with each young heart and small hand bravely held tight.
Even on the days you don’t really like them.
The Day Seven Tagged Our Van
About Me
Hi! My name is {just call me Norea Kipe, maybe}, and I live just outside a city of a certain size, somewhere in the Midwest. I have eight children, homeschool, foster, have adopted, and survive one day at a time by the good Lord’s mercies. I do not naturally enjoy children, as a class. But as you may have heard before, God has a sense of humor. He has called me daily to do a very great deal of the most important work in the world, day in and day out, like it or not!
My husband and I often joke about how our lives should be a reality show, but I hate reality shows, so here is the next best thing. For many reasons, this will be a true confessions situation. You don’t know me in real life, and I don’t anticipate this arrangement ever changing such that you will need to know my real name. I prefer to be able to tell the truth exactly as it happens: the nitty gritty of fostering, adopting, parenting and homeschooling a large family in general, kids with special needs, and all the other things that we try (and often fail) to accomplish while keeping the kids alive. Hopefully the freedom to read it like it is makes up for the lack of a full name and backstory! {If you happen to ever come across this little site and you do know me irl, well, let’s keep it between us, yes?!}
I started blogging because I need to journal more often all the crazy things that transpire in this daily life, but don’t seem to get it done without a deadline or an audience. {Also, I am shamelessly lobbying sponsorships for my bucket list goal of taking all the kids to all 63 national parks between September 1, 2022 and September 1, 2032.} If you find our adventures interesting too, well, I will try to keep you up to date as often as possible. I can’t make this stuff up!
The kids have to be told about, of course. I shall call them by number, by age, because I think that’s the least confusing. One is a nine-year-old boy; Two is a seven-year-old boy; Three is a seven-year-old girl; Four is a five-year-old boy; Five is a five-year-old girl; Six is a four-year-old boy; Seven is a four-year-old boy; and Eight is a four-year-old. But I’ll tell you about them in the order they came to us.
Three was first. My first pregnancy, first c-section after over sixty hours of induced labor, first breastfeeding experience, first (and only) mini-me. She is currently one of the smartest of the bunch, beautiful and intuitive and kind and mischievous. She likes to sleep in bed with her daddy and me still and is very free with her opinions. My brown-eyed girl.
Five was next. She is an angel, also brought to us via major abdominal surgery, after (I pray) my last pregnancy. My blondie, she is the sweetest of the whole gang. Kind to a fault and caring in every circumstance. Very slim, pixie-like even, I adore her every move.
We met One, Two, and Six together on one fateful day in December of 2018. Our caseworker asked us if we would consider taking three brothers as our first placement when she came to have us sign our freshly-approved foster license. We were so new. Over the course of the next three years we daily rode the roller coaster of fostering with the highs and the lows and every possible emotion in between. There were many days that I didn’t know how we would make it through a day, let alone a life, with these boys. But almost three years to the day later, we finalized adoption for all three. I can tell stories another time about how they were when we met them and how they have grown and changed over the years. But for now, suffice it to say that One is loving and kind on a good day, very ADD and spacy on a bad day, and not particularly mature for his age. Two has struggled with speech and other delays, and still reads and comprehends quite below where Three is although she is five months younger. Six has overcome the most severe delays and is approaching normal but still does speech therapy and has significant emotional and processing challenges. Six probably has been the least negatively affected by the foster experience. He is the most bonded with me of the boys and is my baby.
Eight was known to us before we got the call, because we are involved in our local homeless shelter and he and his mom had stayed there briefly in the late spring of last year. So by the time he had to be taken into care, we had talked about him and felt drawn to accept placement for him. That happened in July (2021) and he’s been with us ever since. Currently in the earliest stages of obtaining guardianship, we anticipate him being with us forever but there’s no way to know for sure how that’s going to go yet. He is difficult. Very emotional, contrary, delayed in speech/language and other areas. He cries and screams and hits here and there still, although his behaviors have improved dramatically in a years’ time. The prospect of adopting him is still daunting to us. But we also feel like the door stands open and we are called to love him as well and as long as God keeps him here.
Four was the placement that was hardest to take. The state called us on a sunny afternoon in April of this year, early April. We tried to refuse. We are busy, had our hands full and more than full. The ask was for us to take one child who was “an escape artist”. He and his brother had been taken into care less than a week beforehand, for gross neglect. They had been placed in three placements together in six days’ time and had disrupted all of them. We did decline over the course of the afternoon, during which time they found another placement for him…only for that dear family to decide in less than twenty-four hours that it wasn’t going to be safe for them to try to keep him, either. Thus by the time we understood that this was the Lord’s call to us and arranged a transfer, we were Four’s fifth placement in nine days. He is terribly delayed in speech and other ways. He is sweet but mischievous; kind but emotionally stunted; strangely impervious to pain but also to correction and improvement.
Seven. Seven is a terrorist. If you can imagine a human raccoon, that is Seven. Biological brother to Four, I felt passionately that we should take placement of him after Four settled in here, so that they could grow and progress together. We were able to take him early May, about three weeks after taking Four. Seven had been in two other placements before us. Although the one before us would have been willing to keep him finally, they were over two hours away and all involved parties believed it would be best for the boys to be together. And this boy is the one to whom I felt most immediately drawn. He lives to incite chaos. And yet, he gives the best hugs. He will hit and slap and spit and kick and assault any of the other kids at the drop of a hat. But his grin is captivating. While I truly do not know how we can possibly survive raising eight challenging children less than five years apart in age to adulthood, I deeply hope that we will be able to adopt and love all of these children for the rest of their lives.
So that’s the crew. If you have read this far I anticipate you want to know a lot more. And boy, am I ready to tell the stories. So subscribe, like or follow my social pages, and fasten your seatbelt, because the next decade and a half is going to be quite the ride!