Healing Together

               

Anytime a new child enters our home, we know that with their few personal items (if any) they will also bring with them a great deal of pain and emotion.  We don’t always know much about each child, but we know that they are in our home because of some very horrible things they have experienced.  A child may come to us because of neglect, substance abuse in the home, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and so on.  We have no control over what they have gone through or how they will respond, but we have the chance and the choice to love them and provide them with a family situation, even if only temporary, that they deserve to experience.

Some of our foster children have experienced horrible things at young ages. Some of them have been lucky enough to have been removed before anything too tragic could happen to them.  Each child brings with them a new set of raw emotions and pain.  In loving them and caring for them, you can’t help but hurt with them.  Last weekend we could tell B was having a hard day. The pain of his past was very present in his eyes.  As a 9 year old boy it is very confusing and painful remembering the circumstances that placed him in state care many years ago.  What a challenge it is for a 9 year old to try and understand why he is in a new home after many years in another home prior to ours, or why his own biological parents aren’t able to care for him.  B’s past is his story to share if he ever chooses to with people in his life.  However, his story is also the story that brought him into our hearts and our home forever.

As we sat down with him and he opened up, sharing the wounds of his heart, I could feel my heart crying.  I may not have experienced what he went through, what he feels, etc….. but I am his mom and what he went through is my burden as well.  Although I have only been his mom for a few short months, I claimed him the moment I laid eyes on his profile. That day he became mine forever.  I love this boy and my heart wants nothing more than to protect him and take away the pain he feels.  I know he is happy to have a forever family, I know we are bonding and he is learning to love us as mom and dad.  That joy does not take away the pain he will feel for the rest of his life as he processes the series of events that he has experienced, as he questions the choices of the past adults in his life. 

B is my oldest son, my newest child, and as we embark on this journey of being a forever family, I will hurt with him.  I will experience his pain with him and be there for him like no one has before.  We will hurt together and we will heal together.

Lord, I lift up my son to you. I pray that you embrace him and comfort him each day of his life. I pray that you enable the healing of his heart and that Thad and I have the wisdom to address his pain in an effective and loving way.  I thank you for choosing B for us and us for him.  We love him so much and are thankful that you love him even more. May his life’s experiences be used to glorify you, Lord.  In Jesus’ name, Amen

Being a FAB Mom

                I realize that my title can cause one to think that I am boasting about myself. However, this is not the case.  We may assume that FAB is being used to represent the term “fabulous”.  I am far from seeing myself as a fabulous mom.  I definitely have my moments where I am a pretty darn good mom but rarely do I exceed my own expectations of what a fabulous mom is.  So what does FAB mean? For me, it represents being a foster, adoptive, and bio mom. 

                I see myself as a fabulous mom if I am able to work full time, keep a tidy home (with the dusting done and windows washed), no dishes in the sink, managing the homework of all the children without even a hint of irritation or impatience, someone who showers daily and hits the gym at least 2-3 times a week, healthy dinners on the table, lunches made, laundry done, and still has time to play with the kids and the hubby.  A pretty hefty expectation of myself isn’t it?  Funny thing is I don’t have this same expectation of other moms.  I see the hard work of other moms, I respect that hard work, I relax in her home when her house is not spotless, I feel a sense of relief when she is frustrated with her children or when she complains about homework.  I want to reach out and support this mom, lift her up in prayer, give her words of encouragement, take her kids for a few hours so she can have time to herself, take her out to coffee, etc.  In fact I very much enjoy being able to support other moms.  So why am I unable to receive the help and support myself?  The support that will help me to be what I view as a fabulous mom.

                When we got word that Brandon was officially able to move in with us we eagerly drove to his state for the weekend, packed up his stuff and made our journey home as a family of 6.  For our family, weekends are the time when we grocery shop, really clean the house, catch up on laundry, errands, etc. As you can imagine being gone the entire weekend left our fridge empty, chores, and errands undone.  Two of my close friends who are also foster and adoptive parents borrowed our house key while we were away and decorated our house in a manner to surprise and welcome Brandon.  Not only did they do that, but they also put a meal in our fridge for when we came home Sunday evening, knowing full well we wouldn’t have time to prepare dinner for the family.  They knew the support we would need.  They even went above and beyond and established a meal train for the following week and a half.  I am not good at accepting help…….I just don’t do it well and I resisted.  I supposed I expect myself to meet unrealistic expectations.  God is teaching me, growing me….My friend Sarah who established the meal train fought my resistance. I am so thankful she did! Her words, “Nicole, you are a leader of our ministry, of the support dinners.  If you don’t accept support and help from others, how can you expect others to accept it?”  DUH!!!!  How could I?  God is growing me in the expectations I have for myself, God is teaching me that accepting support does not mean I am incapable, weak, or a failure of any sort.  Quite the contrary, it means that I am strong in who I am, I am secure enough to accept the help being offered, and I am smart enough to know my limitations. 

                As a foster and adoptive mom, my support system is what gets me through each day.  I have learned over the years that surrounding myself with those who believe in me, believe in our calling, and accept me for my humanness are the ones I need to fill my life with.  Those with good intentions just don’t make life any easier.  When I am frustrated, when I am struggling, when I need to vent, I don’t need the response “well you guys are the ones who chose to do this” or “maybe you should think about not doing this anymore”.  Of course we chose this, we love this, but it doesn’t mean it is going to be easy and that we won’t need support.

 I still struggle with accepting support, but I am getting better. God is creating many opportunities for me to practice this new skill.  I am a FAB mom, and this time I do mean fabulous.  My love, advocacy, and life are based around my family and what they need – that makes me fabulous – not perfect – but definitely fabulous.  God has blessed me with a church family, family, and friends that have helped me achieve that title. 

Warning: Proceed with Caution - Adopting Out of Your Birth Order

When we entered into the world of foster care and adoption we established some basic rules.  Our number one rule – we don’t adopt or foster out of our birth order……..Simply put, we believed that a birth order was not to be messed with, it helps establish roles in a family and then there is no confusion for the children about their position in the family. 

It wasn’t long before our rule was challenged.  In October, God grew a 9 year old in our hearts, a young man 6 months older than our eldest child.  This posed a problem in our mind, it went against our rule.  Still, God placed it on our heart to view his profile, his pictures, to hear his story.  We did so with open hearts and the entire time we felt as if God was calling us to pursue adopting this child.  Oh the struggle we faced with going against rules we had established but that rule could not be held up by anything biblically so we had to make a decision; trust God and throw the rule out, or ignore the Spirit speaking to our hearts. Over the next month we prayed daily that if this was not God’s will that the doors close and that if it was His will that all hearts were prepared for the transition to follow.  The day before Thanksgiving a committee determined that of the families pursuing Brandon, we were the perfect match and selected us as his forever family.  It took 4 months before Brandon was able to permanently move in with us but in those 4 months we were able to Skype, have him every other weekend, prepare our family for the transition and pray about the changes to come.  The transition was going amazingly well, far better than we could have anticipated. The kids loved him, wanted him to move in immediately, and Brandon adjusted as if this was always his home.

                Four months of preparing, four months of discussing what changes were going to happen with our children and we felt confident that things were going to be pretty smooth, well relatively smooth at least. We made this decision as an entire family through prayer and petition.  It was apparent that our children were just as on board for this as we were.  We thought about how this birth order change was going to affect our oldest daughter and we came up with some plans to initiate in order to help her adjust.  Or so we thought at least. 

                In looking back I realize that we were in a sense looking through a telescope.  If you imagine yourself peering through a telescope into space you are able to clearly see a small picture of what space is.  That small picture is clear, but you have to span around in order to see any other parts of space. The big picture, the whole picture is unable to be seen while looking through that telescope.  Yet, peering from Earth without it, the whole picture isn’t clear, it is out of focus.  You can’t see in clarity until you are directly upon it, until you have entered space and are in the midst of it.  That was us. We were seeing only a small part of this change and the affects clearly. We had yet to be in the midst of the change. 

                It wasn’t until Brandon had been living in our home for a couple of weeks that we started to see things clearly.  Man did we feel like kicking ourselves when we realized we hadn’t fully realized and been proactive about the impact this change would have.  We knew Brandon and Elena would be in the same classroom – we thought that was a good thing for him, a blessing.  We knew they would be in the same Sunday school class – again we thought that would be a good thing for his transition.  What we couldn’t see is that this was not a blessing for Elena. After a day of holding her while she cried and witnessing the resentment she was starting to feel towards him we realized that we were finally in the midst of the whole picture and could see in clarity.  Elena wasn’t just in the same classes as Brandon, she suddenly was sharing her parents, her siblings, her home, her teachers, her friends, her gymnastics, her entire day had Brandon in it. The only thing she had to herself was her bedroom.  Everything else now included her new brother.  We didn’t think about her friends spending more time with him than her at recess, we didn’t think about the fact that they are only 6 months apart and therefore will always be in the same classes, sharing all the same people in their lives.  We couldn’t see that her typical routine of being the first one awake in the morning and enjoying her favorite television show would now not exist because Brandon wakes even earlier than her and turns on his show.  Our daughter was feeling squished out of her home, her life.  We had not prepared for this.  As much as we tried to see the whole picture, we have truly learned that until you are in the midst of it, nothing is clear.

                In Elena’s mind, this was her house first and truth be told, it was.  Now it is also Brandon’s house.  We have worked diligently to be mindful of how this change is affecting every part of her life.  She is not the eldest child anymore, but she is still the oldest daughter. We have given her the largest bedroom to honor that. As much as we are against televisions in the bedrooms, we placed one only in her room to allow her the ability to continue her morning routine in a manner that cannot be affected by Brandon.  We have kept her counselor separate from Brandon’s.  She and I have a special lunch date every Thursday that does not include any of her siblings. It has been our goal to stop looking through a telescope and to be more tentatively aware as we enter into the moments.  In doing so, we have seen some very wonderful and positive changes.  We know this is just the beginning and that unclear moments that we have not prepared for will arise.  Blessed is our family though that God has chosen each of us to be a Kittelson and He will see us through this entire journey. 

What About Me Mommy??

As an adoptive mother I am always fairly sensitive to how my children who are adopted may feel about things.  Do they feel like they are able to identify culturally with someone in our family, our community of friends, etc.  Am I being sensitive to the fact that they may have questions, fears, and so on about their adoption, birth parents, and their entire biological "identity"?  It is easy to be sensitive to, intentionally aware of, and self-educated about the questions and the various things that adopted children may encounter as they get older and the more they understand about what their "story" really is.  Each of our 3 adopted children have their own story that we share with them openly. One of them has known their birth family, one will one day know their birth family, one will never get to know theirs.  We are in contact with two of the birth families and have open relationships where we can ask questions that may arise.  We are prepared in a sense about how to discuss each of their adoptions, what we weren't prepared for were the questions our home grown daugther threw at us.


In our house it is a common joke that we will one day be sending our home grown child to counseling because she wasn't adopted.  Little did we ever think that being the only biological child in our home would cause her such great distress.  With our heart grown children, they have each other to identify with, they have multiple members of the family that may be feeling or wondering the same things.  Their siblings will be able to empathize various things about their life.  Addy doesn't have that.  Addy, in a sense, sees herself in solitude, where she can't relate or empathize with her siblings.  Being home grown does not give her a sense of superiority, rather a sense of difference that she experiences alone.  This is an issue we had not prepared for.... 


What a blessing it is that Addy was heart grown too, just like her siblings.  It wasn't with us though, she was heart grown with Christ.  In our family we all get to experience the joy of being adopted.  Christ adopted us into His family and we have been grown in His heart.  Addy has an adoption story.  It may look different than a worldly adoption but none the less it is her story and she too can share in that similarity with her brothers and sister.


(The link that I posted in the comments below did not paste properly so I have included it here. This is an excellent article about biological and adoptive children.  http://www.zimbio.com/Adoption+And+Foster+Care/articles/19/Parenting+biological+adopted+children)

At The Heart of a Family

Have you ever pondered how you got to a certain point in your life, how you came upon the path you are walking?  In looking back I see how God has been paving my path with gold since I was a young child.  I remember at the age of 3 believing with all of my heart that I would one day own an orphanage and I would love all the kids no one else wanted to.  It was a goal of mine, one that I never fully let go of.  Little did I realize that God was planting a seed in that 3 year old mind of mine.  A seed that has blossomed into the most beautiful flower, in full bloom; a flower I call my family. 

                Years passed and my heart never seized loving the unlovable.  The older I got, the more and more I felt called to adoption and foster care.  I used to feel guilty because my desire wasn’t to adopt from third world countries or overseas like so many others.  Nope, God called me to love those in our own backyard.  The vulnerable children here in our country, the orphans we call foster children.  You see most people don’t think of them as orphans because they have “families” they live with.  But many of these kids age out of the system or are legally free without ever having a forever family, a family they know will be at their graduation, their wedding, or the birth of their children. They don’t know whose home they will spend Christmas morning or Thanksgiving dinner at.  It is these children that God has called me to love, to adopt, to commit my life to.   

                It took several years of prayer before my husband found the path I was on and agreed to walk it with me.  He too felt that God was calling us in this direction.  Of course making the decision was only one of the obstacles we faced.  After making this decision I could really feel people trying to persuade Thad and I that foster care was too “risky”, not the right choice, that these kids had too much baggage, that saying good-bye would hurt us too much.  It was shocking to hear the arguments people had against caring for these orphans, but also encouraging the faith others had in us as we ventured on this journey. 

                In beginning the journey of foster care we had made the decision that we were looking to both adopt from the foster care system and to also take kids that were not on the adoption track.  Our first foster son was this beautiful, biracial 18 month old little boy.  We only had “Little E” in our home for 5 days but we loved him immediately.  It was heart breaking to say good-bye but we knew God had a purpose for him in our lives, even for those 5 short days.  Little E was our “ideal” foster child if we had to pick one out.  He was the age we preferred, gender, etc.  Little did we know that God had even bigger and better plans for our family. 

                Within a week of Little E leaving our home we got the call about a newborn baby boy.  We welcomed this 7lb bundle of chocolate joy into our home and never thought twice that he wouldn’t one day be ours forever. But getting to the forever part seemed to take eternity!  In the two years we have had him, we have faced many agonizing and stressful moments.  Moments where we had to fight to pray for his birth mother, yet fear the visits he would have with her.  It was very difficult trying to balance our hope of a future with him and knowing in our hearts that his birth mother needed to be healed, saved, and free of the struggles in her life.  Every trial and hearing brought with it the anxiety of ‘potential’ outcomes.  Verdicts appealed, trial dates post-poned, termination trial dates changed…. It all felt so never ending. When were we finally going to be able to breathe, knowing we would never have to say good-bye to this little man we called our son?  Well it has been two long years and in this process we have also welcomed two other toddler boys into our lives. Little men we still love, pray for, and will hold in our hearts forever.  We have said good-bye to three foster sons over the past two years and God made our baby boy our forever son officially on September 30,2011!  We are over joyed to call him Teagan Jude and eagerly await the finalizing the adoption of our newest forever family member, Brandon.

                We are blessed, more than we deserve.  God has provided for our every need and beyond.  It only seemed right that we be good stewards of these blessing and give to the “least of these”.  After all “faith without works is dead” (James 2:17) and we made a choice to live out our faith.    In doing foster care people ask us how we can take a child in with so much baggage, our answer is “how can we deny a child who has had no choice in their life, whose circumstances are unjust, unprovoked, and out of their control?”  We are asked how we can love a child that is not biologically ours?  Our response is, “how can we make the choice to not love these children when God has chosen to love us, ‘for the greatest of these is love…love one another as you love yourself.”  We are also asked how we are able to endure the pain of saying goodbye.  It is then we explain that the pain we feel is nothing compared to the pain that these children have experienced in order to have been placed in our home in the first place.  Our pain is nothing compared to theirs and the joy we get to experience when a birth family has overcome trials, struggles and addiction in order to gain their child back is indescribable.  Not only do we get to share in changing the life of a child but we also get to be a witness for their birth families. 

                The golden path God has lead us on has been a path that is the heart of our family.  What path is He taking you down and are you willingly walking down it?