Christmas, Christmas spirit

Christmas Spirit

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It’s around this time of year when I start to take stock of how things are going with my life.  It’s a time to be thankful and loving.  Perhaps it is odd, but this Christmas, I think back to my lunches a couple of years ago with Michael.
It’s rather amazing.  Years after meeting him, I think of him again this Christmas.  At first, I would wish for him to find that for which he is holding on, but after thinking about it, it seems he had found it.  In fact maybe his mentality is closer to the Christmas spirit:
“…hold on because God is good and God says the word is good, and the word says the world is good so everything is going to get better because…”
Maybe the true Christmas spirit is one of recognizing all the good in our lives and holding it close.  When I asked my son last night what he thought Christmas was all about, he said, “Christmas is about loving our family.”  Amen.
I sometimes find it funny how many people say seeing all the Christmas lights out gives them more Christmas enthusiasm or spirit.  As I walk around my neighborhood, almost half of them are decorated for Christmas including one house whose light display is one people make special trips just to drive by it and gawk.  It’s impressive, and one might think they are trying to get on one of those extreme Christmas light shows.  Despite its and other houses’ bright attention grabbing light shows, the house I think best sums up Christmas spirit to me is the house down the street with the single electric candle in each window.
Their candles are lit year round.  The funny part to me is the parents didn’t know what it signifies, though the daughter who owns the house did and does.  The single white candle in every window used to mean there is a warm open bed here, and nobody need freeze outside.  It was a welcome on those cold frozen nights.  The meaning of the signal is lost on most everyone these days, but the simplicity and worthiness of the message is my favorite Christmas symbol. 
My kids love our Christmas lights and want more, so I don’t see a change in the near future for us. I do sometimes wish we could just put the light in every window.  It would be even better if we could agree to honor the message. That said and looking around my house, maybe our house is on the right track towards honoring the message.

Merry Christmas!

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Fair, foster care, stretch goals

There Is No Fair

There Is No Fair
For many things in life, I think we have to accept there is no fair.  Whether we are talking about the patients who have MS forever alter their life or the children who lose their parents as they are placed into the foster care system, there is no outcome which even remotely comes close to fair.  For all of these people, the outcomes will probably never be the fairy tale, but as my Physics teacher used to drill into us, “Nobody ever promised you a rose garden.”

As I was running a week before my 15k, I was doing some agility drills at the end of my run when I fell and hit my head on the sidewalk.  When I was asked if I regretted doing the run in the rain, I said no.  I did finish the run, and now I know I can’t do agility drills at the end of my run in the rain.  I tried and failed, but in doing so I gain knowledge of my limitations and an area on which I need to work.  If one succeeds at everything one tries, then I suspect the odds are one’s best efforts have never been made.  For what it’s worth, after my runs in the rain and in sunshine, I did complete the 15k run.  Chalk one up as a stretch goal reached despite a couple of falls, scrapes and bruises picked up along the way.

Now it’s easy to ask what on earth this has to with a post on fairness.  The answer comes in terms of what is expected of a foster parent.  A foster parent has to raise a kid like they were born into their family.  A foster parent has to bite their tongue when a parent doesn’t show for a visit.  A foster parent even has to bite their tongue when a parent is 2 hours late for a surgery being blessedly held waiting on their consent.  They even have to recognize a parent showing up late may in fact be one of those people pushing at their limits to be there for the child.

It’s hard to let a kid go into surgery in the unfamiliar arms of mom and to go through post op in those same arms.  It’s not fair to the kid to go through the added trauma in addition to the fear of being in a strange building.  It’s not fair to the foster parent who has taken care of the child who requires no small amount of loving care to then see the child call out for them and not answer. Doing so only makes the kid cry for the foster parent’s hold.  It’s not fair for the mom to hear her child cry for another’s arms.

Still, so long as the hope is to reunite the family, the bonding through surviving the scary together should be between the child and mom.  It’s not fair.  However, we can only hope through the continuous stretch to reach new limits with the patience to forgive failures and allow for another chance, maybe there is hope for the less unfair outcome of a family reunited.

Overall, I think this is or should be the goal of every foster family, to provide an opportunity for a less unfair outcome.  Doing so ensures enduring some heart wrenching moments, but of everyone in the story, the foster parent is the only one who got to choose their role.  I know I always hope the opportunity is one grasped, and sometimes it is.  Living to provide those moments seems a goal  worth stretching to reach both by the parent and the foster parent…even with emotional falls, scrapes and bruises.

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