Tag Archives: Foster Care
Black Eyes and Wounded Hips
And the truth about people who do not fear God or respect humans is that they may look and sound and even feel tough, but in fact they are not. All it takes is the right kind of pressure to make the judge in the parable give in. The justice of the widow’s case is not his concern. His concern is only that he should not suffer or sacrifice for any particular outcome.
One Year
If I’d been given advance knowledge of how this would go–all the medical stuff, the sick nights, the background hum of destruction–when we were asked to take her, I honestly don’t know what I would have said. So it’s a mercy that I didn’t know, because as hard as it’s been, I don’t regret it. She is barnacled to me for everything from bedtime to bathroom trips to doing kitchen chores. I can’t pretend that I don’t sometimes resent this, especially now as I am trying to make my peace with her departure from our home. “Please don’t need me like this,” I mean to say when I just get frustrated.
Home and Away
We spend our lives in this world trying to find a home. Trying to make a home. We rent a place or buy a place or we stay with friends. We bring our bag of belongings to a church basement. We get on a plane to go from a refugee camp to a new country that’s been willing to receive us. We decorate. We personalize. Even detained immigrant children will try to give some beauty to their surroundings.
Suburban Diarist: Whatsoever Thy Hand Findeth to Do
It’s good to have projects. It’s important to expand oneself with tasks that go beyond the boundaries of daily needs. And it’s hard to live with only the exigency of the moment. Closer and closer it comes–the meal, the sermon, the meeting, the Wednesday night Lent worship talk, the coughing that pierces the night, the shopping for baseball gear–like the secret police, narrow escape after narrow escape until the knock comes before you’ve had the chance to slip out the back door.
Chicago Diarist: The Faces That You Meet
There I was, an hour early in my new dress shoes and business-casual ensemble, wanting to present every bit of the serious and patient foster dad from the suburbs I wish to be. I am always mindful of the stigma that can attach to foster children and foster parenting, and I would do nothing to legitimate that stigma. This child’s excessive exuberance or vocal exertion will be, to me, merely the rough poetry of childhood; my own role will be sober and affectionate, savoring nothing of mercenary or needy motives.
Good News to the Poor
And what you learn from this experience of insecurity is that the way we talk about this stuff—what we’ve “earned,” what we “deserve,” what we’re “entitled” to—is just words. There’s only what we’re willing to give to each other, and what the world can take away. The rest of it–all that “earning” and “deserving” and “being entitled”–is smoke and mirrors. The child in our care can see a doctor when she needs to and get the medicines that help her breathe because Americans pay for her, through Medicaid. And if we as a society are ever convinced that medicine for a child is a luxury we can’t afford, it can just go away.
Chicago Diarist: Nowhere to Lay His Head
(I wrote this in June 2010) The storms on Wednesday night were very intense out here. We lost power before 6 p.m. After the cell passed, we called ComEd for an estimate of its return. The hour came and went, and so we went to a hotel. A baby girl in our care needed a […]
My Back Pages: Foster Care and John Calvin
(This piece originally appeared in The Daily on May 8, 2011. It is no longer extant, so I’m re-posting it here.) The optometrist was very generous in praising our motives, but came back to the question so many people end up asking. “It must be so hard to get attached.” I had decided to start […]
Brutally Ordinary Things 