Consider This Your Email

A week before Thanksgiving, an email went out to all Ottawa County foster families. It dropped in my inbox with a clap of thunder as I prepared to end the workday and collect my boys from school.
“Ottawa DHHS needs your help and an 11-year-old boy named _____ needs a home; placement is needed by Friday.” It was Tuesday. Emails like this one are rarely sent which told me they were running out of options.

I finished reading the message and clicked on the video at the bottom, recognizing him right away. He looked just like my middle child, ash blonde hair and toothy smile. His plastic-framed glasses had been broken and taped back together at the corners. He talked to the camera about sports and Pokemon and his dream for a family, those big and little things that hold a boy together.

But this particular little boy had been waiting on his dream for three years, and based on this email, the current foster home would not be his final stop. We’d been in that position before, parenting children we knew were not meant for us. It is a torturous, guilt-ridden place to reside, and my heart ached for that little boy and his foster parents.

I typed out a text to my foster care licensor – then deleted it and drove to pick up my kids. In line at school, I watched the video again, and when my oldest jumped in the car, I played it for him. His eyes did not stray from the two-minute clip, smiling when the boy proclaimed his love for all those familiar childhood treasures.

“Can he stay with us, Mom?” My son’s eagerness caught me off-guard. While our license remains open, we have decided to hold off on placements until summer, or at least until our former foster children have found their forever home and need less of our support.

“I thought we were taking a break, bud. We said we were going to give ourselves some time to just get back to us for a while.”

“But he seems really nice, Mom. What kind of behaviors does he have? Are they severe or moderate?” he asked, fluent in the language of foster care.

If I was being honest, the little boy sounded a lot like our previous placement – and our previous placement was hard. I wasn’t sure I was ready to jump back in, but my oldest, the child who had given us the greatest push-back over our last placement, was adamant that our family could handle this one. His reaction was entirely unexpected, and as his mother, I was proud yet hesitant to believe him. So, naturally, we watched the video once more…

…and then again when the rest of my children climbed into the car. When it finished, a chorus of little boy voices championed for the one in need of a home.

“We can do it, Mom!”

“I know we can!”

“He is really nice, Mom, and he likes everything we like!”

“Please, Mom! Please!”

I stared at them, watching the magic of our journey unfold. Saying “yes” to this path of heartbreak and hope had changed something in all of us. The same children who had pleaded with me a year before to send our foster kids packing were now begging me to do it all over again. To say “yes” to the hard, “yes” to the unknown, convinced that we had the strength to carry all of it. At a time when I wasn’t sure we were capable any longer, my kids sang life back into me, “We can do it, Mom.”

So, I rewrote the text and sent it. “If you get in a pinch and need a temporary place, please let me know.” We weren’t ready to expand our family forever, but my kids convinced me we could make some room again. The next morning, a reply came. They had found a home, and I hoped the boy’s dreams for a family were behind that next door.

Attached to the reply, though, was the face of yet another boy, a child who at fifteen had already been abused by not only his biological parents, but also by his adoptive ones. He was back in the system and living in a shelter, waiting. Again.

Every time I clicked on my inbox, his eyes looked back at me. Could we handle a fifteen-year-old laden with years of abuse and rejection? I didn’t know that we could, not yet. We are still learning and growing, building confidence in our “yes.” We are still making mistakes raising our own little boys, boys who have not yet hit the muddy, tumultuous waters of teenage existence.

But we will get there, and our “yes” will grow as our family grows. I can see it. In the eyes of my kids who show up with the encouragement our family needs when I think we’ve exhausted our capacity, I see it. I sit at the kitchen table and cry for the boy staring back at me from my inbox. I will not be the one to help him. I wish these emails were sent to everyone in our community, showed up in every inbox across this country.

If his face appeared in your inbox, what would you say? If you had to learn his name, read his story, might you say “yes” to this child in need of a home? A child who will spend this holiday and potentially every other surrounded not by family, but by forgotten boys and girls just like him?

Consider this your email. I can’t share his face or his name, but I can tell you that he is very, very real. And in the unlikely event that he finds a home, there is a never-ending line of children right behind him. They are waiting. Might they be waiting for you?

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Grace

*To learn more about becoming a foster parent, call 1-855-MICHKIDS or visit www.michigan.gov/hopeforahome