Into the Unknown

If you now have the song sung by a certain snow queen playing in your head, then I apologize. (But not really, since it’s an awesome song to pump you up when you need it.) But that phrase – into the unknown – perfectly describes what this past week has been for me.

Monday evening, I got a phone call, the phone call, letting me know there was a baby who needed a home and needed one immediately. After such a long time without a baby, it was starting to feel like my “normal” was life without a baby, rather than the other way around. Overjoyed, I promised the social worker that I could indeed be there to sign paperwork in 20 minutes, packed up my backpack with a blanket and onesie for a little baby boy, and rushed out the door, anxious to get there as soon as possible.

I showed up (just before 5pm, as promised), ready to sign paperwork so I could go pick up a baby I knew nothing about, other than the fact that he needed a home. I usually get more than a few minutes notice (a couple hours or even a day is usually what happens), and I also normally get some information during that initial phone call – the baby’s name, how old they are, what the circumstances are, and a guestimate of how long their stay with me will be. Of course, things change (I’ve said before that the only constant in foster care is change), but even having that much information and the social worker’s best guess helps me wrap my mind around the situation.

This time, I had none of that. I just knew that I had to show up, and so I did. As I started to go through the paperwork with social worker, I realized that the name I was seeing on the papers was for a girl, not a boy. Not a huge deal, as I love having both girls and boys, but it was something definitely expected. Finishing up, I asked the social worker all my standards questions, and was told she had none of that information. All she knew was the hospital I needed to go to and the baby’s name.

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Paperwork in hand, I showed up at hospital, only to find out that not only was the baby under a different name, but that she was actually in the NICU! (For those of you wondering if I picked up the right baby, I did. The social workers, nurses, and myself all double checked.) I changed this little baby girl, only 4 days old, into a blue onesie, put her into the car seat covered in dinosaurs, and drove ourselves home, where I immediately changed her into clothes with little hearts and settled in to get to know this little girl who I already loved with my whole heart.

On Wednesday, as I was still trying to adjust to caring for a newborn even as classes and work continue as usual, I had another phone call from her social worker and learned that she would be leaving on Friday. In less than 48 hours, I went from having no baby, to being up all night to hold her so she would sleep, to learning she would be moving again in less than another 48 hours. As an ESH mom, short stays are always a bittersweet thing because they mean that my babies have a long-term option for them readily available, which is better than the temporary stop-gap I help fill as an ESH placement. It doesn’t make them any less chaotic for me, but a part of me is happy that they will be in a stable place so quickly.

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It is now Friday evening, and Baby Girl has been dropped off with her next family after a frantic morning spent packing her bag and a copious amount of tears on my part. It is hard to process just how much has happened this week in such a short amount of time. Yet at the same time, foster care is always about going into the unknown and committing to love anyways. Most of my babies don’t come with such a large amount of unknown squished into so few hours, but I usually don’t know exactly how long a baby will be with me or where they will go after their time with me. I don’t have any guarantees about how many complications they come with or how their birth family will act towards me.

I have taken a lot of comfort this week from a new song by JJ Heller, “You Already Know.” I might not know what is going to happen with any sort of certainty, but I can be assured that God does. He already knows when that next phone call will come, how long that baby will stay with me, and even where that baby will end up staying forever. I don’t have to know. And while it’s okay to feel scared and overwhelmed and anxious about it all sometimes, those feelings don’t mean I shouldn’t be an ESH mom – they just mean I’m human.

I plan on taking it easy this weekend, to sleep in as much as I want and keep to myself at home. But when Monday comes, I will commit to going into the unknown again without hesitation. As author Rachel Fordham has said, “I have zero regrets about loving this child. I will grieve deeply the love I want to keep giving, but never the love I gave.” I might not know what my future holds or who I will get to love, but I do know that I will continue to say yes to the chance to love.

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