A Wrench in the Plans

Last week was one of those weeks I'd seen coming on my calendar, every night was packed, no room for extra commitments, sickness or crisis of any kind to hit. Well of course, we know things rarely go so smoothly.

Well nothing tragic happened but sadly the girl who had been living with us was kicked out of the program she lives with us through which means she had to move out on Wednesday. She had never really bonded with us. She had been pushing herself away from me pretty fiercely so it wasn't a relational loss for her to leave, but I was still sad. I guess she's the first kid to get "kicked out" of my house. Even though it wasn't my decision & there wasn't really anything I could do about it something about is smacked of failure to me. It's the cost of working with foster kids but it still stinks.

On the other had Rachel was "relieved" that she left. Rachel had been in the middle, the recipient of the information about all the sneaky decisions our girl was making, & ultimately she made the right decision to tell me what was going on. Our girl wasn't supposed to know that it was Rachel who told because she has some scary friends Rachel didn't want to get on the bad side of, but in the way things often do the world of social workers & placement moves, the truth came out. I felt pretty angry that Rachel is going to be walking around anxious about getting jumped by those kids, but then I started to realize it could be re-framed to teach her something about character. I want her to know that it is good to do the right thing even if it puts you at some risk & I hope this will help her learn that.

It was funny because the first reaction she & I both had was, "who is going to live with us next?" Right now it looks like it may just be the two of us for awhile. It's been a long time since it's just been the two of us, over a year. It was sweet to see how she has become used to this funny lifestyle we have of people living with us. Having an open home definitely seems to be a part of our calling as a family.

Well I have a lot of happy things to post about from last week... time to get busy making up for last week's postlessness. The spooOOOKKKky photo is a silly preview!