Jumping Thru Hoops

As a couple we had to jump thru many hoops in order to qualify to be a parents in the county system. Which when I think about it, I find it so ironic because most parents don't need to be licensed to become parents. They didn't have to take classes to qualify or have their finances looked or even have a back ground check. If that were the case most of these parents in the system wouldn't be allowed to be parents. Most of those parents probably just had to get drunk one night and forget to protect themselves and they got the blessing of having a child. But my husband and I.....well we didn't get that blessing so we just kept asking God to guide us and then we would jump thru another hoop.

There were days I wasn't sure I could do this. I would listen to the stories and I would ask myself ..what are you thinkin'? We sat thru hours of childhood development and abuse horror stories. We listened to legal mumbo jumbo from lawyers and social workers. Every time we left we could come up with a million reasons to walk away. But there was still the one biggest reason to stay....a little baby we could call our own.

I was still traveling with Jackson most weeks but the weeks I was home my husband and I were in some sort of training class. It was overwhelming really. One day when I was on the road Jackson asked me if I planned on working when we got the baby. I really didn't know how to answer him. If I told him...no I plan on staying home I could risk the security of my job....but if I said...I planned on staying at work...I would be lying and he would know I was lying...we had gotten to know each other to well. So I said...I am not sure what we are going to do. I explained the whole thing to him...wanting to be a stay at home mom vs. needing the money at home especially with a baby. And as I was explaining all this to him I noticed his eyes changed. He didn't look worried I was going to leave work to stay at home with a baby..he looked more worried that I planned on staying. I didn't comment on it but I wondered what that look was for. The conversation just ended with Jackson reassuring me that as long as he was there I had a job. But I wondered what he was trying to tell me....

Rebecca had also finally got wind of why I was missing so many Fridays at work and she approached me one day to have lunch with her. She and I had gotten closer but I still hadn't been open with her as to what was going on in my world. At lunch she brought it up for me. She asked me how our classes were going. I explained what classes we had taken and how we were excited to be parents but we questioned if we could handle the situations we had been hearing about. Rebecca listened intently. I must of rambled on for a half an hour about all we heard and how we felt about everything we heard and she just listened. After I was done with my tangent.... she proceeded to tell me positive stories about cases she had been involved in. She lit up when she talked about her favorite kids. She explained why some parents ended up in the system due to mental illness and how some kids would never get out of the system because of the cycle they were born into. She also told me that it broke her heart that most couples wanted to adopt the babies but nobody wanted the older kids because they thought of them as to damaged. It was such an enlightening conversation it was the first time I heard a positive story from social services. The only positive story I knew was my pastor and wife. The rest had sounded to horrible to imagine. When she was done sharing her stories she told me if I ever needed to talk to her about this she was open to being a sounding board.

As we walked back to the office that day after lunch I finally felt like I knew someone that got what my husband and I were going thru. We had been to tons of these classes and we never met another couple that we could use as a support system. But luckily for me God had placed Rebecca in my office and had given her the courage to approach me.