Ooh Child

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a song I sing to the kids: “Ooh Child” by The Five Stairsteps.  It’s an old 70’s song with repetitive lyrics I’m sure we’ve all had stuck in our head.  I’ve sung it many times to each of the kids in a whisper before nap and while scooped up into my arms after a fall.  They’ve all heard my off-pitch voice repeat those lyrics.

Ooh-oo child, things are going to get easier

Ooh-oo child, things’ll get brighter

This week when my foster daughter woke in the middle of the night with a stuffy nose and I held her on the couch with her little head nestled into my shoulder, I sang quietly to her.  I had no doubts in my mind that morning come, she’d be breathing easier.

And when she had a tantrum over Cheerios and threw her tiny self onto the floor, I sang with a smile on my face.  Oh child, of course things will get easier.

But then the morning came when she was supposed to go with a stranger for the day.  I went into her room, and she greeted with me her ritual good morning laugh.  There’s no sitting down and preparing a toddler for a big change.  We went through our morning routines of alligator wrestling (otherwise known as getting dressed), eating a low effort breakfast (cereal sprinkled on her highchair tray), and playing her favorite game of dumping out all the shoes and scattering them throughout the house.  We did all the usual things, but I kept an eye on the clock, knowing we had 20 minutes before a stranger would walk in the door and take her away.

I sang to her as she threw shoes around the house.  Someday you’re going to walk in the rays of a beautiful sun.  Someday when the world is much brighter.  But I didn’t really believe what I was saying.  A seed of doubt was growing in my mind that maybe things weren’t going to get easier.  Maybe things weren’t going to be brighter.

20 minutes later, I watched the edge of her pink coat disappear into a dark-colored van and drive away.  When is it going to get easier?  When does the stream of drivers carrying away a crying child fade from memory?  Right now each of those moments with every child we’ve had is seared in my mind- the outstretched arms, head flailing back, feet kicking, the silent scream that builds until it erupts into terrified wails.  But the worst part about it is knowing you have no idea what awaits.  You can’t promise that child it’ll truly be okay.  You say the words, sing the songs, and put on your happy face, but your heart is worried.  You’ve seen too much, and your faith is shaky.

This is the epicenter of my life that’s hard to share with people because most parents’ Thursday mornings don’t start with a tortured goodbye.  Most parents don’t have to experience raising children who will someday no longer be a part of their lives.  They don’t have to worry about their biological children crying uncontrollably because they think they’ll be sent away just like their foster siblings.  And they don’t have a storage unit in their memory of those final, terrified and confused farewells.

We have an early intervention specialist who’s been coming to our home over the past year to work with my foster daughter.  She’s become more of a friend than anything, and this week she asked about how all the kids are doing with the transition.  My foster daughter has been tired, sleeping more than normal.  And my biological son… my son seems fine one minute and falls apart the next.  He can’t explain what he’s feeling, but the only sister he’s known is leaving.  The sister that follows him around and copies everything he does is leaving.  I hate that his heart is hurting.  When does it get easier?

Maybe we’re not the “Ooh Child” kind of family.  Maybe I need to stop singing about rainbows and butterflies to my children as a way of making the pain go away.  Because it doesn’t erase the hard things.  All I can hope for is that we can go through these trials together and come out stronger, more compassionate, and more reliant on God.  It reminds me of a quote by Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne, that I’ll end with: “When life is good and we have no problems, we can almost let ourselves believe we have no need for God. But in my experience, sometimes the richest blessings come through pain and hard things.”