2 Months.

Our foster children left almost 2 months ago. We had them over for the first time since they left a couple of weeks ago. We had snow earlier in the week (thank you, Minnesota), but the weather was gorgeous that day. We took out the Slip ‘n Slide, and it felt like no time had passed. The kids ran circles around the yard, snuck candy from the Easter stash, and we all had a fantastic afternoon.

When it was time for the kids to leave, I helped the youngest get socks on and filled the brief silence with an “I love you.” The other heard and asked, in one of the longest sentences I’ve ever heard this speech-delayed child utter, “Mom, you love me too?”

I think my heart broke.

How is this child expected to understand that I love her with an ache down into my soul after I packed all their belongings into boxes and said goodbye? That ache is an unextinguishable flame that doesn’t leave just because this is foster care. I will always love them, even if I never see them again, and the knowledge that it wasn’t my choice means very little when there’s a hurting child in front of me who’s confused why I did this to them.

Last week I went through Mother’s Day knowing there’s a child out there who still sees me as Mom and wonders if I love her. How do you go about your day with that kind of knowledge? God, help.

People don’t tell you what to do after the kids leave. They tell you to eat some ice cream (check), go on a vacation (check), and grieve a little (major check). They don’t tell you how to navigate the relationships. You feel like you’ve failed them- failed to be a mother in any sense of the word. You’re not there to protect them anymore. You’re just not there. You’re the mother they’ve known, and you’ve disappeared.

Since they left, I’ve been going through the motions with an undercurrent of… exhaustion. It’s draining for my thoughts and emotions to teeter between the here and now and a matrix of possible scenarios the kids could be in at any given moment. What are they doing right now? What are they having for breakfast? Did they brush their teeth? Are they scared, confused? Mom mode doesn’t turn off when they walk out the door.

Through the grief, I’m starting to feel like I’m slowly coming back to life again. Crying with a dear friend who allowed me to work through these feelings of failing the kids helped immensely, so this is my vague reference to someone awesome. 😉 Thank you. There have been so many wonderfully supportive people, and the weather has been nicer.

I started 200 tomato seeds that I haven’t really cared about… because I didn’t really care about much of anything for a while there. This week, I looked at them with new eyes. I saw a bunch of scraggly plants in need of some tlc, and for the first time since we were preparing the kids to leave, I saw potential. I saw a project I could shift my energy onto. There was hope for something good again.

Gardening is a low-effort hobby with fairly immediate results. I put in a small amount of labor, and then I get to observe how the creator of the universe has designed life to burst forth from the dirt, grow, and sustain itself. Life finds a way in impossible situations. When your heart is broken and it doesn’t feel like life can go on, seeing it over and over again in lesser form is awe-inspiring. It’s been medicine for my soul this week.

Chuck Swindoll said, “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities disguised as impossible situations.” This has been the most impossible situation. Where is the opportunity within it? I think at first getting out of bed was enough, but now it’s time to engage in life again and work really hard to find the opportunities.