A year later, it’s still the truth

This morning I found this journal entry from last year when we were quarantined at home due to the pandemic. The truth I found then is still the truth I’m finding a year later so I edited it a bit and want to share…

Tonight as I tucked my 4 year old foster son into bed, like usual he asked to pray. He led and prayed the bedtime child’s prayer I learned when I was little (little did I know he was really listening and memorized it) and then offered his own sweet prayers up to Jesus that took my breath away and made me cry.

You see, for the past two months we have been home due to the pandemic and during this time he began to disclose more of the trauma he experienced prior to coming into my care. These things are very close to my own childhood trauma.

At first I wasn’t sure if I was hearing, seeing and thinking what I was and so I asked my therapist if these were normal developmental things yet knowing in my gut that they weren’t, but I was afraid I was projecting my “stuff” onto him. She confirmed my gut instinct and encouraged me to report it to the proper authorities, which I did.

Little by little he has been adding information about his story, and then one day about two weeks ago he just stopped talking about it, as if to say that he had told someone safe and now he could let it go.

Tonight after a bath when he was getting ready for bed and I was changing his pull-up, he started saying and doing the same trauma indicating things he did weeks ago and then added some additional information. As always I want him to feel safe, seen, heard and believed so I told him I was thankful he felt safe and shared with me.

So when going to bed tonight and offering up his prayers in his own words, he added about the trauma, the name of the person who did this to him and said “Thank you Jesus makin’ me safe”. Okay this is where I lost it, and yet t I think I also heard him thank Jesus for watching Toy Story, playing with Buzz, Woody, Spiderman and his Lego’s.

My soul aches for him and yet it is overjoyed that this little boy has found safety and will not go through a lifetime of hiding his trauma and pain, very much unlike my own journey. I didn’t know safety until I was a 50 year old woman sitting on my therapist’s couch.

Fostering can be difficult; to give of one ’s self, to pour out to these little hurting children and their families can be draining, frustrating, painful and yet, there is often hope and joy. But to do all this as a single parent with her own history of abuse and neglect, someone who probably should have been removed from her own childhood home, it’s beyond hard. It is only by Jesus’ grace I do what I do. I don’t even know how I do it most of the time… I just do. And that is how I know there is Someone greater, wiser, more gracious and loving than I could ever be looking out for me and the children He brings into my home. Who knows how long it would have been with me working every day and this little one going to daycare before he would have had the trust to feel safe and space to tell me of his wounds.

All I know for sure is that God didn’t create COVID19, abuse, neglect or trauma; and I definitely know that He can use all things for our good and His glory even when, especially when it seems impossible and hopeless. Things just don’t happen by coincidence. I believe that God planned our time at home during this Pandemic for my foster son to have a safe space for his truth to come out and for this boy to start healing. And in a way, to bring a little more healing to my own trauma recovery too.