Clinging

A few months ago, my husband, Trenton, and I responded to the needs of a single mother we mentored years ago through a youth ministry called Young Life. In order to help her finish school, we agreed to care for her two boys, alongside our own biological sons, until November, when she will graduate.

And now, we’re all just kind of clinging around here. All six of us, like scraggly moss to the sides of each other. That’s the thing about moss: It grows in the dark, in the hard places, and it holds on to whatever it can find.

Joey’s been holding onto me a lot lately. He gave me some plastic flowers this week, and I put them in a vase on the kitchen table.

And I’ve been holding onto Aiden and Kasher, and during the day, Jin’s been a happy little clam. But he wakes at night crying, and when I pick him up and hold him it’s as though he’s trying to drink my hug, he’s so thirsty.

Then there’s Trent, who’s been reading his Bible a lot, because he’s holding us all up.

It’s been about a month and a half and there are different stages to this caring for someone else’s children.

First, the honeymoon stage, in which you’re all excited and wowed by the mystery of what God’s doing. Then there’s the shock, registering that the mother won’t be ready to take her kids back for quite a while. And there’s a new kind of energy required every single morning, with four kids now, instead of two, and all under the age of four.

This happens at about two weeks—it hits everyone differently, but it hits, nonetheless.

It is followed by a quiet lull where you get into a semi-routine, and then the attachment begins. The boys begin to need you in a way you weren’t prepared for, and you begin to need your own biological sons, because you’re afraid of losing the old, forever. And everyone’s just kind of...hanging on.
And every so often when it feels like the thing we’re holding onto is going to let go, we take a break—the foster boys returning home to mom for a bit, and us, to ourselves, because we need this time.

To remember that we cannot do this on our own. We cannot even grip without God. Everything we are, and every ministry we do, is because of Him.

So we re-attach ourselves to the rock that is God, and remember that no matter what happens, no matter how it hurts, no matter what stage is around the corner, we can do all things through him.

And so, we cling.

Image by Christian Jones. Post is a modified reprint by Emily Wierenga, author of Chasing Silhouettes: How to Help a Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder (available September 2012)