The Bailey Brag

…I used this reference while chatting with a friend just days before we took in our three foster boys referring to the quiet and very calm atmosphere we were enjoying at home and wondering when DCS would call with a potential placement. The storm definitely came and now it has passed. Now I feel like I am about to crash. Managing a family of eight isn’t easy but with a little obsessive planning and nagging of everyone to keep up their responsibilities it can flow very smoothly and it did for four months. Now that I am back down to a family of five I can’t seem to keep up. I know it’s a personality issue with myself. Unless I am so busy that I can’t find time to pee I find myself in a tailspin not capable of managing just a little. Since the boys left last Monday I have gotten very behind in laundry, cleaning, school lessons with the boys….the list goes on and on. I feel compelled to get things back in order because at any moment DCS could call but I just can’t move. Maybe I am a little depressed. Maybe I am just resting for the first time in many months. All I find myself thinking about while I wait and tote around my phone like it’s a life saving device is that right now there are children being neglected. Being abused. Hungry. Being born to addicts. Our future son or daughter is one of these children. I didn’t really think about this before our previous placements. It’s all I think about now. I think about what L was going through just hours prior to her parents being arrested and DCS picking her up. I think about the living conditions in which A, T & J were battling just before they were removed and placed with us. When I worry, I can’t function normally. All I find myself doing lately is worrying what our little ones are going through right now for a sub-standard government system to have to remove them from their home today or tomorrow or next week. The system’s standards are so much lower than mine and yours because it has to be or so many more children would be in custody. So when a child is removed it is a big deal. I look at my boys laying around reading or playing with their toys in their safe home and it brings tears to my eyes that this isn’t the norm. I find myself praying all day every day for our little ones to stay safe. Will you join me? Please begin to pray now for our future adopted sons or daughters that they carry a shield of protection over them until they are delivered to us. Thank you!