Georgia

We are still trucking along in the foster process. We have sent in some paperwork and are kind of waiting right now for things to progress. I worry a lot about how to interact with the biological parents of the children who will be in our home. From my own family's experiences I know that there are several kinds of parents. The parents that worry me the most right now are the parents that love their children the best way that they know how. You or I would think that the care they give their children doesn't translate into love at all, but they feel like they are doing the best that they know how. I was talking with one of my sisters about this the other day and I mentioned that I wish I knew what Mama would say about it. She said that she was with Mama in a situation like that once and she told me what she did. ...
In May of 2007, Mama got a call saying that there was a newborn baby girl at the hospital for her to pick up. My sister went along with Mama to pick up this precious baby. Georgia was a 4 pound baby addicted to drugs and with physical problems more than likely associated with Fetal Alcohol syndrome. My sister said that she was so mad at this mom for treating her unborn child in this way. It is, obviously, very irresponsible to use drugs and alcohol, especially when pregnant. This baby was so tiny and was jerking from the withdrawals of drugs that she was experiencing. My sister said that as they were leaving the hospital room with this tiny little baby, the mom was crying like her heart was broken and after telling mama to take care of her she said, "Please don't cut her curls!" My sister said that she was so mad and wanted to hurl back... "YOU have no say in her life anymore! YOU did this to her!" BUT in that moment, Mama looked back at her with love in her eyes and said, "I would never do that to YOUR baby" And then she turned to walk out of the room and almost as an afterthought, she turned back around and said, "All the babies in my house call me Nana. You are her Mama." Mama reached out to her and helped comfort that grieving mother all the while caring for her infant daughter. Georgia's mama said that she didn't know that her activities would have such an effect on her baby. That's hard to believe, but Georgia's mama took parenting classes as often as she could and got into every self help program that she could find. In the months to come, Mama invited this young mother to church with her and she came. She went with her to doctors appointments and mentored her as she turned her life around.  It wasn't long before Georgia was back at home with her mom. But Mama was always Georgia's Nana. Georgia would spend some weekends and vacations and Holidays with us. She really was part of our family.  Georgia got to spend her birthday weekend with Papa this year. She misses her Nana so much, but she loves her Papa too!

Nana and her Georgia at Daphne and Austin's wedding
(This picture was stolen from Beth Murley!)

The families that Mama and Daddy fostered don't all have happy situations like this one did, but Mama always tried. She was always aware that the children who came into her home had a likely hood of going back to their families, so she tried to have a relationship with that family. Sometimes that was impossible, but the better the relationship with the birth families the better she felt about their situation. I'm still trying to figure out how to do this when we start fostering. We are intending to foster to adopt, but we know that there will be cases where we will have children into our home and they go back to their birth families. Either way, I am praying that the relationships between us and the birth families are as good as we can make them.