by Cari
One day over five years ago, the hubby and I took the life-altering plunge into the wild world of foster parenting. While I had personally felt the Lord’s calling in that area of my life, my poor, sweet husband had no doubt heard the calling of my endless nagging. Only a truly selfless man would agree to such unknown terms, especially while already having two fully grown children of his own, and a third wild child, whose ridiculousness and shenanigans could pretty much only be attributed to me. After all, his girls never once broke any limbs on a golf cart or shot at their basketball goal with a pellet gun “just to see what it would do.” Nonetheless, he agreed, and so began a wild and crazy ride in the life of the Ruschmeiers, but one I would not take back for anything.
Our very first placement was a sweet baby boy who stayed for only a week, and my biological wild child and I cried for nearly that long after he left us. It was heartbreaking. I was stunned at how quickly and completely we could fall in love with a child we had just met. To be honest, I wasn’t sure my heart could take that kind of heartbreak again. However, that feeling was quickly overtaken by the desperate desire to feel that kind of reckless love all over again, and we broke our own cardinal rule of foster parenting and agreed to take two kids. And not just any two kids, but two boys under the age of four. To this day, I am fairly certain that there had to have been some drugs in my system or I somehow got a hold of some bad meat or something, because what sane woman says to herself, “I think I need a three-year-old and an 18-month-old to go with the six-year-old that still sleeps in my bed and causes me to cuss in my head (if not out loud) multiple times a day.”? In my defense, what sane husband lets her? I’ll tell you what kind. The kind that adores his wife and just wants her to be happy. The night that they got to our house, they looked like tired, dirty, little blonde-haired, blue-eyed angels. Little did I know that those sweet angels would not only get me kicked out of the YMCA once, but twice, and that eventually, they would make me notorious in the annals of foster parenting history by getting us all kicked out of the county courthouse by hitting the panic button on the fancy chair in the visiting judge’s chamber. Fortunately, to this day, that is still the only time I’ve been in a room that was swarmed by cops solely because of my parenting or the lack thereof. Despite how it may sound, those sweet boys taught us more about love, acceptance, and resilience than we ever could have learned on our own. We also learned a lot about our limitations, and to our own surprise, they weren’t as numerous as we had originally thought. It is true what they say, that “When God calls you, He also equips you.” I know for a fact that pre-fostering Cari could never have juggled three very active boys, a full-time job, and time as a volunteer with the youth at church. But God makes all things possible. He is still in the miracle-making business, and trust me, the fact that all five of us came out on the other side of that eight months relatively unscathed was nothing short of a miracle.
In the five years that we fostered, I did things that definitely did not scream “Mother of the Year.” During one especially exciting season in our lives, we had two 2-year-olds, a 4-year-old, and our then 9-year-old. I have to be honest and say that from day one of that experience, I was in complete survival mode. We all were. My boy became very independent in a very short amount of time. It was either that or starve to death. I think he chose wisely. There were numerous nights that I would dress the baby girls in their clothes for daycare the night before. I know. They slept in their school clothes. Appalling. But as it turns out, their “school clothes” weren’t that much different from their pajamas, anyway. After all, it wasn’t like I was dressing them in tiny Catholic school girl uniforms and patent leather shoes; although had that been the requirement, I probably would have. With any kind of parenting, as with life, you do what you have to do, like giving your toddlers an astronomical amount of those tasteless little fruit puffs just to keep some semblance of calm and normalcy while out in public. You see, our two little girls were blonde just like me, so there was no getting off with the, “ Oh, those kids have a different hair color from her, so they must not be hers” justification for their behavior. Instead, I had the pleasure of knowing that any meltdowns that occurred in public or otherwise would be solely blamed on my genetics (my hubby has black hair, so he was off the hook). I know you’re probably thinking that lots of Moms pacify their kids with food in public, but looking back on how many of those things I let them eat, it’s a minor miracle that either one of them ever pooped again. But they did. A lot. I bet I easily changed a few hundred diapers as a foster mom. I had it down to a science. I shouldn’t be proud of it, but I once changed one of our sweet baby boys in the middle of the bleachers during a high school football game, without most of the people around us even noticing. I justified my behavior by telling myself that he had just “gone number one,” so it was fine. As a foster parent, or maybe any parent, you find yourself justifying lots of things all the time in the name of survival.
I’m telling you all of this to say that if I could do it, so can you. I see my amazing friends who are still welcoming countless numbers of kids into their homes, and I am so inspired by them daily. I would love to tell you that our time as foster parents made huge and lasting impacts on all the kids we took in, but we won’t know that for sure for a very long time, if ever. I can, however, tell you that those kids had a huge and lasting impact on our lives. A part of each one of their beautiful little souls is forever stitched into the tapestry of our lives and memories. And while that season in the lives of the Ruschmeiers has come to a close, there are still multitudes of children who need their own set of “hot mess” parents just like we were to take a chance on what God has in store for them. Now, they may get you kicked out of your local gym or personally escorted by cops out of your county courthouse, but think of all the character you will build as a result. And I can promise that although loving a child so recklessly will hurt you a lot at times, that pain will not hold a candle to the amount of healing it will bring to the children you welcome into your life.
