Watch Over Them

For the next few days, we are watching the same two foster kids we had back in the middle of July.  When I had them last, I understood that their foster mom was planning on adopting them.  I guess it didn't work out.

I got a phone call from DCFS Monday morning informing me of the situation: After having the children for six months, the foster family decided that they couldn't take care of them anymore and requested to have them removed and placed with someone else.  Their new foster parents are unable to receive them until this weekend so the State called me to see if my husband and I could watch them between the gap.  The social worker explained with solemnity, "They know you and feel comfortable with your family.  We'd rather have them stay with people they've been with before during this transition than have them adjust to strangers all over again."

I was more than happy to take them in.  They squealed with delight this morning when Micah opened the front door.  He stepped back to catch his balance from the force of the children running into him and hugging him tightly.  He grinned proudly and was glad to see them again.

The foster mom was quiet and stepped back out onto the porch to retrieve two large garbage bags that contained everything the kids owned.  She set their belongings on the couch, returned outside again, and came back in with two car seats.  She paused for a minute and watched the children playing on the floor with my kids.  She called their names to say goodbye but they were already engrossed in imagination and hardly noticed her speaking.  I knew it was the last goodbye and that they would never see her again... but the foster kids didn't realize it.  This was very painful for the foster mom.  In an effort to help, I tapped the kids on the shoulder, "Hey, she wants to say goodbye.  Can you give her a hug?" I nudged the older one and he complied.  The younger one glanced over at his foster mom, gave a half-wave but found the toys more interesting and took off down the hall.  Tears welled up in the foster mom's eyes and I could tell she had a bunch more she was trying desperately to hold back. Embarrassed, she said to me shyly, "They don't understand."  Six months was a long time to grow attached. "I'm so sorry." I said to her.  I didn't know what else to say.  I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her as tight as I could.  "I'm sure this is excruciatingly difficult for you."  She nodded affirmatively.  My heart went out to her.  "I'm so very sorry," I said again.  "Thank you." She whispered sincerely and then turned in silence to make her way out the door.

After she left, I looked across the room at Miriam who had just observed the whole scene.  Tears then began to flow from my eyes too as I pondered on what just happened.  Those children didn't understand that she was not coming back.  What will go through their minds when they finally do realize?  They are so young now.  At what point do they grow weary of attaching and detaching that they begin to numb themselves to the pain?  Will they learn to keep relationships at a distance so they don't have to get hurt again?  Will they begin to feel as if something is fundamentally wrong with them?  Will they blame themselves as the reason certain homes didn't keep them?

I wish our home was ready so I could be their new foster mom.  I hope they don't have to go through a removal again.  I hope this next place can be a permanent one for them.  Tonight before bed, I read stories in an effort to help them wind down.  (I miss the age that my children used to cuddle next to my side as I read them picture books. So this was a treat for me.)  The youngest boy fell asleep in my lap.  I turned him around so he could wrap himself around me and rest his head on my shoulder.  I wondered how often he had been held or cradled in his life.  I didn't want to let go of him so I took him outside and carried him back and forth on the porch in the cool summer night air under the glitter of the stars.  He sunk deep in my arms and relaxed completely in peaceful sleep.  I prayed silently for him.  "Bless this perfectly innocent child.  Bless him to know that he is loved.  Bless him to learn of his worth.  Dear Father, please watch over this sweet, sweet boy."  I took him back into the house, carefully placed him in his bed and wondered about his future.

These experiences with fostering will tug and tear at my heart in ways I can't imagine.  I pray I will be strong through it all.
-Alicia

"Zion Shall Not Be Moved" -Ponderize - Week 19

These last couple of days I haven't been able to decide on a scripture to ponderize for the week.  After this evening, I have finally chosen one.

I attended a cottage meeting tonight that Big Ocean hosted where two of my friends presented.  Mother and author, Nicholeen Peck, spoke and so did JaKell Sullivan, who has been a strong voice against Common Core for many years now.  My friend Kim Ells, assistant for Family Watch International, showed an informative and extremely disturbing video on what is entailed in the Comprehensive Sex Education Curriculum that the Federal Gov. is trying to push in every State. (They've already succeeded in some.)

It wasn't really new information to me since I heard a great deal about these teachings when I went to the United Nations and World Congress last year.  I knew these disgusting  publications were being distributed to youth through the International Planned Parenthood Federation and our own Planned Parenthood. It's just now their teachings are getting published into our education system and encapsulated in words like "sexual health" so it's "easier" for schools to choke it down their throats.

It grieves my soul and inflicts great sorrow upon my heart to see something so wonderful, so beautiful, so sacred, this very real sacrament with God, cheapened, trampled, exploited, and dragged through the mire.  It's a clear shot bullet to the heads of our innocent children.

This is a very real war and the firing squad is mowing down our babies.  People  just don't understand how very serious this is. I would encourage every parent I know to get informed.  http://www.comprehensivesexualityeducation.org/

Sometime tomorrow I should be able to get access to the 20 min. video my friend Kim showed tonight.  When I do, I'll be certain to share it.

I have no doubt that we will witness in the next few years a massive division take place all across the globe.  It's happening now.  But we must not lose heart... with that division also means there will be a great unification.  People of all faiths, all nations, all races and backgrounds are coming together to combat these attacks.  I've seen it.

I really need a verse that is hopeful to ponderize this week to help me remember this:

 "Therefore, let your hearts be comforted concerning Zion; for all flesh is in mine hands; be still and know that I am God. Zion shall not be moved out of her place, notwithstanding her children are scattered.  They that remain, and are pure in heart, shall return, and come to their inheritances, they and their children, with songs of everlasting joy, to build up the waste places of Zion."— D&C 101:16 - 18

-Alicia

Understanding the Pain of Separation

I've made a goal to buckle down and work on my Young Women's Personal Progress.  I've chosen every Tuesday morning to be my day for this.  It's pretty easy to record online and I can enter my journal notes right there on the website.  As young women leaders, we're all going to take turns letting the girls know how our own progress is going and we hope it will inspire them to keep moving on theirs.

This morning, I spent some time studying about the Atonement and the Plan of Salvation.  In the church, these are fundamental doctrines we have learned over and over our entire lives.  With the frequency of these topics, it might be easy to lose interest but I was really grateful to take a moment, read the scriptures related, and reflect on a couple of questions.  "How does the knowledge of these teachings affect my actions, help me understand my identity, and strengthen my faith?"

Understanding that we are literal spirit children of God, that we lived with Him before we came to earth, that we knew each other, is an incredibly amazing teaching.  It's unique to the Restored Gospel but I believe that there are many outside the church who have been given a sense of this great truth:

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” 
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Our spirits are eternal in nature.  This tangible light has a life-span we cannot comprehend. Joseph Smith expounded in his King Follett Sermon;

"I want to reason more on the spirit of man; for I am dwelling on the body and spirit of man—on the subject of the dead. I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man—the immortal part, because it had no beginning. Suppose you cut it in two; then it has a beginning and an end; but join it again, and it continues one eternal round. So with the spirit of man. As the Lord liveth, if it had a beginning, it will have an end. All the fools and learned and wise men from the beginning of creation, who say that the spirit of man had a beginning, prove that it must have an end; and if that doctrine is true, then the doctrine of annihilation would be true. But if I am right, I might with boldness proclaim from the housetops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself.

Intelligence is eternal and exists upon a self-existent principle. It is a spirit from age to age and there is no creation about it. All the minds and spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement."

God is an eternal being, we are all eternal beings.  God is all about gathering, about "oneness", about togetherness.  Even when we speak of being separated from God, it is not His undoing but our own.  He is not the one who severs ties, who divides relationships, or breaks apart - these are things that exist in the physical and temporal realm.  And those who never learn to live by and receive Christ's spirit will be bound to this physical and temporal plane of existence.

This must be why there is pain in separation, because such an experience flows completely contrary to our Divine nature.  Nevertheless, it is a necessary part of our growth and learning.  Everything that hurts us, that is painful, ministers to our mortal education here on earth. But with the Gospel lens of truth, we have a glimpse of Heaven and we are given strength to endure.

"Though otherwise 'lively,' hope stands quietly with us at funerals. Our tears are just as wet, but not because of despair. Rather, they are tears of appreciation evoked by poignant separation. They will change, erelong, to tears of glorious anticipation. Yet the emptiness is so real and so restless it initiates a retroactive inventory of what is now so painfully missing, doing so, however, while forecasting fulness and resplendent reunion!" - Neal A. Maxwell

"When such a friend from us departs,
We hold forever in our hearts
A sweet and hallowed memory,
Bringing us nearer, Lord, to thee." - Hymn #293

We could try to numb ourselves and pretend there is no ache, no pain when we are separated from those we love but such an attempt would only prove to dull the Divine attributes inherent within us and thwart our progress.

"Moreover, we can’t fully appreciate joyful reunions later without tearful separations now. The only way to take sorrow out of death (or separation) is to take love out of life." - Elder Russell M. Nelson

We find hope in Christ, knowing that He has bridged the gulf of the great divide and through His great atoning sacrifice, there is no such thing as the end, there is no such thing as separation, no more farewells and no more goodbyes.  We find our our way "home" in eternal principles.

"There is no end to matter; There is no end to space; There is no end to spirit; There is no end to race. There is no end to virtue; There is no end to might; There is no end to wisdom; There is no end to light. There is no end to union; There is no end to youth; There is no end to priesthood; There is no end to truth. There is no end to glory; There is no end to love; There is no end to being; There is no death above. There is no end to glory; There is no end to love; There is no end to being; There is no death above."

-Alicia