Working has given me two things I had previously learned to take for granted:

Eating and sleeping indoors.

Okay, I give up. I GIVE UP. I have never seen so much political mumbo-jumbo anywhere in my whole life as I have on the blogstream since I came on at the beginning of the New Year. I stand in awe of both sides battling it out with a duel of words worthy of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Swords or pistols, anyone?

Well, lest one should think I am elevating myself above the fray let me graciously beg your indulgence, and have my humble say.

I will give in, this one time, and am only going to go as far into it as my anti-abortion, conscientious objector, small government, big private charity, pentacostal, charismatic, leanings will allow me. Only this once, mind you. Should you read another rambling piece of political jargonism on my blog, you may arightly assume that I have gone out of my head. Or at least into menopause. Okay, I know that was unseemly....yet it is not untimely.

If turnabout is fair play in this volley of words, then here is my lob. It might be an out, or it might be ad-in, but after this, the game is over for me. My serve was always my best shot anyway. After that it was just too much running around for me. I got too hot and sweaty. I forfeit. I know, that’s cheating, isn’t it? Playing until you feel like quitting and then just walking away. Ah, yeah. My Dad wouldn’t allow it, but my friends couldn’t stop it.

Well, since our eminently qualified Whitster is posting scripture and asking for our cogent arguments about the afterlife and eternal reward over there in The Whittier Whithood, so I am going to, this one time, step out of my philosophical ivory tower, far above the hustle and bustle of real life, which as you know by now I do not condescend to do anything that could be construed as mundane in my REAL life, and give you my caustically bland two cents on politics on this side of the blogstream, in these decidedly non-desperate housewife ‘burbs.

If you cannot comprehend the ambiguous enigma that I am, you will have to get your daily devotions elsewhere today. I’m sticking my head out of my imbued shell as far as I’m gonna, and I ain’t getting it chopped off for nobody.

Wait a minute, you say, I’ve been reading you a bit here and there... how can you be BOTH anti-abortion AND conscientious objecting all in the same breath? One is the mainstay of the political right. One is the foundation of the ‘peace, baby, free luuuv, sixties’, the cornerstone of today’s liberality. Oops. Politically incorrect once again! Can't fit in on either side. Will I ever learn?

The answer is easy if you could only see into my objurgatory yet conciliatory mind. I am anti-death. Well, we all die sometime, don’t we? None of us get out of here alive. Grow old or die young, I always say. However, let’s not cause any more death on purpose than we need to.

My generous, forgiving, magnanimous outward appearance conceals an irksome, tedious, wearisome morality. eeeeesh. I have been called names such as unseemly, ill-advised, impious, overly loquacious, and pertinacious by some who purport to be way more important and wise than I will ever be. Well, at least in their egomaniacal dreams. I have also been referred to as garrulously mellifluous, docile, benevolent, eloquent and obeisant by others. Yeah, I don’t know quite what to make of them either. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I have concluded this much from my mundane musings about rules and reigns, monarchies, oligarchies, dictatorships, and republics. I am too doveish to be a true elephant, and yet not ‘peace at all cost’, ‘let ‘em bomb us and turn the other cheek’ enough to be a true jacka…..,I mean, donkey, either.

The only forced death I am in favor of is the death penalty in the unfortunate circumstance that we have an unrepentant serial killer among us. Does that fit into somebody’s neat little box for me? I hope not. I’ve always aimed to be the model of servile perfection, but since hitting the big 5-0 have embraced my inner indomitable child and am circumspectly allowing a bit of her to emerge, but not so much that I am summarily hammered into the ground.

I never claimed to be uncomplicated. It’s kind of the unspoken right of a woman anyway, isn’t it? To be complex and indecisive yet overbearing. Oooops, that was sexist. Incorrect again. This is why I don’t spend much time on the specifics. In my common little housewife life it doesn’t make that much difference anyway. It’s all rhetoric and semantics.

Okay this is what I have to say:

Politics is a beach full of constantly shifting sand, continually and incessantly ready to ebb with society’s flows. If you don’t believe me, consider this:

My parents, so Republican that my father took me into the voting booth with him when he voted for Nixon over Kennedy in 1960, when I was seven, had to shift gears in the 1960’s, ‘70’s and ‘80’s when being a Republican became associated with anti-abortion protestors, war hawks and other conservative leanings. It was really a ponderous time for them. As Democrats were then and are now known for big government, big spending, pro-welfare and other liberal platitudes that they were not prepared to embrace, what were they to do? As far as I know my parents have never claimed to be born-again Christians. My mother worked for Planned Parenthood. What a quandary.

On the other hand, my in-laws, who were much more politically active and astute than my parents, running for offices, holding high estates, even their volunteer work imminently noteworthy in local and state newspapers on a substantially regular basis, were Democrats. Christian Democrats. An oxymoron you say? You would be wrong. Not in the political climate of the 1950’s and 60’s.

In those days religion played little or no part in politics. Yeah, some people were a little nervous that Kennedy was Catholic but so what, he was SO handsome, wasn’t he? SO well-spoken, looked SO good on TV in the new age of television politics, especially next to the sweating, stuttering, teary and beady eyed Richard Nixon.

He did so well, indeed, that even my so-called conservative mother was subtly taken with him in spite of herself, not that she would ever admit to such renegade heresy. Oh no. We are much too elegant and refined for such lack of demurity.

Ah, the irony. She is four years older than Jackie and resembled her more, with her high cheek bones, wide set eyes, and strong jaw line, than Jackie’s own sister Lee Radziwill. We couldn’t go anywhere in those days without someone remarking on the uncanny resemblance.

JFK had the Boston political machine behind him and it didn’t hurt that brother Bobby, who was quickly added to the Cabinet after the election, had a moral compass, at least publicly, that Jack couldn’t seem to follow or cover up. Ooooo, those Kennedys. You couldn’t help but love them. They were just so goldarn pretty! Camelot. What a dream. Imagine. Worthy of the theology of John Lennon that we are all debating over in Whittierville.

These days, these pseudo- cool, you da man, you dog, ruf-ruf-, oo-oo, wild-n-crazy days, everything is like flipped, bro, like, you know, um, like flipped upside freakin’ down. When did all this happen? Where did the change come from?

Whoever heard of Christian Democrats? NO way, man, you zoopin’ me?

I don’t think many would think ol’ Teddy, that slippery Chappaquidick guy, would admit to being, even on his BEST day, a born-again, Bible thumpin’, Falwell following, Robertson redacting, TBN televiewing, Christian Coalition cohort. (Sorry, I was having too much fun there with the alliterations and just couldn’t stop.)

Yet even HE was against abortion before it was legalized and he had to suck up his opinion ‘for the good of the party line’. So much for integrity. Repeat after me, “life’s a stage, Connie, and all of us are merely players. You got a bit role, bud, and it’s a non-speaking part,

and don't you forget it!”

Republicans believing in the right to choose between life and death? Where does this fit in? That’s as ludicrous as Alan Keyes and Rush Limbaugh even dreaming that Hillary just MIGHT come over to the right side on that one!

I’m a gonna give ya a piece of inside information on me that even my best friends, for the most part, don’t know. Honest! I asked my daughter, the political science/pre-law major (I told you I was just a maze of irony), just this morning as I was writing this, if she knew what I was registered. She said no and was perplexed to find out the answer.

I’m a registered Democrat.

Ha, ha, haaaaaaaa.

Did I get ya on that one?

I have been since one year after I was old enough to vote.

Ahhhh, I just love gloating over the ironies of my common little life.

All my children, the ones who are eligible to vote, that is, which is six, soon to be seven, out of nine, are ALL registered Republican, along with the two son-in-laws who decided that they would marry my daughters even though they realized they would have to put up with a religiously obstreperous, seditious about church, almost to the point of being treasonous, mother-in-law.

I guess they figured out that my daughters were the treasures that I always said they were, and married them in spite of having to deal with me on a fairly regular basis, and knowing that I would be the grandmother of their children.

I don’t know, it’s just all too Family Ties for me. My kids are Alex and my husband and I are Steven and Elyse. Well, not really. In name, if not in practice. Besides, I'm not as pretty as Meredith Baxter.

It’s really downright laziness, as in an ‘I really don’t care’ attitude, but I think I’ve decided to leave it that way because in my old age I’m just enjoying the dichotomy too much. There’s already so much paradox in my life that this just makes one more interesting addition. Anyway, it gives me something to throw at the people in small town America that keep trying to shove my increasing girth into their tiny boxes.

That common little born again, fundamental, charismatic, goody goody housewife with the big opinions about God, abortion, and capital punishment, is a DEMOCRAT?

Well, let me tell ya what happened up in here.

Way back, when I was 18, back in the Stone Age, for the teenagers that read my blog, I registered Independent. I didn’t completely agree with my parents mostly unspoken views. We were not allowed to express opinions about anything controversial at the dinner table, particularly politics and religion. My father was a relatively quiet man but if you got him riled up on something he could be loud and argumentative, so it was better to say nothing at all than to say the wrong thing. We didn’t know exactly what my parents believed but Walter just wouldn’t shut up about the Vietnam War every night and the poor people of Southeast Asia just kept showing up in front of our face all the time, and it was all just so polarizing that no one could keep their mouth shut about it for very long.

I didn’t completely agree with my future in-laws political pontifications at the dinner table either, all that social injustice stuff that didn’t seem relevant to my perfect little life at the time. I mean, when my mother-in-law was the President of our large city school board she actually got picketed! Right in front of her house! Right on our respectable street in our upper middle class neighborhood! How could this be? So what that she was for busing to end what was essentially classest segregation. What’s wrong with these people out there with their signs and loud voices, and why don’t they go home already?! That was my take on the whole thing, but I will beg off for being ignorant. You think a lot of stupid and ignorant things when you are 18.

So I just up and went Indie on all of ‘em.

The problem is that I didn’t take into consideration that I would not be able to vote in the primaries. Bummer! So, I registered Democrat. It was 1971. I wanted to vote, even in the primaries, in 1972. Big deal what side I was signed up for. It made the husband happy. Who cared? The lines weren’t that delineated. There wasn’t as much yelling over Sunday dinner, even at the in-laws, about it back then.

Then January 1973 rolled around. Uh-oh. Well, the lines were still sort of blurred. Let’s face it Mommy and Daddy were still voting under the sign of the elephant for the most part, and the in laws were still solidly on the side of the jacka....I mean donkey. My mother-in-law personally met ol' Jack through her political work. We have the picture of them deep in conversation. Tough to walk away from that kind of headiness. After he died, he became a martyr worthy of Fox himself. At least in that house. Marilyn Monroe, notwithstanding.

I know I’m not a Democrat, I never was, although once in a while I vote that way in my hick town election for Mayor because I like the guy and what’s the worst that can happen? He might approve re-paving Main Street? Gee, I even let him put his little sign in the corner of my yard.

Okay, this is probably the most politics I’ve discussed since I was twenty in 1973 and I know I’m still definitive yet waffling. Where’s the syrup? Now, THERE, seeeee, I CAN pick a side…..I have to have Vermont Maid. Nothing tastes quite the same. If I can’t have Vermont Maid I’m not eatin', so there!

The legalization of abortion is the only issue that ever got under my skin.....that still gets under my skin. Don’t worry, I have been accused of being narrow minded by more intellectual people than I’ve met on the blogstream before. It doesn’t bother me anymore. Open mindedness is for people who haven’t researched the topic and formulated their thesis yet. I’ve written the paper, handed it in and got the grade.

“Connie, I don’t agree with what you’re saying but you have such a way with words.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whoopdedoodlededoo. Big deal. Words don’t save babies. In this country I’m not sure what does.

I've never cared what party whoever is on and have always looked at the issues only. I’m not anti-Hillary any more than I am pro-George. I like both of ‘em. I don't agree with either of 'em.

Hillary came to the small town next door to mine last year. Oops, one kudo for her. Bet she wouldn’t have stooped to do that though if she wasn’t looking at higher goals than the NY Senate.

George came to our big city and gave a little speech in 2000. I shook his hand and got his autograph. Two kudos for him! Well, he's actually MADE it to the big house, and not on his spouses coattails so his signature might be worth more than hers, huh? Oh, that ISN'T what it's all about? Well, at least I have SOMETHING to tell my grandchildren from my common little housewife life.

I personally think Hillary has got some good ideas about health care, and with the crisis on that in this country somebody better give it some thought, even if she does believe in out right murder. As for me, I like doctors okay, but they aren’t God and couldn’t heal me two years ago when I almost bled to death. If I don’t have health insurance someday, I’ll just have to trust the Lord some more. Ooops, she's back on GOD again.

Anyway, I think George is right on some stuff too although for the life of me it escapes me right now.

If you think I’m waffling, that’s okay. I’m sure George and Hillary would too, if they ever stopped by long enough to have breakfast with me. Don’ t even get me going on the ketchup guy. At least Hillary has half a brain in her head even if I don’t agree with most of it. I just never did see what the attraction was with John and Theresa.

So, that’s why I’m not a political analyst. On the blogstream or anywhere else. A true politician plays both sides against the middle and I’m too one track minded and set in my ways to ante up. I can sure go on a long time about nothin’ though, huh?

It was a bright spring day when the gentle man, who is the head of our county offices, called to tell me that my babies were coming back into foster care.

“They are? Yay!” I replied.

I had been picking them up for weekends and didn’t even know they had a caseworker working with them. Well, okay, I’m dense. One Friday when I drove out to get them after school to spend the weekend I had seen a caseworker there but it just went over my head like so many other thngs I see, but am too busy to process.

The one day that I remember seeing her, two of the kids were complaining because I wouldn’t let them bring their Britney Spears music and Pokemon cards to the house. I told them that I had a lot of things planned and we were going to be busy. While I really did have lots of things planned for the weekend, we were going to the museum, baking cookies, making crafts, going to the dollar movie theater, etc., in reality, I didn’t want either of those things in my house and had strong opinions about the value of them. The kids always came and by the time they got to my house weren’t even thinking about Britney or the stupid Pokemon cards anymore. However, the impression had already been made on this caseworker.

I had no idea the impact this small incident made. I don’t remember how much time elapsed between this and the time the kids were to come into care, probably several months, but it stuck with her. When the time came for them to be removed from their mother, a fact that I had not been made aware of, the county had decided that the three of them would be placed with another family in a town fifteen minutes away.

“Another family?” I croaked after he told me on the phone. “Another town?”

My head was spinning.

“But...but...but...I've been picking them up every weekend. I have dressers full of clothes for them! They have their own beds! They KNOW me! They’ve never been with anyone else! They’ll be scared! Our house is the only stable home they’ve ever lived in all these years! I wouldn’t even let my husband re-side the house because I knew it would upset them! THEY’RE MINE! No...no...NOOOOO!”

“I’m sorry, Connie, the decision has been made. We’ve had a meeting and it’s been decided. The new foster parents have already been retained.”

“Why? Whyyyyy? WHYYYY?”

I started crying. I started bawling. Right there on the phone. Sobbing into the mouthpiece like a blubbering fool.

“You can’t do this! You can’t do this to me! You PROMISED! You PROMISED me that you would give them TO ME if they ever came back into foster care. Did the mother say she didn’t want them to come here?”

That is a rule of the foster system. If the natural parents don’t like the foster parents, for whatever reason, they have the right to overrule that home, no questions asked. I didn’t think it was that reason but I couldn’t think of anything else.

“No, Connie, we haven’t talked to the Mom. She doesn’t even know the kids are being taken yet.”

“Was it the kids?” I couldn’t believe that even more, but I was running out of options.

“No, Connie.”. His voice was gentle. I could sense he didn’t want to do this. But for some reason, some reason that he wasn’t telling me, he felt compelled to.

“What is it then? WHAT? You KNOW how I feel about them. You know I’ve been involved in this case for eleven years! They are MINE! How can you do this to me? I can’t believe this!”

Did he just think I was going to take this sitting down? I had worked with the system for over twelve years. I was no rookie. They knew I wasn’t a ‘take it lying down’ kind of foster parent. They already knew I was their resident ‘radical, fanatical CHRISTIAN foster parent’ and were cool with it. There were no surprises at this point.

“Connie, we just don’t feel that you and your husband are the right home for them at this time.”

“WHAAAAT? How can you say that? They visit us every week! They KNOW us. They know all of our kids and they all get along really well. I AM their mother, as much or more than their real mother. What are you TALKING about?”

He wouldn’t say anymore. Nothing I said made any difference.

I told him that he had made an “oral agreement” with me. I told him that it would stand up in court. I told him I would fight this. He said he was sorry, he couldn’t help me, the decision was made. I asked him why he bothered to call me at all. He said that he knew I would find out and he wanted the first word to come from him.

He hung up. I just sat there with the receiver in my hand. The phone started to buzz. I just sat there and stared at it like I didn’t know what it was.

I made dinner in a fog. I went through the motions but I felt like I was outside my body watching myself do it. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t focus.

My whole body felt weak from fighting. I felt like the past five years of my life, ever since the problems with the church started, had been one big long fight. One right after the other.

I went to bed. I started to cry again.

“God, isn’t what I went through with the church enough? Isn’t it enough that they wouldn’t let me go to Scotland with the teens even though I had all my papers in order? Isn’t it enough that I’ve lost my reputation in this town, and most of my friends? The Hardcore is gone, the band guys are gone, everyone is in college, I’m home schooling and feeling like a complete failure...isn’t this ENOUGH? When does it end, God, WHEN DOES IT END?”

I was beginning to feel like maybe even God was against me now. This wasn’t the church anymore. I couldn’t blame them. This was different. With the exception of the whole Marine and Deandra thing, I had always gotten along well with caseworkers. The guy that called me was the top guy. I had nowhere to turn.

Was the whole world against me? Was God against me? I didn’t feel inferior anymore. Now I was feeling paranoid. I laid in bed and cried out all my frustrations, all my weaknesses, all my fear.

All of a sudden something so MAD rose up in me. I thought of something I hadn’t thought of before and suddenly I was just SO MAD.

The DEVIL was the one that was doing all of this. HE is the one that comes to kill, steal and destroy! Sure, I knew all the verses. Yeah, I knew in some vague way, that he had been involved, but suddenly all I could think of was that he was right up in my face. Right then. Stealing my babies right out from under me.

I had never taken authority over the devil before. Never. Even during all the problems with the church. I kinda knew about it, having been to Rod Parsley’s church you can’t really miss it, but I had never done it myself. But all I could think of was that this was a devil. A devil assigned to steal my babies from me. Over and over I found myself whispering, “this is a devil...this is a devil...this is a devil”.

These days I rebuke Satan in a loud, no uncertain terms voice, but back then, in May of 2000, even after all those years of being a Christian, all by myself in my bedroom, under my covers, my face all bloated and splotched, barely able to raise my voice above a raspy whisper I said,

“I rebuke you Satan in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth”.

I wiped the tears away and again, in a low but determined voice I said,

“I REBUKE YOU SATAN IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST OF NAZARETH”

Out loud I said, “You WILL NOT steal MY babies from ME!”

It would have been one thing if they were going with their mother. I didn’t like that either but she was their MOTHER. The county would even CONSIDER giving them a different FOSTER mother, let alone already have one set up?

I went to sleep telling myself that if they didn’t see the light on this thing I would call one of my lawyer brother-in-laws and make good on my promise.

First thing the next morning I called the Senior Caseworker, the one just below the top guy. She tried to give me the same answer about my husband and me “not being the right home for them at this time”.

I told her that I wasn’t accepting that. I told her that they had given me ‘oral agreement’, and that I would take them court if they didn’t stop this right now. I told her I needed a better answer than the one I was getting. I needed the REAL reason. This woman had known me for ten years. I begged her. Finally she realized she wasn’t going to get rid of me. I wasn’t going away. She brought her voice to a low whisper and said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what the reason is.”

The reason as it was explained to me was that they had heard I had issues with secular music and only played worship music in my house. I admitted that that was true, that on the three ‘family stereos’ there was only music that I liked and felt honored God, but I told her the kids were allowed to have Discmans and listen to other music.

She also mentioned Pokemon. Again, I admitted that I did not like that. She wanted to know why.

She thought it was for spiritual reasons and as everyone knows that is the WORST reason to do ANYTHING in your life, right?

I told her that there was a big spread in Time about the guy who drew the cartoons and how he started the whole thing because he was having nightmares. He was an artist and he couldn’t sleep until he got up and drew out his nightmares on his drawing board. I told her that I didn’t know anything about the spiritual ramifications of Pokemon but my kids had enough of their OWN nightmares, thank you very much, they sure don’t need to watch anyone elses! She sat in stunned silence. She had known me long enough to know that I was not going to lie about that.

Today was the day the kids were to be removed. Time was short. Court time was early afternoon. The county was expecting to win the case, had already set up another foster home and barring an upset from the judge the kids would be picked up when they got off the bus.

An hour later I got a phone call from the home finder, a different worker from the one I had spoken to earlier. She is an extremely kind and gentle woman. She said, “Connie, I want to let you know that we have changed our minds and are letting the kids come back into care with you.” My heart felt like it was going to fall into my stomach. This almost seemed too easy!!! I was so used to fighting every battle to the bloody end and still losing.

She said, “I’m really sorry about this. I went to bed last night thinking,”We can’t do this to the kids. We can’t do this to this family.”

I asked her what time she went to bed. It was the exact same time I was in my own rebuking Satan in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. People can argue the Bible with me, but they can’t take my testimony away from me. Okay, it must be a coincidence. I don't think so.

She said they had had another meeting and would I please take the kids (like she had to ask), and oh, by the way, would you mind driving over to the kids house (a one hour round trip) and helping the caseworker get them in the car, we might have a problem with that”.

Okay, so let me get this straight, suddenly you are going to give me my way but you are still asking favors of me?

I didn’t care. I got off the phone and thanked God and repented for thinking that He had abandoned me, and cried new tears….. of joy.

It was not known for a year whether the kids would go back to her or not. The mother made her usual half-hearted attempts to do what the county asked of her. She just couldn’t see clear to giving up her convicted child molesting boyfriend though. She SAID she wanted her three GIRL children back, but for the life of her couldn’t understand why the county would object to a registered molester living in the house.

In 2002, after the adoption papers were final, the kids caseworker came to make a last ‘close the case’ visit. She gave each of the kids a gift. She went on and on telling me how good the kids looked, how well they were doing in school, what an amazing improvement they had made since they had come into care with us.

I answered her in a low voice, trying to keep the sarcasm to a minimum,

“Yeah, you guys don’t like to hear about the Gospel but you sure like the fruit of it, huh?”

She nodded a very humble nod.

People ask me how it is to take children in and then have to let them go. People tell me that they could NEVER do foster care because they could NEVER let the kids go. It would be too hard. I tell them that life is hard no matter what you do.

But, I’m not going to lie.

It’s hard.

I’m saying it right now.

IT IS REALLY HARD.

Back when they took my three babies, the ones that are my three youngest adopted children now, back in the summer of 1995, a month before I went to camp the first time, I just laid on my living room carpet, pressed “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand” at least ten times, the ten minute Vineyard version, and I cried.

I cried

and I cried

and I cried.

I didn’t think the tears would ever stop for the rest of my life.

After they stopped I didn’t think they would ever come back for the rest of my life.

I felt numb. I was so depressed that I didn’t go outside. God and my husband kicked me out the door to go to camp that summer and that changed my common little housewife life forever, but whenever I thought of my babies, gone, all gone,…..I died. I died a little more inside everyday.

My mother was happy they were gone.

“Can’t you just do your ‘volunteer work’ OUTSIDE your home, dear?”

How could I explain that this was NOT volunteer work? What can one say to another who does not feel the burden of life beating down on their soul….

their mind, their will, and their emotions… every single day…..with nothing to stop the memories, the pain of another on your heart?

You love your Mom. You do. Without her you wouldn’t be here in the world. You will always love her and treat her with respect for who she is to you. You know that even though she didn’t teach you right things about God, that she did the best with what she knew to do and your little Beaver Cleaver life was so much better than the lives you are stepping into now. Lives filled with abuse, and unspeakable atrocities that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, let alone your babies……………..Oh God.
OH MY GOD!

How do I live through this? How do I live the rest of my life knowing what I know and not being able to do anything about it? It would have been better for me not to know. But I can’t go back. I have put six years of my life into these children. How do you forget? I need to forget. But I can’t. I need to sleep. But I can’t sleep. They are in my dreams. I need to stay busy. But I can’t focus. I can’t stay awake. The pain is too great. I can’t go to sleep. The dreams are always there. I just want to die. God, I know I shouldn’t feel that way. God, help me not feel that way. But I can’t take the pain, and I can’t take the dreams, and I can’t……………

How do you explain all this to the woman who worked for Planned Parenthood for twenty years and probably thought the mother of my babies should have just aborted them anyway? The mother of my babies has three older children. She had six altogether. The three older ones were taken away from her before mine were born. So she went and had three more. Any abortion clinic counselor would have counseled an abortion for her, all three times, and everybody, maybe even some anti-abortion people, the ones that think that it’s not okay for their own, but they wouldn’t tell someone else what choice to make, would have thought that the right choice.

My mother wouldn’t have said it like that NOW, now that they were born, but I know she would have counseled that to the mother of my babies if she had come into her clinic while she was pregnant.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mom. She just doesn’t get me.

How do you describe the ripping pain, the almost physical tearing? The knife in your gut that just doesn’t go away. After a time it starts to heal AROUND the knife, but the knife is still there. All it takes is for someone to make an insensitive statement, even if they don’t mean to, and the knife turns. Just a touch, but that’s all it takes. You’re bleeding again.

“No, Mom, I can’t.”

There was nothing left to say. I knew she would never get it. Even my husband didn’t completely understand. While he cared about the babies, he was not bonded to them quite the same way I was. He didn’t change their diapers, or give them baths. He didn’t feed them, give them bottles, or dress them. I did all of that. He knew how I felt….he just didn’t feel it himself.

My first year of camp took my mind off them a little. Getting the new foster kids gave me something new to focus on. Youth group was fun and Hardcore Worship was even more fun. I was busy, excited, running around getting everything done during the day so I could run around all night having a blast.

But my babies….ooooo, I wanted my babies. They weren’t really babies any more, they were 4, 5, and 6. Once a baby, always a baby.

A woman who knew me told me that she couldn’t imagine me being so interested in babies. She looked at my comraderie with the teens and said, “God created you for teenagers”. She thought she was making me feel better. I just curled in on myself and said, “You just met me. I have another side.”

People kept trying to make me feel better by saying that if they hadn’t gone home I wouldn’t have been able to be used by God with the youth group. I bristled at that.

“Bring ‘em on”, I would snarl, “I’ll STILL do the all the stuff with the teens and take care of my babies too.” I actually said that. I would tell them “just as I taught the teens to worship God, if I get my babies back, they can all come over here and help me, and I will teach them to SERVE God.”

Well, that pretty much shut the naysayers up. Nobody knew what to say after that and I was glad. Don’t say anything, ya dummies. I’d rather have that. Like I said before, I got a little snippy attitude for a while there.

I had hoped that going home in the summer like they did would make it so hard on the mom that they would come back before school started. I know how bad that sounds but I didn’t care. I had always helped her whenever the kids went home before. I brought her clothes from the Blessing Shop, milk, even though I knew she was getting food stamps and was spending it on cigarettes. I took the kids every weekend. She loved me for it. I was giving her a break. She didn’t realize this was my life. I waited all week for these weekends. It was not a chore. No more than my own biological children were chores. They were my existence. I know it may sound sappy, but it’s true. Like my purpose was gone.

This was then and still is, an unrepentant mother, who couldn’t or wouldn’t change and I was getting sick of her. It had been almost seven years that I’d been dealing with her and she was stubborn, lazy and unwilling to change. Even for her kids. I was sick of it.

I wanted my babies...not her babies...I potty trained them, I disciplined them, I took them to the zoo, I heard their first words, I recorded their memories with video tape and scrapbooks. I wanted MY babies back. Maybe they weren’t born to me but they became mine with every bath, every diaper, every meal served. Summer passed, my first year at camp ended, the new foster kids settled in, all came and went, and my babies were still home with their mom.

After five months, by Christmas, I realized they weren’t coming back. Not right now anyway. My husband tried to make me feel better telling me that they would be back when they were teenagers. We had been through those years and he said the mom would never make it.

"Thanks alot!" I said. "I get ‘em in diapers, and then when they are at their snippy worst, 13 years old!"

I caved in and started bringing her food, clothes and picking the kids up for the weekend again, just so they could get a bath and their long hair brushed out.

They didn’t come back into care again for five years. It was a very long five years for me. The county knew how “over involved” I was and they didn’t like it. Having Marine and Deandra in the house and the altercation with their caseworker didn't help matters either. They tried to talk to me about my involvement with the little kids.

I tried to tell them that they shouldn't call it Foster CARE if they don't want the foster parents to CARE. They even sent me to a psychologist about it! I went to the counselor anyway and just LOVED having a whole hour to talk about my self and my family to this woman who actually was genuinely interested (she really was) and it was paid for by the government! Not as good as the blogstream (love you guys) cause it was only once a week, but good. I liked it. But the underlying problem was that the county thought I had gone off the deep end.

When we had taken the other three, back in the summer of ’95 I told the county that I would only take them under one condition…that they never tell me I can’t have the other ones if they came back into care. They agreed at the time, but then they forgot, in May,2000 when they called me to tell me the babies, 9, 10, 11, they all were now, were coming back into care. Yeah, they were coming back into Foster Care, but....not to my house....not to me.

When does love come? At what point do we learn how to love? It is a learned behavior. Babies are so cute, aren’t they? They are so cuddly and soft and don’t they smell so good? They snuggle and they hug and they laugh the most infectious little laughs. But all of that is not love. That is selfish ‘all about me’, ‘take care of me’ love, which isn’t really love.

A loving child cannot be taken for granted. Love must first be ministered. A child who does not receive love will not know how to give love. Love must be taught. A child who is not taught how to love will react from his base instinct.

Our base instinct is...power. Selfish, self-serving, everything is me, I am the King of the World, power.

Love is not natural to humans. It should be because we are made in the image of the Almighty Love. But that doesn’t take into account the fruit of disobedience that resides in our hearts ever since Mama and Papa ate the apple.

People think that they will take in foster children and those children will automatically love them, appreciate them, and reciprocate the love shown to them. This is mostly a fallacy and any would-be foster parents should be taught in the required training classes that this should not be expected. If it is one will become so disillusioned they will give up.

Theophileous writes on love quite frequently. When he is not going intellectual on us over there, that is. Even then, he always treats his detractors with love. Whit wrote a good piece on love a few days ago too. I was so excited. Whit was posting scripture!

People don’t want to read the Bible...for whatever the reason. It’s boring they say, but I find it more fascinating than a soap opera. It’s hard to understand, they say, but I find that with the discernment of the Holy Spirit, the One Who wrote it anyway, it is not only easy, it is revelational. How can you put it down?

People say they don’t agree with it, but as Whit proved, when you quote the Master, even the people who don’t think they would agree with something in the Bible agree with it.

Yeah, when it comes to love, no one describes it better than ol’ St. Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There are whole libraries full of books on love, how to love, where to find love, who to love, but no one, NO ONE comes closer to hitting it on the head than the Author of Love, the Creator of our hearts, the Reason we are even here at all and have the capacity to love.

We seek love in so many places. Our hearts yearn for it. To love and be loved is the greatest desire of the human soul. More important than even food, even sleep or even sex. Good sex is not indicative of good love. Boomers, the 'free luuuuuuuuv' generation proved that, didn't we?

The love of the Bible, whether it is eros (Song of Solomon), philo (David and Jonathan), or agape (Christ dying for us on the cross) is TRUE love. The love we REALLY want. The love we really need.