Sinner, not a saint.

I have been trying and TRYING to write a new blog for weeks now, and it's just not working.  Everything I write doesn't come out right and it doesn't all go together so I keep deleting everything.  Someone told me today to just do it already though and not worry so much about how it sounded, so here I go.

I am not a saint. 

I feel like I am placed on a pedestal some days when people here that I do foster care and it drives me a little loco.  Chad and I didn't get into foster care because we're super shiny people with super shiny halos who just love love love helping wounded kids and their parents.  This wasn't in our "plan" for our life.  This wasn't a calling that was driven by a passion of ours.  It's actually the opposite.  First came the call, then the passion.  People are forever telling us how wonderful we are, and some even tear up when we mention that we're foster parents as if we're these amazing humanitarians or something, but it's not really the case.  Newsflash: Chad and I wanted to have kids of our own.  We even went so far as to try fertility treatments because we wanted kids so much, but it never worked.  And foster care gives us the opportunity to have kids in our home.  Real, live kids, who call us mommy and daddy and tell us they love us.  And they pay us to do it.  Bonus!  I'm pretty sure saints don't get paid....
Before we got into all this, I used to have a really bad case of baby fever.  You know what I mean--where all you can think about is having a baby, where you seriously contemplate buying a onesie you think is cute because you just know you're going to have a baby someday, and where you constantly check out the latest and greatest in strollers so that you'll be on top of your game when that magical day comes.  Other symptoms include a constant urge to pee on white plastic sticks, a secret shameful jealousy of anything pregnant, and an unnatural obsession with the first day of your last menstrual cycle. 
In my fever-induced hysteria, I thought the only cure was an actual baby--but I was wrong.  God had a plan for us and all He needed from us was to be willing to go where He wanted us to.  If I had the time, I'd tell you the whole story.  It's pretty amazing to look at the whole thing--you can't deny that God was in control of it all.  He gave us the call to get licensed and to open up our home to children (not just tiny babies), and over the past fifteen and a half months, He's cultivated a passion in us to help these children--to love them and to show kindness to their parents.  He's broken my baby fever and continuously works to keep me from a total relapse, despite myself.  Throughout all of this though, He's blessed us even more with an even stronger marriage, the ability for me to quit my job and stay home with the kids, and, if the day comes, to adopt children for basically nothing and continue to stay home with them.  I often feel that I get more out of this than the kids do.  We are not saints for doing foster care.  We are quite possibly some of the luckiest people in the world.  We were called into doing this and we answered that call with quasi-obedience (you can drag your feet, whining the whole way and still be obedient, right?) and so God has blessed us for it.  Life is not always easy.  We don't always get what we want.  And we definitely have had our share of ups and downs recently.  Hopefully I'll be able to sit down again soon and let everyone in on what the kids are up to because, my land, they've been up to a lot!  For instance, I've got a kid starting meds soon, a kid who's now pretty much potty trained, and a kid who can shake her finger and say "fiiiiieeeeerce" like she means it :)  Life is good :)