Another home, another homestudy visit. Yesterday we had the great opportunity to meet with our social worker for the second time. These are really interesting meetings where we answer questions that she fires toward us, it's really not that daunting rather quite lighthearted. Yesterday's topics included how we might deal with a troubled teenager to, if our cat Nooma gets on well with little children.
The meetings are about two hours long and begin with a customary cup of coffee, selection of biscuits and a catch-up. They are entitled homestudy meetings but essentially they are studies of us not our home.
As you might know we are on the move again, this weekend we move all of our belongings from our friends two garages into our new house that we're renting. Our next homestudy meeting will be in our actual home, we've already completed a homestudy in America in a house that we lodged in for three weeks, and have had a meeting here in our old house and a house where we are temporarily dwelling. We expect to be at our new house for the foreseeable future and be able to call it home. It has been both wonderful and confusing during this interim period of moving out, waiting to move in and eventually moving in. To be honest it feels a bit like holiday at home, it's August, we have cable TV, we're living out of suitcases, scrounging around meals and enjoying a slower pace of life if even for a couple of days.
The labour of moving, packing, unpacking, downsizing, running to the tip, etc... will come to an end soon and we'll be enjoying the comforts of our own house. It got me to thinking what it would be like to always be living in the interim, to be in-between as the norm? For children who are in the care system being at a place they can't call their own is unfortunately the way it almost always is. Whether a child is in foster care or in a children's home facility it is always a place until something else happens. It is not permanent, it is in a way like living out of suitcases, of course for many children they are too young to even understand what they are going through. It's the space until moving on to the next space.
I remember as a teacher having students who would arrive during the year into the classroom. At first usually very timid then after a month or two they would begin to acclimate, build friendship and trust only to find out that they were moving on again. A note would come into the inbox or an email stating that _____ was no longer enrolled, and of course that child would go to the next school and begin the process all over again. How difficult it must be to be always in a temporary state?
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| have not read on my list though |
For children who are awaiting adoption this is their position. While in foster care (this is a much needed service and these homes are usually fantastic places to be) there is that possibility of having to move on to the next house, but there also maybe existing is the opportunity of being brought into not only a long-term house but a family. In Psalms 68:6 it says that God puts the lonely in families, what a gorgeous picture of restoration! Although many children may have fallen through the cracks of family and society there lies the hope that they no longer must dwell in the land between, God does place the lonely, heartbroken and troubled into families.
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