Blogger Liz Curtis Faria, a former social worker, graciously allowed us to repost her blog entry about a troubled foster child, desperately reaching out for someone to love him. Unfortunately, his story is not unique. Thousands of children in the foster care system are waiting to be adopted right now, and are at risk  of meeting the same fate as him. The boy in the story was never adopted, and we can’t help but wonder how much differently his life could have turned out if a family would have taken a chance on him.

It was something about the phrasing that got to me. Something about the cadence of his words, the staccato of his speech.

“Nobody loves me. Not even my mother who gave birth to me.”

It is an odd turn of phrase, isn’t it?

Not even my mother who gave birth to me.

He was buckled into the backseat of my Toyota, still too little to sit up front. At seven he had already moved more times than the total number of years he had been on the earth. And this time, like the times before it, he moved with his belongings in a trash bag. A suitcase, at least, would have added a small degree of dignity to the whole affair – to being “placed” in another and another and yet another foster home before reaching the 3rd grade. Trash bags break, you know. Trash bags can’t possibly support the contents of any life, and certainly not a life as fragile as this.

They break from the strain, eventually.

This move was harder for Stephen than most. It was a home he thought he would stay in, at least for awhile. He had felt affection there. When I went to pick him up, after his foster mother gave notice that he could no longer stay, he came easily with me; head down, no reaction on the surface of it. It was only when he got into my car that he began to sob the kind of aching sound that leaves you limp in its wake.

He could barely get out the words. Nobody loves me. Not even my mother who gave birth to me.

Months later, in a repeat scene (another foster mother, another removal), he would put up a fight. He would run around the living room, ducking behind furniture, refusing to leave. But on this night he had no fight in him.

That was Stephen at seven.

Nine-year old Stephen grips his report card in sweaty hands. We’re headed to an adoption event, where we will meet families who want to adopt an older child; families who do not automatically rule out a boy like Stephen with all of his long “history.” And he wants to impress them, these strangers. He wants to win them over, and so he brings his good report card along as tangible proof that he is a child worth loving.

A child should never have to prove they are worth loving.

Twelve-year old Stephen tells me that I’m his best friend. I’m his social worker, and he should have a real best friend, but I don’t say this to him. We’re at a taping for Wednesday’s Child, the news spot featuring children who are up for adoption. Stephen is engaging on camera. Maybe somebody will pick him this time. Maybe he is offering just enough evidence, at twelve, that he’s a boy worth loving. And he is lovable, truly. But it is not enough. A family never comes.

Years later, long after I’ve left the agency, I get an email from my old boss asking how I’m doing, and ending with a short P.S. “Stephen is in DYS lockup after running away from his foster home. You need to adopt him.” My stomach drops. I’ve had this thought many times. I should adopt him myself. But I don’t.

I heard about his murder from a friend who had seen it in the news. Shot outside a party over some foolish dispute. Dead at 18, dead just as he became a man. Not my Stephen, I prayed. When I realized that it was really him – that it could be no other – I sobbed gripped by the kind of anguish that leaves you limp in its wake.

What have we all done? What haven’t we all done.

The newspapers ran very little about the murder, as if it were an afterthought. Barely worth a mention, really. Anonymous strangers posted nasty comments online: “Just another gangbanger,” they said. You don’t even know him. You don’t know the first thing about this boy. You don’t know that as a child he would trace letters into my back with his finger to pass time at the doctor’s office, asking me to guess what phrase he was spelling out. “I ♥ U” he traced between my shoulders, the last time we played this game.

Stephen had been wrong, that night in my Toyota. His mother did love him, in her way. She was there, at the funeral. She greeted me kindly. I think she knew I loved Stephen as I knew she did. We both failed him in the end, and that joined us I suppose. Neither of us could give him a family.

There were no photos from Stephen’s childhood at the funeral home. No images of the green-eyed boy with the sweet smile to remind us of what had been lost. There were no pictures of Stephen with his brothers, and so I printed up snapshots of the four boys together, taken on a supervised visit, and brought them to the funeral to give to the family. It was something I could do, against the larger backdrop of nothing I could do.

There were very few social workers at the funeral, and none of Stephen’s many foster mothers. Were they even told he was dead? Stephen spent more of his life being raised in the system than out of it. If you claim legal responsibility for a child, you best show up at his funeral. You should show up when he dies. He was yours, in a way, wasn’t he? You owe it to him. And if he did not belong to you, then who did he ever belong to?

His mother was there, at least. His mother who gave birth to him. I hear the echo of his voice from those many years ago.

Somebody does love you Stephen. I want to tell him. But it’s too late.

Stephen was the one, for me. The one who embodied all the failures of a system so broken that to heal it would take far more than the casts that heal the literal broken bones of the children growing up within it.

They break, you know. These kids we leave behind. Eventually they break.

You can learn more about fostering and adopting through Arrow at https://www.arrow.org/foster.

You can find Liz’s blog at www.amothershipdown.com and her Facebook  page at https://www.facebook.com/amothershipdown.

*Stephen is a fictional name for a real boy the world lost.

Sitting around the dinner table enjoying chicken noodle soup, the Senofsky family shared their “highs and lows” for the day.

For the youngest, 6-year-old Abigail, the highlight of her day was being with everyone at the table, from her adoptive mom and dad, Lori and Nick, to her three siblings and her nanny, Hannah. Her low was that a bully at school told her to “shut up,” which hurt her feelings.

But even though hurtful, the quip is mild compared to the traumas Abigail has experienced in her short life.

She and her siblings, 11-year-old Samantha and 7-year-old Daniel, were placed in Lori and Nick Senofsky’s care in September of last year. Their previous foster parents told the children they would adopt them, but then things fell apart, leaving them even more wary, especially Daniel.

When Daniel threw a toy and accidentally broke a picture in his new home, he immediately broke down and hid, fearful that Lori and Nick would send him to yet another foster home. Samantha, the eldest, estimated that she had been in at least 10 foster homes, some with Abigail and Daniel, some split apart from them.

The result is that the three are working through issues that most adults can’t even begin to imagine.

However, before even meeting the kids, Lori and Nick were committed to adopting them, giving them a permanent, stable home.

“We believe that God gave them to us,” Lori said. “There was no plan B right from the start.  We trusted God to pick our three biological kids, and we trusted God to pick our adopted kids too.”

With patience, love and faith in God, Lori and Nick are seeing God begin to heal the siblings’ hearts from their feelings of abandonment and betrayal.  Their official adoption in July was an especially important part of the healing process.

“They were very wounded,” Nick said. “You can take all the classes you want, but until you live it, you can’t imagine what it’s like.”

One of the most difficult problems the children are overcoming is their nightmares. Lori and Nick have relied on God to grant their children peaceful sleep. They even anointed the children’s beds, and have taught them to pray for Jesus to take away their nightmares before going to sleep.  Lori said the prayers have helped with their nightmares tremendously because they empower the children to ask Jesus for help, and not feel like victims and live in fear.

“For me, it was a miracle,” she said.

Prayer plays a huge role in the family’s life constantly, not just at bedtime. When the kids are having a bad day, Lori has a group of supporters she texts to ask for prayers.

The couple’s 17-year-old birth daughter, Lauren, and 22-year-old birth son, Will, have been another huge help in caring for their new siblings. Both have made sacrifices in order to spend time with them. Lauren sacrificed time with her friends or dates to watch them, and Will even decided to live at home instead of on his own so the three would get to know him.

However, there was still a need for another set of helping hands, especially so Lauren could a chance to enjoy her senior year of high school to its fullest, so Lori and Nick hired a nanny, Hannah, to help out.

“Hannah really saved our family dynamic,” Nick said.

Lori, Nick, Lauren, Will, Hannah and other family and friends have come together as a team to help the siblings, and they’ve shown dramatic improvement over the past year. They are doing better in school, their fears have lessened and their behavior continues to improve.

Along the way, Lori and Nick have grown spiritually.

“We’ve experienced God in a way we never had before,” Nick said. “All you can do is depend on God. My faith has really deepened.”

But more importantly, the kids “have a stable home, a lot of love and a better shot at a future,” he said.

Originally posted at showhope.org

GUEST POST: Why does God call people to adopt?

This might seem like a question with an obvious answer. But sometimes, stating the obvious is a good thing.

For us, the call to adopt was heard relatively late in life. In fact, it was about the time we’d decided we were done growing our family the biological way. Yes, we’d told God we were His, and surrendered our plans to Him, but no more kids, m’kay?

Adoption was not even on our radar.

Almost 10 years later, we have adopted 7 children from China. Our beautiful brood has grown from 4 to 11. The Lord has done a mighty big work in our little family.

But why? Why are some of us called to adopt?

When we accept Christ as our Savior, He calls us to join Him in His story of redemption. In fact, Jesus tells us to “Go…” For each of us that is a unique directive, and for some of us, that is adoption. And when God calls us to adopt, I can testify… He can use it to transform us in a big way.

1. For the orphan. This might seem painfully obvious, but oh my, does the Lord do an amazing work in the life of a once-orphaned-but-now-beloved-child. And please don’t miss this: when we adopt, it’s God’s idea. It is God that’s going in – and He asks us to join Him. If we try to get into the driver’s seat, it can breed self-righteousness and back-patting. And God wants to use all things to draw us closer to Him, not elevate ourselves. The beautiful thing about being God’s assistant in this thing called adoption is that is you get go join in His work, get your hands dirty, see the way the Lord transforms and yet He holds up both ends. He begins the work – way before He invited you in – and He promises to finish it. And then He gets the real glory. There is nothing I have experienced in my 45 years that compares to witnessing a child bloom in a forever family. It’s a beautiful thing.

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