FPA

Tonight I went to our first FPA (foster parent association) meeting. It was pretty much what I expected, a lot of older couples and older single women. Talked about basically everything we already knew. Mentioned upcoming meetings and conferences, answered questions, introduced everyone. What I didn't expect to see was...KIDS! A lot of people brought their foster kids, and it was nice to see them, actually see physical kids in the system...they DO exist. It's not just some figment of my imagination. Real kids in the system. A sweet 23 month old boy, two year old twins (a boy and girl), a sibling group of three boys (somewhere from 9-15) and others that were in the next room over so we didn't get to actually "meet" them.

As expected, some of the other foster parents were complainers. Some know-it-all's. Some didn't say a thing the entire time. We were the newbies.

Our worker walks us out to the car "hey I found your baby registry!" Huh? I didn't make a registry for this baby? And what? How in the world did you find an old baby registry of mine? Google of course, I guess I should have expected him to stalk the internet for me. These people know more about us than we do.

In the end, we will be going next month- hopefully it will be a little different. Hopefully we will have a foster child by then, too. It's so odd to be in this sometimes. Saying we want a foster child...is like saying we want something to happen...we want these kids to be taken away so we can take them in. Mr. and I we're talking about this tonight, sometimes we feel guilty about saying we "cant wait for a kid". Like we're saying "please don't feed your child for a week someone, so we can take your child!"

But really, fact is there are kids that are being abused and neglected all over the place, all over our town. What we really mean is- we want them to be found. We want the children who are hurting who nobody knows about yet- it's not that we want it to happen, it's that it IS happening. It is happening, and when the children are removed we do want them. So when we wait for a child, it's not because no child is being abused right now. It's not that no child is being neglected or hurt, or hungry, or alone. It's that nobody knows about them yet, but we will be here when they do.