A tragic love story--Part 3

By the end of that first meeting, we looked around at everyone ("Team K" we eventually named the group), and asked when we could meet her. There was a collective relief felt round the table. Shoulders relaxed as they realized this meeting had not been yet another wasted hour of their time. I can't even imagine how many meetings these social workers sit through along with prospective foster parents that end in shaking heads and no responses. We where IN and ready to go. We wanted her.

Waiting anxiously to hear when we could meet her, I got a call a few days later asking how our decision-making was going and did we have any questions. I guess they just didn't believe us. I assured the social worker that yes, we want to meet K as soon as we can.

And now, as I sit here today I recall my conversation with that same social worker last week. "How soon can you take her?" We are calling it quits. We want her out before it gets worse. I have to think that if our birth son was consistently and increasingly skipping most of his classes, not taking his medications prescribed by a psychiatrist, doing drugs and drinking, had stolen from us, disregarded house rules on a constant basis, and was being disrespectful toward us in the way that K has been for months, that we would have him out of our home and in rehab as fast as we could.

We've made the decision not to wait and see how things go any longer because we can see that they are not going well. In fact we have allowed this to drag out too long. We can continue to sit and wait or we can help her along to rock bottom by kicking her out. We can let her bring us down with her and ruin any desire for us to ever foster again or we can take a break for awhile, stand back up, brush ourselves off and think about the possibilities of trying to help other kids.

They've already asked us to hold on for another week until they can plan a meeting. Nope, we're done. Find a place that can take her and hopefully help her and come get her before she goes down big. And I just have a feeling that if we get to that point it will be a scary place. In the meantime we sit and wait and hope for the best. For the county, a foster home is cheaper than rehab and that is what K so desperately needs. We've learned a simple thing. We are not rehab. This was a big experiment gone wrong. We are a tragic love story with an unhappy ending. A loving family can obviously only get her so far. She cannot love herself if she is abusing drugs and alcohol. And if she does not love herself she certainly can't love us. Not matter how much love and care we try to give to her.

Sadly, I still have no answers on how to fix all that is broken; these kids, this system, and foster parents like us who have tried to help in the poorest of circumstances. Did we fail? I don't think so. We tried to show her what a normal, stable, loving home looks like. And in that sense I believe we succeeded.