The final thoughts of things that we have come to learn over the past 10 weeks: 1. Know your own family 2. Communicate effectively 3. Know the children 4. Build strengths, meet needs 5. Work in partnership 6. Be loss and attachment experts 7. Managed behaviors 8. Build connections 9. Build self esteem 10. Assure health and safety 11. Assess impact 12.make an informed decision.
In the end, Lamar and I finished these meetings, coming out as different people. Learning our strengths from our needs and becoming even more prepared to love a child and become their forever family! I think there are times in your life when you think that you know your family so well, but in the midst of life, you can lose that knowledge that you once held so dear. You not only learn about your family but you learn so much about yourself. Some good things and lets all face it, some not so good things! oh please, everyone has baggage and garbage in their life that we would care to sweep under the rug, but unfortunately, the classes make you bring it out into the open. After all, as our social worker tells Katie all of the time, "We don't just give children away!"
I do have to share though how well they quickly learned about Lamar. All of you that of course no him, know that he adores food! This is the man who could play the SNL skit with the all you can eat chinese buffet and the man yelling at Chris Farley saying "Fat boy, you leave, you eat too much." ok, so back to the story. Every week a couple was to bring snacks for the class since we were there for 3 hours. The second week, we get there and are all settled in and the couple that was supposed to bring snacks had yet arrived. our teacher says to the class, well, Im not sure who was supposed to bring the snacks this week for class, but we will figure it....(Lamar very loudly interupts), stands up from his chair, points across to the empty chairs, and says in his deep southern drawl , "that couple over there is in charge of snacks tonight!!!", so after the laughing stopped, our teacher says, well, if anything, Lamar will always know who is bringing food! I love my husband!
Final thought on the 10 weeks of classes. We are ready and so prepared to be parents again and raise this amazing child that God has chosen just for us. Katie is going to be an amazing big sister and adore this child and this child is going to be loved by so many people and have a wonderful life and so many opprutunities that it may not have had. This journey is going to be a rollar coaster of emotions, but in the big picture, God is in control, he has a plan and no matter the road that it takes to get there, it is the journey that makes us who we are and strengthens us to become even better people then we were before.
We also have learned that we can preach and preach Katie everything that we think she should do and how she should live, and the person that we feel she should be, but the ultimate truth is that she has become the young woman that she is by learning what she has lived and the examples of what we have and still continue to be for her. Your life is what you make of it, you only have 1, so make the best of everything that God has blessed you with.
"Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6
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