“Sometimes love looks like sitting in the floor tearing tiny strips of construction paper to keep a lava lamp safe when it’s packed, because it’s not really about the lava lamp. Sometimes it means going to the mall to “ride the rides” even when you don’t have time for that, because you are down to the last few hours you have with someone. Sometimes grief looks like tears over eggs cooked the wrong way, because there are no words for how it feels to lose a brother. The hardest thing we have ever had to do is love someone with our whole hearts and then prepare to say goodbye. I’ll take all the prayers for today. Today I have to take this sweet, smart, funny, wonderful boy across the state. Three months ago we were strangers. Now, he’s my son. And today I have to drive him 4.5 hours away and leave him with another mom. He is heartbroken. We are heartbroken. This is not easy, for him or for us. but the Lord has confirmed over and over that He has big plans for this little guy. We were not the final chapter in his story like we had hoped to be, but God is still writing his story.”

These were the words that I wrote with a heavy heart the day that our first foster son went to another home. It still hurts to read it, even five months later. I still miss him so fiercely, and there are still days where I feel like there’s a hole that may never quite heal over. I know it will, we’ve been here before and I know we will be here again. But it takes a long time, and the hurt goes deep, and friends and family don’t completely understand.

Goodbye in foster care can either come as a complete surprise, or it can come as part of a planned event. Maybe a judge has ordered it and everyone is working toward it, or maybe you’ve decided that you just can’t anymore and you ask for a placement disruption. Either way, goodbye hurts.

It hurts when you see it coming, it hurts when it hits, and it hurts as you watch it pull away in the rearview mirror.

But.

In this house, goodbye is not the final word.

Because He is faithful, and because He keeps His promises, I will get to see my kids again, even if it’s not always this side of heaven.