Our foster daughter Teenasia has been with us since last
February, and over the course of her year with us, her
birth father has fulfilled the conditions the court set
for him to take custody of his daughter. The planned unification
date is March 26 and between now and then, Teenasia will
spend more and more time with her father, beginning with
overnight visits, working up to weekends, then three-
and four-day visits.
Our family is giving up Teenasia for Lent.
I’ve never loved Lent. I’ve respected it as
a necessary season of the church, and I’ve valued
it as an opportunity to discover the areas of my life
that I need to die to, in order to more fully live. But
I’ve never looked forward to it. And this year,
as I page through the calendar and anticipate saying goodbye
to a little girl I’ve come to love and laugh at
and wipe the nose of, Lent looms like an unwelcome desert.
I don’t know the faith of Teenasia’s father,
or even if he has a faith, but I know our family’s
time of loss and pain will be his family’s resurrection.
Teenasia has never lived with her father, so going to
him will be a rebirth for her. Her two brothers, ages
3 and 4, already live with him, and they, too, will receive
the gift that is Teenasia, a gift we must help our own
sons to give away.
The other day, Teenasia’s father called, and as
we chatted, he told me he had never seen a young child
run with the speed and coordination with which Teenasia
runs.
“She is going to be a track star someday,”
he said. “I’m going to need to train her in
track and field.”
I told him I agreed, that I had seen the potential too.
But I didn’t tell him that I had once been a track
star myself, and up until the last court hearing, a part
of me hoped maybe, just maybe, we’d keep her and
I’d turn her into the fastest girl Wisconsin had
ever seen.
The hardest thing about letting Teenasia go is the not
knowing. I’ve never been to her father’s home;
I don’t really know him; I don’t know the
woman he lives with or the other children in the household.
And yet I know Teenasia intimately. I know she loves to
wash her doll’s hair in the tub, but screams when
she needs to get her own hair washed. I know she gobbles
up mashed potatoes, but doesn’t have much use for
lettuce. That it’s best to let her brush her teeth
by herself for a couple minutes before coming in to “check”
them.
There is no way to deal with this not knowing than to
simply live with it. I have read and learned too much
about why children end up in foster care to naively believe
everything will be perfect in her father’s home.
Yet, I believe enough in Teenasia’s social worker
and her guardian ad litem to accept that they would not
have recommended placement with her father if it weren’t
in Teenasia’s best interest.
So I enter Lent with the understanding that from where
I stand, I cannot see the whole picture. That Teenasia’s
year with us is a small slice of who she is, and who she
will someday become. I enter Lent believing that God’s
plans for Teenasia are bigger than Bill and me and our
boys. Good Friday always comes before Easter Sunday. And
what the disciples saw as the end turned out to be just
the beginning.
(Scobey-Polacheck and her husband, Bill have two sons,
Jacob and Liam, and a foster daughter, Teenasia. They
belong to SS. Peter and Paul Parish, Milwaukee and St.
Monica Parish, Whitefish Bay.) |
