Visiting Lacy

With the help of a case manager, Randy and I started to visit Lacy as often as possible.

At first, the staff there was painfully difficult to deal with. In retrospect, I realize that they were protecting a child that had nobody else to speak for her. I later learned that there has been previous children adopted from this facility, and not long after were dead or returned in much worse condition than when they left. So for the first few weeks, we were considered the enemy.

For a while, many of the toys we brought to Lacy disappeared by our next visit. Often Lacy was ushered away from us after only a few minutes the the justification that she "had a schedule she needed to keep".

Undeterred, Randy and I managed to gain permission from Lacy's social worker to visit her as often as we liked. Our visits increased to every afternoon, every single day of the week. We came after her nap, and would often stay until it was dinner time. Soon, we just stuck around for dinner as well.

Not long after, we began to notice that Lacy's meals were not what we would want for her. One week she was fed canned peas and mashed potatos three times. I was livid. This little girl needed more than canned food.

Randy and I started bringing in Lacy's dinner everyday. We brought her snow crab legs, sushi, stir-fry, chicken, raspberries, oranges, tacos... nothing we brought ever came out a can. Lacy loved it! Especially the snow crab legs! Of course, some of the staff made comments as we rolled in with a pound and a half of snow crab for a two year old, but it made us so happy to see Lacy excited about new things.

Soon we were buying her new clothes, shoes (pink crocs), books and toys. We wanted so badly for Lacy to be part of our family. Within time, the staff became more tolerant of our presence, and we even found a few friends among the group. Randy and I were taking all of the classes required by the county to be foster parents, as well as the classes required by the facility to take Lacy home. It was tedious, frustrating and especially time consuming. At the time, I was working full time and taking 24 units a semester. I often slept only 4 hours a night, and skipped sleeping tuesday nights because I was working at the hospital from 6pm to 6am between my 5-day-a-week-classes. Not only was Randy working weekends and taking the same amount of classes, but we had just been told that his dad had cancer and was given less than a year to live. Our lives were out of control, but for some reason, we continued to visit Lacy.

Along the way, we understood that her birth mother still had rights, although she rarely showed up. In the seven months we were visiting Lacy, her biomom showed up four times and never for more that 15 minutes. Each time bringing a different man with her and introducing him as "daddy". We had no guarantee that Lacy would be coming home with us, or if this was all we would ever know of her. Randy seemed to deal with the uncertainty better than I did. He was, and has always been, the most amazing parent! From the start, Randy bonded with Lacy. I need to keep my distance, often just sitting in the corner and watching Lacy play. I wasn't sure if I could survive watching Lacy go home with bioparents that were less that prepared to deal with her issues. I often joked that this whole thing was going to go one of two ways... Lacy would be the most incredible thing that ever happened to us, or God was giving me a testimony that would speak to people who were totally screwed over by life! I was not particularly interested in the second option.

For the second time (a whole diff blog) in my life, I prayed this prayer... "Lord, if this is not your will, take it away right now. I can't go through this only to see it taken away". I waited for it all to end, you see the first time I prayed this prayer everything suddenly went away.