A Glorious Weekend

So…there are these two little girls. And they are the sweetest two girls I've ever met. Let’s call them girl A and girl B (ages 6 and 4). They are sisters. I had the privilege of spending a weekend with them. Their smiles and laughter were contagious. Neither girl dared brush away one of my attempts at physical touch. Whether it was picking them up to hold, placing them in my lap, grabbing their hand, or playing with their hair. They soaked it in.

Both girls have these ridiculously infectious, large smiles that would melt a heart of stone. You wouldn’t know by the way they loved life that they had been so deeply hurt by the people who were supposed to love them the most. The gory details that girl A chose to share with me, nonchalantly, on the car ride to our house were heartbreaking. I hadn’t asked her to share them and they were difficult to listen to.

We laughed all weekend. We played hide and seek and went to the zoo, and colored, and played at the park, and ate ice cream, and watched a Disney Movie. Emmeline chased them around the house and they chased her and played with her and loved on her. They shared their food with her when she had eaten all of her own and cried for more. They held her hand and kept her from running into the street.

When I picked them up from Sunday school class they asked me where Daddy was, referring to Peyton. At the park they screamed to me, “Mommy! Come look!” and I wouldn’t even think about correcting them because it would have been a blessing and joy to be their Mommy. And all the other kids at the park had Mommies to yell for and it just didn’t seem fair.

Peyton worked most of the weekend so I spent the majority of the time with them. I'll admit that it was difficult to transition from having one child to caring for three. After all, there were three mouths to feed and care for and bathe. (At least Emmeline doesn't have hair, so that left two girls' hair to brush. ;) The fact that they were such amazingly well-behaved girls made it so much easier than it could have been. But when they left on Sunday (to return to their great, long-term foster placement and a family they have grown to love) my heart broke because they had brought so much joy and laughter into our home for the short time they were here. They seemed surprised when I explained to them how much Emmeline, Peyton and I would miss them. They repeated it to me as a question, "you will miss us?" But I think it sunk in when I saw them run up to their foster mom and claim with confidence, "they said they are going to miss us". Those two girls now possess a piece of my heart.

I know that we will have a lot of difficulties and struggles to overcome with the different kids that will come in and out of our home. Many will have behavior issues, learning difficulties, etc from a combination of their past, lack of instruction, and the fact that different kids (even with a great family life) have different struggles. We were just blessed with some absolutely wonderful kids this past weekend who were particularly easy to fall in love with.