So my faith is still being tested. It has been a rough few weeks dealing with things. However I do see God working in the process, especially in me. I pray every day for faith, hope and patience. I get on my knees every night and pray. A lot of those prayers end up in tears. It is me begging God for answers. 

Well God gave us some answers. Not all the answers are ones we hoped for, but some were. We had a meeting with our case worker and another meeting with the kids case worker. I will say after our meeting with our case worker, we both didn’t feel good about things. It is hard being told to pick our battles and not bring up our concerns. Jimmy and I felt like things are going to get tougher before they get better. After our call with the kids worker, we realized this is true. The kids won’t move until after school, it isn’t up for discussion. This is really hard for us for so many reasons. 

I struggle with the kids thinking we don’t want them to move in with us. I struggle with them thinking we aren’t their future family. It breaks my heart when I heard one of the kids was “acting out”. Or they are struggling in school, we want to help them. Are we not seeing the issues, because we are just the fun family? Or is it because the kids really love us and our prayers for the bond have been answered. These kids need so much more love and attention. I mean one of them every time they see us, comes running and jumps in our arms. Our Sunday visits are so different from when they spend the weekend with us. When they are with us there is so much more structure and routines, which we think the kids love. They all get the chance to be kids, have fun yet structure. They are okay with the house rules, in fact they helped to come up with some of them.

If it were up to me I would move them sooner than later. The kids’ case worker doesn’t want to cause any trauma with them in the system, which I respect. They haven’t had the trauma that kids can have in the foster system. Which goes back to the system is broken and needs work. I wish I knew how to help the system. Ever since we started this process of becoming licensed, my heart breaks even more kids in the system. I want to be part of the solution. 

After our meetings this week, we are hoping things will improve in the communication area. But I have doubts that it will. We mapped out visits, hoping that they work out, but we aren’t sure. We are waiting for another call. I have been putting my life on hold, while we wait. I haven’t spent the time on my business like I should have been doing. I decided that getting back into blogging, recipe creating and food photography is really good for me. I am even doing an order soon and most likely a wedding in a couple months. (coming out of retirement for this wedding) It has been good getting back into blogging, recipe creating and food photography. I will say I realized that I am quite rusting with cakes. I definitely need to practice more. I laughed at how long it took me to frost a cake for a recipe. It has been probably 6 months or so since I frosted a layer cake. I am excited to get back into cakes. 

The night after we did a call with the case worker, I read this verse in my devotions. I will say it really helped me. God is control and He has plans for us and this process.

A lot of you have asked what you can do. Well, pray for us, pray for the kids and pray for our family. We love these kids and want them to have the best life. We know they have so much potential and are smart.

That’s the Dish from my Kitchen to your Kitchen 💕

Billie-Jo