Post written in 2018 but not published until now.

I had a dream last night…

[and there goes all readers but my mom]

…where two of our foster children came back to us. Our little boys brought a baby brother this time and—in that weird way dreams go—they required a lot of care, as in, all of them were babies with really bad diapers. I was weary in parenting them but also very happy and I remember exclaiming to Jeremy how wonderful it was that I didn’t have a job yet so I could be free to care for them.

I woke up and felt crushed. Crushed with the fact that carrying children in your heart once means you carry them there always. These little boys are my question marks. I’ve tried to figure out where they are and if they’re being cared for, but every avenue pursued for information has been a dead end. I also felt vulnerable, as though Freud himself was examining my dreams and floated out two very big and confusing life issues all in one relatively brief moment of REM.

My life now doesn’t look the way I intended it to. This is quite a theme for me, and sometimes the pain of it will seemingly come out of nowhere and smack me in the face, just like the dream did from last night. As I get older and meet more people, I’m keenly aware that not everyone knows my story. What is obvious about us Tredways is that we have one child. And good grief, sometimes that really kills me. What’s not so obvious is that we said a thousand yeses prior to our four years in foster care and all throughout our time welcoming children in our home. We said yes to adopting children two years before Livia arrived and we haven’t ever closed that door really. We said yes to biological children from the time Livia was one. We loved our peanut baby who is now in heaven, and I went through multiple surgeries and drugs to conceive, all with a no as the final answer. And then we rolled the dice big time and started caring for other people’s children through foster care. We knew reunification was the goal and always cheered on the parents whose lives we were privileged to join for a time. Meanwhile we said yes; yes to all the phone calls for more placements and yes to the children needing a permanent home.

When you say YES all those times and the answer is always NO, you feel confident that God is speaking.

I care too much about what others think. This is a lifelong struggle of mine. But I don’t mind saying out loud that God closed the door to more children.

And then I dreamed again of our little boys.

Oh, this life. It doesn’t always make sense, right? It doesn’t make sense that you could want something very badly and just not get it. It doesn’t make sense how grief works—both in our situation and in your lives, too—and how you might feel fine one moment and feel whammied the next. It doesn’t make sense that the future doesn’t seem crystal clear and that we might have seasons of feeling goal-less and aimless. As much as we fill up our schedules and find ways to be productive and necessary, at the end of the day, what are we doing with ourselves? Where do we find comfort and rest?

I cling to God’s promises in the Bible. I’m completely aware that many of you may not find hope there, but I do. My faith is weak, my vision is poor, my memory is forgetful, and even my dreams sometimes punch me in the gut, but I have faith in a God who is sovereign and who loves me very much. This world has all kinds of trouble, but He is good and He is faithful from the beginning of time to the end.