Leaving the Safe Zone

This first part is not the point of this post.

 ------The caseworker stopped by yesterday for a visit.  I just do not know how to handle this new caseworker!  She comes when she says she is coming.  She makes what seems to be common sense decisions.  I keep waiting for the other foot to drop and she just keeps doing her job in a no nonsense fashion.----

The caseworker told me yesterday that the we are going to win this case.  She said that she had an off the record conversation with the attorney for bio mom who said bio mom's case had no chance.  I can't relax until I know the boys are free.  I am slightly more relaxed, but its not over until its over.

The thing I am so sad about is that everyone says she will appeal.  We will have to wait for the entire appeals process to finish until we can adopt.  I don't want to wait!

Maybe its the trauma of the last 16 months, but I get palpitations everytime the phone rings and I see it is DC$.  Seriously! Every. single. time.  I think "what is going to go wrong now?"  I have this crazy fear that my boys will be taken from us.  Someone will decide they don't like us or something and then we will all be devastated. 

As some of you may remember the boys were removed for a stupid reason way back in the beginning. If you are curious look around February 2012 posts.  I did get them back the very next day, but not before some person I never met gave me a lecture for complaining about my caseworker, which I had NEVER done (at least at that point, hahaha!). She was clear, don't upset anyone or else.

As a foster parent I learned quickly that my job was to go through the wringer with the kids.  As a foster parent I was neither safe, nor a savior.  It was my job to leave the safe zone, not to save the day.  There is NO saving the day.  I think foster parents continue on when they have learned the dangers because they realize no child should have to navigate all that pain all by themselves.  So I held my boys hands and went through it with them, that's all.  I tried to protect us all when I could.  I figured if I did it right then they could look up at me knowing that at least they were not alone.   Someone else was hurting with them.

Now that the end of the "danger zone" is in site I want to sprint my children and myself safely the the end of the nightmare.  We will do life together and it will be highs and lows, easy stuff and hard stuff, but it will be our life.  I can leave behind the fear that some big, bad, boogeyman is going to force us apart.  Whatever is ahead I just want to know that we will all get to face it... Together.