The luck of the Irish

A friend recently told me that the luck of the Irish is "Stepping in dog doo, but you weren't wearing your good shoes." I guess that is a pretty good descriptor of my life. Sure, I had my share of bad experiences, but I had some really good fortune too. This post is dedicated to those lucky breaks I experienced in care.

My grandmother died when I was six and this was tragic. I miss her to this very day. The thing is, I had her for my formative years. I have dozens of memories of her, all of which are good. I am not sure if this would still be true, had she lived longer. We lived in poverty, partially due to my grandfather's alcoholism, partially due to my mom's disability and partially due to the fact that my grandmother weighed 400+ pounds and could not work. It is conceivable that as I grew older, I would have come to resent my grandmother for enabling my grandfather's addiction and not taking care of herself better. She was taken from me before I could take her for granted or judge her.

I entered the foster care system because no one in my birth family was willing or able to take care of me. I am now one of the only college graduates in the family and one of the only members of the family to make it to my twenties without becoming a parent. If I had been raised in my birth family, who's to say this would have happened?

As mentioed before, I was in a couple of foster homes that probably should never have been licensed. The thing is, in those placements, I made some really good friends who had really good families who let me hang out at their houses all the time. I spent less time with the foster families as a result and was less scarred by the experience than I might have been otherwise. In one of these situations, my friend's family even went so far as to contact the Department of Human Services to inquire about getting licensed as foster parents. Their hearts were huge, but their house was too small, so they were told it was not an option. I never knew they had done this until YEARS later, when their son mentioned it in passing. When I asked my friend about it, she seemed a bit annoyed that he told me. Their parents were not doing it for glory, money, my appreciation or anything like that. They simply wanted to help out a kid in a bad situation. As I look back at it, after they were turned down for their foster care license, they doubled their efforts to make sure I was safe. I was invited to more sleepovers, church events and family gatherings than before. That friend was the Matron of Honor in my wedding and I still value her whole family as a key part of my support network.

I left one perfectly good foster home for five years before I moved back in with them. I lost all of that time to bond with my foster family. I will never get that time back, but I learned to appreciate them more. My foster parents are not perfect, but their intentions are good and they want me to be happy and healthy. I can appreciate this about them now, but had I never lived in bad placements, I might take them for granted. As it is, I am thankfully every time I interact with them that I have a family.

I try not to get too caught up in the bad things that I have experienced because most of the time it gets balanced out by good things. It is easy for me to see this in hindsite, but I continue to work on it in the present. I have a friend who is always telling me that she has to "turn things over to God". I think that is what I need to do as well. I do not have the all encompassing knowledge of the future to handle it all on my own and it is always good to have a second set of eyes on things anyhow.