Sometimes, you don’t know how blessed you are until you view
your situation through someone else’s eyes. For kids, we often don’t take a
look at who our parents are until we’re parents ourselves or have grown up
enough to have perspective on our childhoods and the people who raised us.
For me, the revelation that my mother had more to offer the
world than just being my mother started after my twelfth birthday when my
parents began taking in foster children. From babies to teenagers, my parents
eventually had more than 40 foster kids pass through their homes and hearts.
Each one held a special place in our hearts, and each one knew without a doubt
that they were loved and a part of our family for as long as they lived in our
home.
Even as a sometimes sarcastic and unappreciative teenager, I
knew something special was happening in our home. It wasn’t easy to be a foster
sister to kids who sometimes stole from me, ruined my possessions and invaded
my space. But I also knew it wasn’t easy for my parents, either, especially for
my mom who was a stay at home mother.
Not many moms would willingly, lovingly continue raising
kids for half a century, but that’s what my mom did. She started, as do most
moms, with her own children, having two girls and a boy before her 25th
birthday. Eleven years after the youngest of the original trio was born, along
came a fourth child—me. That meant I was kind of like an only child for a
while, given my older siblings left home for jobs and college after high
school.
But my parents decided that their house—and their
hearts—needed more than one child at home, and so they took up the calling to
be foster parents when I was entering the seventh grade. There were babies and
preschoolers, tweens and teens, all of whom were in need of more than a place
to stay and food to eat—they needed love and comfort and the chance to
experience what makes a house a home. All that and more my mom and dad gave
them.
Now that I’m a mother of my own, I marvel at how my mom
related to these battered, bruised kids who had been treated so abominably by
their own moms and dads (and other relatives). Kids who were sexually abused,
physically abused, mentally abused and verbally abused. Kids who had never
eaten a meal with the entire family seated around a table. Kids who had never
had a space of their own in a house. Kids who had never been loved just
because. Kids whose back stories broke your heart.
Then they arrived at my parents’ house, sometimes in the
middle of the night, sometimes without anything but the clothes on their backs,
sometimes with all their meager belongings stuffed into a black trash bag. All
of them scared, upset, lonely, and missing their parents.
And greeting them at the door was Mama Jo, my mother, with
her heart opened wide. She would settle them into our house as if they were a
long-lost son or daughter returning home. Not once did she ever treat any
foster child as if they were less than a full member of our family.
Gently, patiently, and lovingly, my mother taught them the
things we who were raised in loving families learned from infancy, things like
how to treat one another with kindness, how to do chores and how to act at the
dinner table. She advocated for them at school, but expected them to do their
own school work. She gave them hugs but meted out consequences when necessary.
She prayed for them, and showed them how God cared for them as well.
She wasn’t perfect, and she would be the first to admit she
made mistakes. But the kids understood that here was someone who cared, who had
their best interest at heart and who was a safe haven in the storm of their
lives.
Because most of all, she gave them unconditional love and
acceptance. My mom never allowed the child’s current circumstances dictate the
child’s future—she’s a firm believer that people can change, and kids can too.
That attitude, coupled with the amazing successes she and my father achieved
with these foster children, led the local social services department to call my
parents first with the most difficult cases.
My parents even adopted twins who had been foster kids in
our home for several years before their biological mom and dad gave up their
parental rights. The boy-girl twins were 14 years younger than myself, meaning
my parents willingly extended their child-raising years to care for these two
toddlers who by that time called my parents Mom and Dad.
What my mother gave those kids made a lasting difference. Some
of their stories we know the ending to because they still keep in touch decades
later. The troubled 10-year-old boy who bounced back and forth from his mom’s
house to ours as a foster kid now has a successful military career. The abused
teenage girl who had started to make unwise choices became a nurse who asked my
father to walk her down the aisle when she got married. The sexually abused
nine-year-old girl who developed an annoying personality to cope credits my
mother for showing her she was loveable and is now married with children of her
own.
When I reflect on the half century my mother spent raising
kids, the majority of which were not her own by birth, my heart overflows with
love and gratitude at the example of motherhood she gave me and countless
others. To me—and I’m sure to all of those foster children she loved so
much—her model of mothering has been the pattern that I strive to follow. If
more mothers were like Mama Jo, the world would indeed be a better place.
This story originally appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Best Mom Ever!
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What meal would you whip up in a cabin with only some canned
and boxed goods?
In Dangerous Christmas Memories, Luc has to come up
with something tasty from some cans of black beans, mixed veggies, barbeque sauce
packets, and elbow macaroni. Priscilla and Luc find the results quite tasty—even
the bad guy has a second helping!
I decided that to see if the dish was as delicious on paper
as it was in person. I whipped up a double batch of Luc’s Black Bean Pasta Bowl,
and boy was it a hit! Even my kids had second helpings. We added fresh parmesan
cheese and sour cream, a luxury not available to Luc and Priscilla, which made
the dish even tastier.
In the future, I would probably add some ground beef or
turkey, or perhaps kielbasa or other sausage to add a little bit more zing.
However, it’s quite good as a vegetarian dish.
Enjoy!
Luc’s Black Bean Pasta Bowl
Makes: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
2 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-ounce can of mixed veggies, drained
¼ cup barbecue sauce
1 cup water
13 ounces elbow noodles
Mix beans, veggies, water and barbecue sauce in a sauce pan. Cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Cook pasta according to the directions in a separate pot. Drain the noodles, then add the noodles to the bean mixture. Stir and serve hot. Add freshly shredded Parmesan cheese and a dollop of sour cream if you’d like! Hot sauce can also spice things up.