God help me so I can help them

Respite care is going great most of the time.

Both boys are a big challenge, but also there is so much potential in them. I am not very experienced in doing respite care, or caring for very hurt child, but from what I can tell is that these boys need a lot of unconditional  love, consistency, patience, teaching basics, someone to praise them and just be in a family.

Unconditional love, is very powerful words, and it's more then just a words, its our actions. I am learning how to love, and love even more with every day of my life. From my own experience , it's so hard to love when child is not accepting your love, when child is screaming, yelling back at you, and doing things that it's hard to believe it's coming out of  this little body.

Consistency, structure  is very important with adopted children, or just any children with trauma. We are learning to be  more consistent so all of our kids knows what will come next, and that we are always be there for them. Our adopted children did well even from the beginning.  Sometimes, any changes in routines would make them anxious  but we never had meltdowns  or anything like that. With kids that came to us from disruption it' totally different story. The other day I changed linens on bed, and I wasn't  able to put them back on before they got home from school, boys were going "crazy" when they saw their empty beds. We were able to avoid big  meltdown  but the rest of the day their emotions we out of hands. For us, and for our already attached children it's  normal, they know that mommy will put new, clean sheets before they will go to bed, but for boys that never new love of a family, and what family is was a huge deal.


Boys came to us with a lot of baggage. They never been in a family before, they were taken from their mom at the moment they were born. They never experienced and knew what family life is. These boys have a lot of orphanage behaviors  but they do have tender hearts. Older boys is always eager to help, and if someone is crying he is always asks and worry if the other person is ok. For being with us for only 5 weeks they already made a huge progress. We will need to teach them how to eat, act, walk, touch, talk, and just be a kid. Sometimes I wonder if they were kept in a "cage", I know it does sounds very harsh, but kids don't even know basics. It's harder for us to help this boys do to a language barrier but we are trying to do our best. We do not speak Bulgarian, and boys know only basic English. We are trying our best to help them to heal, grow and become best they could be. I have no idea how long they will stay with us, which direction everything will go, but I know that as long as they with us we have to do everything we can to help them, they are our children now.

Probably 10 minutes a day total, I am thinking I cannot do this, this is not what I choose to do when we heard your voice God, please tell me that I don't have to do this, and the rest 1430 minutes, I can see changes just hurt little kids who needs me, who need us, I feel that this is exactly where I want to be, this is exactly what makes me a woman of God, to care for fatherless, and help these little boys!

Please pray that God will give us strength, wisdom, and He guide us in every parenting decision we make in our every day life. Please pray that we will teach boys something, and it will help them in their future! Pray for boys so they heal and they will not be sad, scared, hurt children, and they will grow in to happy kids.