Ever stand in the doorway, watching your child sleep peacefully?  You often wonder what they are dreaming, or how safe and sweet they seem.

I have been a mom for seven and 1/2 years.  I started out at 11:00pm with a group of 4 siblings.  They were 8 months, 4, 6, and 8 years.  They came on a frigid night in the deep of winter.  It was a crash course in motherhood with different ages, development, and experiences.  They arrived scared, silent, and starving.  They wore multiple layers of clothing, everything they owned layered underneath their ripped and dirty coats.  The baby, big eyed and silent.  They sat on the couch in their coats, not willing to take them off, devouring bowls of cereal.  The four year old caked in mascara and make-up finally allowed me to bring her a warm wash cloth to wash her face.

My oldest used to open his eyes in the morning, in the years following this night, to caress my cheek when I woke him up for school.

“You’re still here.”  He’d state.  Silent tears leaking from the corner of his eyes.

“Yup.” I would tell him.

He would go on to tell me how I had died in his dream.  Each time more violent and gruesome than the night before.  He would explain in a monotone how our home had been invaded, all the areas our security wasn’t strong enough.  The windows on the ground level made him nervous at bed time.  The curtains upstairs had to be closed at dusk.

At first I was mortified.  I couldn’t get my head around what he had experienced that could breed the level of terror he felt.  At times, meeting his needs for safety were impossible, incredible, and on some level astonishing.

I would find him in his closet, buried in every blanket from our house, under his bed, hidden.  As he grew, his ability to control some of his fear grew, but lead to other behaviors that weren’t safe for him.

I struggled to hold on, to my own sanity, sometimes feeling his fear, anxiety.  I struggled to hold on to the safety of our home, his siblings, and some pieces of “normal” for him.
The more that he shared, information was confirmed, and he really spiraled.

I had to accept some really hard truths.  I loved this little boy with my whole heart.  I wanted to have him healed.  I wanted to give him the experiences that he deserved as a human being.  I wanted him to have peace.

I had to accept that I couldn’t give him healing.  I couldn’t give him peace.  I couldn’t keep him safe.

I was asked if I had prayed, had I really prayed?  I was asked if there wasn’t something more I could do…..I was asked if there was another way.  I was told it was a shame.  I was told it was out of my control.  Finally, he was removed from our home, to a higher level of care.

I was hurt, I was angry, I was ashamed.  I thought God would heal him.  I thought God would provide all the things I needed to give him.   I went through a period of numbness, backing off on my own attachments with my other kids, and my husband.  I became a robot, putting one foot in front of the other.

The one thing they don’t tell you as a foster parent is that they want you to function like a family, but function like a clinician as well.  So you perform all the parenting stuff, but don’t really attach to kids.  Don’t fall in love with them.  No one acknowledged my loss of my son.

There were so many of my beliefs that were challenged.  I believed you worked hard and you could make anything happen.  If you are committed and you put in all your heart, If you prayed, if you believed, if you were creative, if you gave, if you labored, if you hoped, anything could be accomplished.  I was wrong.  I did all of those things to the extreme.  I couldn’t change the situation.  God didn’t change the situation, I begged Him, pled with Him.  I used every service available, I opened my home to every clinician.  We exhausted every resource, in ourselves, in our home, in our community.

The answer was “NO.”  There isn’t always a happy ending.

So after dying in his dreams a thousand times, I wasn’t dead.  His fear had come true all along, I was just gone.