Carolyne Aarsen, under the pen name Kathleen Bauer, is the author of Before the Dawn from the Guideposts Books series Home to Heather Creek.
Garth Brooks' song “The Dance” talks about a young lady he loved who left him for someone else. In the song he thinks he could have saved himself pain had he not invested in the relationship. But then, he would not have had that dance.
This song has resonated with me after the loss of our foster child, Justin. Like Charlotte in the Home to Heather Creek series, who was devastated after the death of her daughter, I leaned on my faith and my family to keep going.
We made the decision to become foster parents because we wanted to share what God had blessed us with: a loving, secure family. Our first foster child was Justin, a malnourished one-year-old baby with cerebral palsy (CP). The doctors and nurses who cared for him knew that if he stayed in the hospital, he would simply fade away, give up and die. So social workers placed him in our home.
The first few months were a blur of learning to feed him via stomach tube, counteract the build up of mucus in his lungs and, later on, manage oxygen equipment. We learned how to work with atrophied limbs and muscles, teaching him to use them again.
Justin thrived in our busy home of four children age four and up. He was cuddled, played with, hugged and kissed with abandon. He now had a reason to live, and live he did. Against all odds, he learned to talk, to handle his own toys, to use a spoon and feed himself the pudding he loved.
After four years in our home, we started to see a future for Justin. We were building a new house and incorporated wider hallways for his wheelchair, planned a room with a wall of cupboards for all the equipment he needed.
Before the house was finished, Justin went into the hospital for surgery to his hips, which were pulled askew by his CP. The day before he was supposed to come home we got the devastating phone call that Justin had died in the hospital of a grand mal seizure.
The darkness that fell on our family was profound and long lasting. I remember being thankful we had the house to build to keep me busy and keep me away from our home and reminders of Justin.
I spent a lot of time praying the pain would leave. We stumbled through days, wondering what our purpose was now that Justin was gone. I wondered if I would ever smile again. Grief held our family in a fierce grip for many months but as we negotiated our way through this valley, we slowly realized God’s grip was stronger still. I learned that peace is not the absence of pain; peace is the presence of God. My faith was shaken but God held our family firm. I know for a fact that the pain would have been more profound had we not had the comfort that in life and death, we are not our own but belong to Christ.
There were times when I saw my children crying over Justin that I wondered what our lives would have been like had we not taken Justin in. We could have missed the pain.
But we would not have had those blessed moments of him calling out the kids’ names when they picked him up from the church nursery. Those times when he grabbed us around our necks and hugged us with pure joy.
If we hadn’t taken him in we would have missed the pain, but we would have missed the blessing of our “dance” with him.
