Author Archives: Amy Jane

My Experience Providing Foster Care
(part 2)

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Looking at it, I realize that I’m not really the most-useful person to know about. I expect very few people will do what I did, and I’m still unfamiliar enough with privacy issues to feel comfortable telling the *really interesting* bits of my experience. (I’m sure the kids would recognize themselves, no matter what names I used).

But it’s a story anyway, and I’m a storyteller. So I just pray it will be useful to somebody.

~ ~ ~

For the record, we stopped fostering just before Christmas 2003. I had an 11-month-old, and was 3-months pregnant with my second daughter. Jay and I decided that, considering the type of children we were working with, we should wait until our girls were older than the fosters we would take in.

We considered it a safety issue. We also felt that we had a responsibility to begin again when it would no longer be a risk to our own children.

Naturally, part 2 begins where part 1 left off.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When my parents entered the new program, they had to take additional classes (beyond the introductory course required of all foster parents). The new system also required more annual hours of continuing education than general foster care.

As another adult living in the household– I was 18 or 19, and attending college by now– I can’t remember if I also was required to attend a certain number of classes, or just invited.

I remember the information from those classes feeling a little like science fiction– theoretically possible, given the context, but utterly outside my sphere of experience.

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Whew! (Storytelling Performance)

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I did it!

Tonight I told my first major story set in about two years (Glimmers in the Darkness from this page). I recorded it too, so now I’ll actually be able to hear what it is I sound like.

This has to be good, no matter what I sound like, because I have to hear what’s wrong in order to change it, right?

I was pleased with how well I did. I’m always amazed/relieved I how well I can do once the “crunch” is on.

~ ~ ~

So now I’m about 50% psyc’ed, confidence built-up, to pursue this project further, and 50% ready to drop it like the hard work it is and do different work for a while.

Two different people tonight said variants on both, “I could never do that– I’m too shy,” and “That’s a *lot* of memorizing!” (It was roughly a half-hour set.)

I understand both statements, but have found that the stories themselves are the answer to both challenges.

When I find the “right” story something in it– a line, an image, a posture, grabs my imagination, and I want to spend more time with it.

Spending more time with the story provides the familiarity to share it (actual memorization and recitation is not even a recommended method of storytelling, usually), and the story itself is the thing that puts and keeps you in front of your audience.

Because if you have a good story you know instinctively that it *has* to be shared.

Even children understand this. Nothing has happened unless Mom or Dad has seen or knows about it too.

“Look at this Mama!” my girls say over and over again.

It’s not enough to experience it alone. Someone— best if it’s someone important— has to share it.

It’s saying that something important to me is also important to someone else, and this affirms that I fit into something larger than myself.

That a story that moved me equally affects someone else– this shows me something we have in common.

And while I often talk about Storytelling in the grand terms of cross-cultural unity, and the variety of things it teaches (because I’m trying to justify what other people may marginalize), I also just love the stories.

I love them because I need stories. And, frankly, if no one ever listened, I’d still need them.

So even when I step back for a season, this telling thing doesn’t just go away. And I find that reassuring, somehow.

Book Work

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Here are some pictures of this week’s work. (If you want to see pictures of actual people, those are here)

jan-books-1.jpg jan-books-2.jpg jan-books-3.jpg

That last case with the empty shelf is from the shuffling the girls and I did. I haven’t had an empty space on my own shelves for a long time. If hadn’t already decided not to buy more this year, that might be way too tempting to look at every morning.

Resolution Time

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(Bottom revised and a clarifying comment from me.)

Based on these numbers, I estimate that I handled over 500 beautiful books yesterday.

I stripped my shelves in high optimism– Yes! We’re *past* the book-pulling stage. Really we are. — and ordered everything according to a new system. (I have been craving this for months.)

Currently I have more unread books in my house than I think I can read in a year. The amount of money I spent on books in the last 13 months is so high I’m not telling you how much.

They were all good books, most of them used (and, so, serendipitously collected), and I bought them as fast as I found them. Which is faster than I can read them, and the whole reason I bought them was to read them.

So now I have determined (God help me) to take a year off of buying. This in order to focus on what God has already provided for me in this fruitful year. My New Year Resolution/Experiment grew out of this.

I want to see if I can go a whole year without buying anything for me. (Yes, I still plan to eat.) Instead, my fun/ freedom/refreshment stuff must all come out of what I already own.

This includes those purchases that I can blame on other catigories (e.g., children’s books, business) that I know are because I am thinking of them at the moment– not because they are true needs of now.

~ ~ ~

Books is just the easiest example of this goal. I also mean it to apply to projects.

I am too easily attracted to new things, and while eating up the learning curve feeds one of my appetites, that passion also pulls my heart and mind away from digging deeper into what I’ve already decided has value.

Under this plan I won’t be taking any new classes this year, and won’t be visiting any craft or book stores (unless it does somehow prove to be a true need? Then we’ll have to work out a different system of checks and balances).

~ ~ ~

There are two big elements of this 2008 project:

  1. Learning creativity and contentment
  2. Re-training myself to simply not look

These two elements working together have reflexively made me more home-focused (I’ve noticed a mind-shift in just the last 24-hours– check with me again in a week), because I am making myself aware of and planning with what’s here and how to use it.

And if I don’t feed my imagination with all the things I can want (#2), it makes #1 easier.

It also frees up my imagination to focus on much more worthy topics. Like how I’m going to show my children that home is a fun place to be. That leaving doesn’t have to automatically = more-fun.

My Experience Providing Foster Care
(part 1)

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As promised, here is the first part of my story.

Like most things in my life that have stuck, this all began with little that I would call “effort” on my part.

My sibs and I were all teenagers (my older sister was in college already, I believe) when my parents decided to become foster parents.

I don’t remember them telling us kids before the process was almost complete (my mom assures me she did, and that we were all in agreement), so there wasn’t much time between becoming aware, and the arrival of our first fosters.

That would be foster*s* plural.

There was a set of three sisters, and my parents agreed to take all three so they wouldn’t be split up. It was a short-term placement (the caseworker promised), and we all agreed that we could do anything for a weekend.

They left not a whole lot longer after they should have, but their caseworker soon called again, asking if we could do a longer (months-long) short-term.

I’ve never asked, but it seems to me that “short-term” means anything with even a theoretical end-date. Ish. If the kid(s) hang around longer than expected and everybody stays cool with that, they become long-term.

So with 2 1/2-days of experience, we became a family of 8.

I was 17.

My parents sold our old Bronco (I never realized till then how attached I was to it) and bought a Suburban. Rooms were rearranged, and I began sharing with a 6-year-old. I also got my advanced degree in child care.

You see, I had got my undergraduate in the previous four years of Calvins and Margrets (who were also *great* kids that I enjoyed, and am thankful I was in their lives), and now I was apprenticed to two experienced professionals.

These kids were good. I’d done dozens of bedtimes, but the older two, especially, knew how to drag it out. I’ll probably never know if the questions were genuine or calculated, but either way I couldn’t resist their clambering for my wisdom.

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Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow!

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Happy New Year!

And I just *had* to share my delight.

In October I attended a writer’s workshop where I recieved back my novel’s first-chapter that had be reviewed and commented on by one of the editors present. For almost three months now I’ve thought my folder from there– holding both the marked-up manuscript and my skip-the-slush-pile cards– had been thrown away.

But I found it this morning.

I’ve been re-organizing my bookshelves (what do you do for a thrill?) and found it buried on a bottom shelf.

All I could say was, “Bless God! Bless God! Bless God!”

I brought out the cards and plopped them in front of Jay. Natasha asked what they were and I said Jay would tell her. He read them, only half paying attention, and two beats later the light went on and he was excited too. (“I’m so happy for you!”)

He had wondered if he was the one who had thrown it away during a house blitz.

Advice for Organizing your Time/Life with Littles

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Written here from the perspective of a homeschooling mom of many with a good memory of the early years of parenting.

Her emphasis is on training early. I appreciated her focused approach, gently and realistically sticking with the basics of loving and modeling.

All that is important to us– truly important to us– will be shown in what we do, and this is wise to remember as we “just live our lives” for the audience of our children.

Marriage Quotes

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Love is no assignment for cowards.

Ovid

*Being married is like having somebody permanently in your corner.
It feels limitless, not limited.*

Gloria Steinem, upon marrying for the first time at age 66

There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.

Ronald Reagan

To keep your marriage brimming,
with love in the wedding cup,
whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
whenever you’re right, shut up.

Ogden Nash

*Find the good — and praise it.*

Alex Haley

Let the wife make her husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.

Martin Luther

Spoil your spouse…..not your children.

Unknown

You don’t marry one person; you marry three:
the person you think they are,
the person they are,
and the person they are going to become
as a result of being married to you.

Richard Needham

*Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.*

Rose Franken

Married love is like a garden—there’s no shame in saying it takes work to maintain; that’s what distinguishes it from the wilderness.

My own (as far as I remember.)

*A good marriage is a contest of generosity.*

Diane Sawyer

Being in a long marriage is a little bit like that nice cup of coffee every morning – I might have it every day, but I still enjoy it.

Stephen Gaines, documentary filmmaker

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?

Mary Oliver

*My Favorites* :)

Because it Made Me Laugh

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And I more-than-half believe it’s true.



I haven’t touched my novel since the end of November (got 10, 908 new words, btw, in case anyone wondered), as I’ve been preparing for a storytelling presentation in the creative free-time I’ve carved out.

January 5th I’ll be giving my first story “concert” in, I think two years. It’s half an hour, so I don’t honestly know if that’ll count as a concert, but it is at least a collection: four tales set in a framing story (Glimmers in the Darkness, from this new page I just put together).

Everything I’ve done in-between has generally been a single story here or there.

Do check out the new page and tell me what you think. I was very excited to see how many stories I have.

Several of these you may recognize from Tuesday Tales (I didn’t link all that I could). What do you think of the one-liner explanations? Do they “give away” too much or over-simplify in a distracting way? Do they make you more interested in the story?

~

And just because we all know this blog isn’t eclectic enough, I’m planning a little two- or three- post series on my experience living in, then parenting in, a fostering family.

In the meantime, if you want a more experienced voice, I’d like to point you toward Mommy Monsters Inc., the blog of a foster-adopting mom.

I especially appreciate her latest post, Adoptive Family Planning: A Wise Choice. Very thorough and thoughtfully written.

Blessings on your day!