Finding Faith

Foster care.

It’s a difficult situation. If you haven’t been there yourself, you have no idea what it’s like to be thrown around from home to home and to feel not wanted. The loneliness and loss of hope that fills your soul is so overwhelming no child should ever bear it. Yet there are more than 438,000 children who do so every single day.

I was in foster care for the first few years of my life. Eight to be exact. The first home I remember was a house with a couple who had children of their own. I didn’t know what to expect but they seemed like nice people and seemed to treat their own children wonderfully. So I thought this was a good thing but boy was I wrong.

I wasn’t allowed to go outside with the other children. Instead, I was locked inside the house while my foster parents would go out and play with their children. I remember being on a couch and moving the blanket that covered the window to peak outside and watch them play. If I got caught looking, which I did several times, I would be in trouble later when they came back in. They would lock me inside the house when they would leave to go to the store.

I remember an emptiness in the pit of my stomach. The growling wouldn’t stop most nights. My foster parents would feed me but I was allowed to eat only what was on my plate which was barely anything and I wasn’t allowed seconds. I remember one evening I wasn’t allowed to get down from the table until I ate all my peas. One of the sons of my foster parents came in with a towel on his shoulder.

“I want to show you something.”

He pulled out a knife. It wasn’t clever but it was one of the big knives from the kitchen.

“We should play a game with this knife. If you don’t eat all you vegetables by the time I get done with dishes then you have to play the game.”

I don’t know what the game was but I didn’t want to find out either. So I ate my peas but the only way I could get them down was by counting them as I put them in my mouth. Counting helped calm me.

Sometimes I would sneak into the pantry at night and find something— anything to satisfy the hunger I had. I would find things like crackers bread or cookies. Food I wouldn’t have to cook. One night I had done my sneaking in the pantry and was in my bed eating some cookies. I heard a noise so I stopped. My eyes wide open and my heart pounding. Someone was coming. I quickly hid the cookies under the quilt on my bed. Someone’s grandmother must have made it. I laid my head down on my cool pillow and pretended like I was asleep. It was the longest two minutes ever but whoever was just in my room was finally gone. I sit up in my bed and go back to eating some cookies. All of a sudden my blankets are off of me and I hear yelling.

“I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS!”

It was my foster dad.

“YOU ARE ALWAYS STEALING FROM ME! YOU ARE LEAVING FIRST THING IN THE MORNING! I’M DONE WITH YOU!

I was so terrified I started to cry. The next day a lady came and took me from that house. In a way I was relieved but I was scared because I didn’t know what was coming next for me. The lady was my case worker. After a while of driving in her car, we made it to my new home. I stand there at the doorstep terrified of the unknown.