The name of the dog was Witney
Fostering as a way of dancing through ultimate reality.
Dispatches
God exists, and I'm going to tell you how I know that he exists.
There's one primary way I know – a big, empty-tomb-can't-make-this-up objective way by which I know that there's a God. But there are other ways, too. Smaller, more personal ways. These smaller ways amount to an epistemology of relationship, a knowing by being known.
Let's acknowledge the element of terror here. Being known, like, really, intimately known, by the Creator of the universe, no less, is unnerving. I am fully seen. No secrets hidden. All my desires are known. Full exposure.
Yikes.
Still, there are moments from my life that only make sense if there's a Father who loves me and knows me and wants me to know that he sees me and loves me.
One such moment concerns a sibling set of sisters we fostered shortly after James was placed with us. I have written about this season in snippets here and there, but nothing very detailed. There is still too much to fully tell, so I will sum up this story by way of arriving at that particular moment where God peeked his head out behind the curtain and gave us a wink.
Let me begin by saying that we had no idea what we were doing with our hands when we said, "Yes!" to fostering two more kids only mere months after saying "Yes!" to James. But as is often the case when you say "Yes!" to God's calling in your life, you end up in situations you never knew were possible to be in. So it was in May of 2016 when James's guardian ad litem (court-appointed attorney) asked us to consider accepting two new placements in these sisters, 4- and 3-years-old, respectively. The outcome of their case was still up in the air, and it hinged on their mother's ability to land a stable job and housing within the next few months. So it was not entirely out of the question that this could be a long-term, if not permanent, placement.
We were told we had until mid June to make a decision, as their current placement was becoming unstable. A week later, his attorney told us that the girls' current placement was becoming increasingly untenable, and that they needed a home by mid June. The attorney needed a decision by the next day.
We said yes.
After a couple of playdates / over-night try-outs, Adalyn and Witney officially arrived on June 16, 2016. (These are not their real names. Privacy, yo.) It was our first insta family. Sides Household Of Five 1.0. That version of our family lasted four intense, wonderful, heartbreaking months that hummed with meaning.
The whole thing was pure adrenaline. Lindsey quit her job in order to be a full-time mother for these three kids in desperate need of consistency and stability, which was in short supply, given that all three kids had weekly visits with bio parents, and the girls even had a weekly visit with a grandmother-type figure whom they had lived with previously. (Lindsey was practically an Uber driver before Uber was a thing.) Lindsey and I (finally) started foster certification training and began to learn more about how to parent kids from hard places. We befriended the girls' bio mom and tried to support her the best we could – updating her on the girls, going to court hearings. While all this was happening, the termination case against James's bio parents was kicking into gear, which was just a tiny bit stressful. And in our spare time, we parented three kids.
Oh, but we loved Adalyn and Witney as our own. And they loved us. And the kids loved each other. We definitely had moments (or days) of craziness, but there was a strong connection and warm affection from the beginning. We were like a real family. We took Adalyn and Witney everywhere we have taken Rain and Lily – to Nana's swimming pool on Sunday afternoons, to my folks' place for the Fourth of July where they gained three cousins, to a wedding on Lindsey's side of the family in New Mexico.
Did I say summary? I'm trying. We lived an entire lifetime that summer. I can still see all three kids laid out like sardines on the monkey swing in our backyard swinging lazily in summer morning light. Those days were wild and full of a joy we had not known before.
I can still feel a little triggered by the chaos and grief that engulfed our home when Adalyn and Witney learned that they were going back to live with their mom. It was in August. Their mom was on the verge of completing her treatment plan. Lindsey and I were at the court hearing when it became clear that the girls would, sometime in the fall, not be with us anymore. We traded emotional breakdowns that week. By September, the stress, confusion, and assortment of who knows how many other emotions pushed me to seeking out a therapist. Nothing felt good, and the future was an uncertain, painful proposition.
The shape of the foster family is cruciform. We were not prepared to be stretched like this. Suffering, loss, uncertainty – splinters all from that hard wood.
On October 21, 2016, Adalyn and Witney went back full-time with their mom. This was not goodbye, though. Our friendship with their mom was deepening, and she said she valued our support and presence in her life and in the girls' lives. Which was good, because we wanted to stay involved. We would take the girls to church with us a couple times a month, and their mom came to our small group once or twice. We were invited to birthday parties and generally felt like aunt-and-uncle types.
This arrangement lasted for about two years. We were thankful for having a role in the girls' life; we cherished those Sundays when the band, as it were, got back together. It was also a trying time as we navigated our relationship with their mom and her boyfriend / fiance. There's a lot that could be said here. And I'm not sure what to say. The Larimer County case managers encouraged us to stay involved, and they encouraged the girls' mom to stay connected with us, too, as it would be good for her and for her girls. And it was. But it was also a strange, tense dance. What Lindsey and I saw of their home life was often worrying and difficult. We regularly found ourselves caught up in drama and dysfunction – which is not an indictment on their mom. She grew up in and out of foster homes, never knowing what it was like to be loved with a forever kind of love. Abusive and manipulative relationships litter her past. She was trying hard to be a good mom to her girls and new-born son. She was doing the best she could. The dynamics and issues that burdened Lindsey and I simply felt normal to her – this was all she had known, why was it a problem?
Our relationship with her eventually broke in the summer of 2018. Some of those aforementioned dynamics were becoming increasingly disconcerting. We tried to intervene in a particularly grim situation, and she felt betrayed. She told us, in no uncertain terms, that we were done and that we weren't to have contact with her or the girls anymore. In some ways I don't blame her. Maybe we shouldn't have intervened in the way we did. Either way, the damage was done and they were gone.
Except they weren't.
The girls' mom has an aunt and uncle who live literally around the corner from our house. From our front yard, I could hit a golf ball into their back yard. How does that happen? Who writes that wrinkle into the story?
So, with us out of the picture, Adalyn and Witney's mom had fewer childcare options, especially on Sundays, and she often had to work on Sundays. We knew that she'd be dropping the girls off at her aunt and uncle's. We knew there was a distinct possibility that we'd see them. And sure enough, every now and then, we'd see their car drive by. Or, worse, usually in the afternoons, we'd see Adalyn and Witney on a walk with their aunt or grandma. A couple of times, Lindsey and James would run out the door to say hi to them as they walked by on the other side of the street. They said that they couldn't talk to us, and their grandma prodded them on like cattle. Below is an entry from my journal, dated June 18, 2019 – about a year after our falling out with their mom. Almost exactly three years to the date of their placement (Rain and Lily had been with us for about nine months at this point).
We saw them walk by the house, with their grandma urging them on. They stopped and looked at us as we waved from the kitchen table. Lindsey started crying soon after they moved on. Then James started sobbing and saying how much he missed them. We both held him and all of us were crying. Helpless. Heartbroken. They were right there. We saw them. They saw us. It almost didn't seem real.
A month passes. And this is it. This is the moment I know God exists. You should probably sit down. If you're sitting down, you should probably stand up.
It was our date night with Lily. July 2, 2019. We took all three of our kids to McDonald's for dinner where we met Lindsey's mom. After we ate, she was to take James and Rain back home to put them to bed while we went and on our date with Lily. The first stop on our date was a quick errand just across the parking lot from the McDonald's. The errand took all of 15 minutes. We walked back to our van. As I was putting the van in reverse, we saw James and Rain getting into Nana's car. We rolled down our windows to say goodbye again, like, oh, hey, isn't funny that we are running into each other again.
But there was something different. Their faces were bright with some strange energy, as if they had seen a vision, as if something had happened. They told us that they had seen and talked to Witney in the lobby of the McDonald's. She was there with her mom's uncle – the one who lives around the block from us – and as James, Rain and Nana were leaving, Witney and her uncle were coming in. I remember asking James if they talked to her, and he said yes. And they hugged each other. And I think I remember thinking that we must have missed her by only a matter of minutes.
Nana took the two older kids home, and Lindsey and I took Lily to the park for our date, a bit dazed. On the drive to the park, Lindsey remarked that we'll likely keep seeing them at a distance all summer. The thought was at once hopeful and despairing.
We got to the park. Lily wanted to go pet the dogs in the dog run area. We went in and approached a woman to ask if we could pet her dog. She was happy to oblige and called for her dog to come to her.
The name of the dog was Witney.
We asked her to confirm that that was the dog's name – we literally couldn't believe what our ears had heard – and the woman said, yes, Witney. Lindsey and I looked at each other. The air felt charged with a kind of presence. We were aware of a significance, an electricity that comes from being close to some great mystery. We looked at each other and shook our heads. This was impossible. This defies reality, logic, statistical variance.
In that moment we knew that God saw us. In that moment, we did not know if we'd ever be involved in these girls' lives again, but we knew that something was going on, and we needed to be paying attention.
Lily pet Witney for a couple minutes. Then the dog and her owner moved off to another part of the run. We watched them from a distance for a minute or two more then turned and walked to the playground.
Foster parents live on the frontier of vulnerability. In these wilds they walk the borders with the marginalized and hurting and lonely and the barely-hanging-on. When foster parents say "Yes!" to a placement, they're saying yes to joy and relationship and the heart of God. They're also saying yes to chaos and near-certain heartbreak and close encounters with generations' worth of dysfunction, not to mention the bureaucratic dysfunction inherent in the local outposts. If fostering is anything, it is everything.
Kathleen Norris defines frontier "as a place where you build on the past for the future."
There may not be a more apt description of fostering. As a foster parent, you are trying to build healing and safety and healthy skills and attachment and whatever else you can – whether it's for a weekend or a four months or a year – onto the trauma of the past with the hope that things might be different for this child in the future.
I often wonder what Adalyn and Witney will remember of their time with us. Will it change the trajectory of their lives? Will the love and prayer planted like seeds in their heart take bloom? What I'm saying is that I hope there's something – a meal, a book we read, a soft word, a hug – that burns inside them, a memory of smoldering hope, that reminds them that things can be different. That cycles can be broken.
It feels strange writing about Adalyn and Witney now, now that we have our forever girls. I am surprised by how much Lindsey and I still miss them. The grief spills over even though God has given us Rain and Lily. I think a lot of foster parents find themselves in this kind of place. But if I've learned anything over the last five years, it's that the joy of a gift does not eliminate the reality of a loss. And that marking and remembering the past brings a deeper realization of what you have in the present. This email, I suppose, is a kind of memorial. This is what we had once. This is where we are now. Time dances in circles, bringing past and present together. Bless the Lord, O my soul.
About a year after the park incident, it happened. We were in our front yard, doing whatever we were doing during the early phases of the coronavirus lockdown days. We look up to see Adalyn and Witney and their mom walking down the street. The girls wave and run over to us. Their mom follows, too. We laugh and cry and I give their mom a hug. Our kids – all of our kids – are there together. They play for a while. I don't know how long. We tell them that they're growing up too fast. In the whirlwind of it all I find Lindsey and we just hold each other for a minute. There are lots of tears on the frontier. Sometimes it feels as if that's the only source of precipitation.
Over the next year we see them every now and then. Always in passing, usually with their mom saying we should have a play date, but nothing ever comes from it. This Father's Day, I was coming back into the house from playing outside with James, and as I opened the front door, I saw a car I didn't recognize start up our street. I didn't pay much attention. I should have. A voice called out, "Hi, Trevor!" I turned toward the car now driving past our house and it was Adalyn and Witney. They were with their step dad. I saw two sets of hands waving at me. I couldn't see their faces. It was a blur. I shouted a frantic hello and waved and watched them disappear down the street.
There are some who believe that our existence, this world, is just a simulation. That we are "living" in the simulation of some grand, universal computer program. That's what explains coincidences and the interconnectedness we experience with others. It's one big Sims. Neo was on to something.
This makes sense on some level. We are living in the age of the algorithm. We live mediated lives on social media and Spotify and Netflix where we are accustomed to these various Deep Thoughts telling us who we should follow, who we should be friends with, what music we'd like, what TV show we should watch next. The ubiquity of artificial intelligence leads to a pseudo-living where the thought of life itself being programmed feels rather natural.
The frightening thing is that these algorithms know me. Maybe better than I know myself. But they don't care about me. They don't want what's best for me. They don't delight in me.
It's possible that life is a simulation. But it's not a satisfying answer to life, the universe, dogs named Witney. It's not a world I want to live in. "The algorithm so loved the world" doesn't have the same ring to it. What happened in the dog park that day means nothing if it was programmed. The fears and anxieties that plague this present age are heightened, magnified, and so thoroughly ingrained in us because we've given ourselves over to simulations of real living when all we really want is to dance.
To move in rhythm and unison with a real, living, Maker.
To find our place in a dance that has been in motion since eternity past.
To know that we are known and loved.
Cultural Appreciation Class
"The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are pouring love and joy and adoration into the other, each one serving the other. They are infinitely seeking one another's glory, and so God is infinitely happy. And if it's true that this world has been created by this triune God, then ultimate reality is a dance." – Tim Keller
Rain lives her best life when she's dancing. Rhythm is a dancer, and Rain is a dancer. She has been in a pre-combo, tap-and-ballet class since last fall and has loved everything about it – the clothes, the gear, the hair, the music. Every Monday night when she gets home from practice she has to show us her new moves. She would much rather have a dance party before bed than read Chronicles of Narnia.
Rain's class has been my first exposure to the world of dance. As a Dad Rocker, I'm used to less refined ways of expression. So I was surprised by dance – the athleticism, the grace, the symbolism, the embodiment. On Monday evenings, I would shadow Rain as she showed us what she had worked on in practice. Cat leaps are dope.
The spring performance was over a weekend in May, and we went to the Friday show. Our family took in a 90-minute, in-person dance performance. The entire show was extraordinary, and Rain was flawless.
We got home late that Friday night, but not late enough for me to play "Tiny Dancer"by Elton and "Human" by The Killers as we ate a bedtime snack. Everyone preferred The Killers to Elton John, so my Dad Rock winning streak continues. But after watching a 90-minute dance performance which moved me to tears at least twice, I think I finally have come to understand the question The Killers dared to ask: "Are we human or are we dancers?"
Baptists, as you may know, don't talk about sex because it could lead to dancing. There is something elemental about being embodied creatures that move and worship with our bodies. We are not brains on a stick. David danced naked before the Lord. If you stopped to count how many times in your life you've danced before the Lord, how many fingers would you need? I hope it's more than what I would need. But the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been dancing together in perfect harmony and enjoyment throughout all eternity, and our highest calling in life is to join this dance.
To be human is to be a dancer.
Poet's Corner
Rain's birthday was in early June. She is 7. For the next few months, we have two 7-year-olds in our home. Pray for us. But I wrote this poem for her birthday, and I think it's the best way to end this letter.
"Rain in June"
See how the Rain cat leaps
through the sky in June
like a dancer across the stage,
her dress a colorful bow trailing
behind her.
O dance with her,
dance with her, all you peoples!
She is dancing for the Maker
of heaven and earth.
She is dancing in and through
and from the clouds.
She is dancing for the Shepherd,
the Great Shepherd of June,
leading us to green meadows
and yellow flowers.
It is her birthday,
and we can hear the glad songs
as she comes twirling
through the breathing,
brightening air!