{GR8 Vacay} Lighthouse and Food

#thegreatchaseeight Q&A How do you handle lies from the birth parents?

Today we gives some As to your Qs and talk about how we handle lies that the girls are told by their birth parents at visitations. It is definitely a tricky issue, and requires a lot of sensitivity. Take what we’ve learned and build on it. If you have your own advice/stories, comment here on the blog or on the video, you can leave any of your questions there as well. Be sure to like, subscribe and share as well.

Answering your Q’s and A’s

Court Today (Tension & Conflict)

Today the girls have a court date. They don’t have to be there and we don’t have to be there, but their mom and dad sure do. It will be decided today what the girl’s futures will looks like. Being placed back with their parents is NOT on the table. What will be decided today is if the girls will stay in the custody of the state, or if we will go ahead and be granted full custody.

A little background.
We were given emergency custody back in August. I think I should point out that we didn’t call protective services or sue for custody, but in a weird turn of events, mom sort of called the cops on herself. I’m not kidding, maybe you’ll read that story later. Cops came out to respond to her call, saw her behavior and called CPS (children protective services).

Visitations was set up pretty quick. Mom made it to the first two then missed the next five, dad, during this time, had landed himself in jail for something unrelated to all of this. About two to four weeks after we recieved custody a “Family Planning Meeting” was scheduled by CPS.

Basically everyone involved with the girls comes into a room with a bunch of caseworkers and gets to have their say. After that CPS discusses the services that they are requiring mom and dad to complete to have custody returned to them. We were the only ones that showed up other than CPS staff.

This is how things usually go when children are removed from their parents. Children are placed in emergency custody, or foster care. The parents meet with their case workers and complete services and go to visitation etc. If they show progress and meet the requirements they get custody back. This process, if mom and dad work hard, takes at least a year, the average is about two years.

This is where the conflict and tension starts to come in. We firmly believe that the best scenario for a child is to live with their birth parents in a healthy, stable, sober, and nurturing environment. When that can’t happen, as in the case of our nieces, we move to the second best case scenario, which in cases like this is now the best option.

We have told their parents this, we have told the case workers this, it would be an absolutely joyous occasion if mom and dad could get things together, we want this to happen! However, the likelihood of this happening is very slim. So at the same time, we hope that at the end of all of this we get custody. The conflict and tension is between wanting to opposite outcomes simultaneously, but we want them for the same purpose, the flourishing of these two little girls.

Why does this matter for today’s case, we’ve only had them for four months out of a potentially two year process?

Our caseworker checks in with us once a month. She comes over to the house and updates us on what is going on.  Two months ago she told us that she had recieved all the notes, several hundred pages, from the case in Texas.

She said that since this is the third time the girls have been taken away, three times for the girl’s older sisters, and two times for Skylee and Stella (mom had three other children from before she was with my brother in law, they have been permanently placed in Texas). And since mom and dad did not complete the services offered in Texas, or learn from and change from the ones they did complete, that she is just going to recommend that the courts give us full custody. She said that she sees no point in dragging this out and wasting time and resources, that it is best just to place the girls, and we have been willing to take custody from the beginning. It is obvious from her eight years of experience that this is the best option.

This will be decided today! From what we understand judges normally go with CPS’ recommendation, but not always. To be honest we are a little nervous. It would be nice to have a definite answer to what the girls’ futures may look like. It would be nice to know for sure, and begin to plan accordingly. We haven’t talked much about this in public. We didn’t want information to get back to mom and dad before they had gotten to talk to their caseworker first.

There is also the fear of retaliation. We didn’t start or cause this, but mom and dad somehow think we planned it all out. We heard through the grape vine that mom apparently wanted to hire someone to beat my wife up for stealing her kids. This is hearsay, but we reported it anyway.

Tensions and conflicts, conflicts and tensions, but hopefully somewhere in the middle, Joy.

Pray for us today. Pray that wisdom and discernment would prevail. Pray for mom and dad, pray for the judge, pray for the lawyers and caseworkers, and please, everyday pray for our girls.

If you are reading this try to be compassionate and not judgemental. Being judgemental is easy, being compassionate is hard. At the same time hope for justice. Life is about doing the hard things in the middle of great conflict and tension. Do the hard thing.