“I couldn’t do it; it would be too hard to say goodbye.”

I thought it several times. I’ve heard it said to me over and over.

We actually experienced saying goodbye 7.5 months ago. After close to 11 months of loving the boy who made us parents, we were given 3 days notice of him moving. We packed him up – we tried to fit his whole life into that stupid duffel bag, how do you effectively choose what to send with him. You don’t want to send anything, you just want him to stay. – and dropped him off at his new home. I said “we will see you soon okay?” Through sobs as I swooped his hair out of his face one last time. 💔

It IS too hard to say goodbye. I’ve never done anything more hard in my entire life. It’s soul crushing hard. To type this and relive that day makes me sob. But if I would have let the fact that my heart could very well be broken drive my decision to do foster care, I would have missed all of the time we had with him. I’d go back and say yes over and over again. He is so worth it.

It’s national foster care awareness month this month. Did you know, on any given day, there are nearly 443,000 children in foster care. Foster care is freaking hard, but don’t miss the good because of the hard. Those children deserve someone saying, “this is going to be hard, but I’m saying yes anyway.”