Vacation

My husband and I have taken six of our seven children on vacation, in a car, 1350 (give or take) miles.  We have spent the last few days with family and friends and then we are off to California where we have planned the best surprise ever.

They know we are going to Sea World, they don't know we have City Passes to use up.

Most of our children have never even been on vacation, forget doing the rest of the stuff.

I Can Not Wait!

RFKC

Amidst shouts and wild cheers coming from rambunctious adults, who are wildly waving signs with names and their meanings in the air, sixty-four abused, neglected and often forgotten children arrive at camp. Some of the children who exit the two luxury buses which showed movies on the way up with happiness and their own joyful noise but others, the ones who are making their first trip to camp, exit slowly. Like war veterans looking ever so carefully for danger, little eyes peer at us with suspicion and doubt that anything good will come of their trip to the forest for Royal Family Kids Camp, Inc. (RFKC).

It is those battered hearts we hold camp for; the ones who need to know that there are adults in the world capable of loving them, capable of allowing them to have fun, who will encourage them to eat their fill and run until their lungs ache with happiness. Those distrusting eyes are the ones we train for and long to reach. The children that say things like; “My parents are in prison but it is okay because my new parents don’t beat me.” Or “I never realized until just now that I love my new foster family.” (From a nine year old girl who had been in five different homes.)

Steve and Valerie Burnette first became involved in Royal Family Kids Camp in 2000, when Valerie's father Walt passed away, because Valerie began attending with her mother in her Dad's place. Steve got involved in 2004 because, as Valerie puts it, "I started bleeding purple. The kids and the camp just kind of get into your blood and we started thinking that we could put a camp like that together in the Tri-Cities too because there was not anything for foster children in the eastern part of Washington. Valerie has been participating in the California camp and running the Washington camp since 2005, a feat that has become a year round job and she says even Christmas shopping seems lead to buying gifts for Everyone's Birthday Party.

RFKC is not a camp like any other camp around since it is manned entirely by volunteers, all who have a heart to serve abused, neglected and or abandoned children. The staff ratio to children is two adults per child. Yes, two per child. When the kids get off the bus they are assigned to a Counselor at the ratio of two kids per counselor; however, it takes a whole lot more people to make the team work. The Camp Directors efficiently orchestrate a musical of chaos and produce beautiful music, all to give a bunch of foster kids a week of normalcy. To give these young people a taste of what other people sometimes take for granted: camp, fun, friends, laughter, unconditional love, multiple chances to succeed, acceptance, a place to belong and community. It is difficult to understand unless these words from previous campers are also shared: “Are you really, really sure no one will come in our cabin tonight?” Or “We get to eat three times today? And a snack? What do we have to do in return?” Or even worse, “No, I don’t want to play dress. Well, maybe I will but only if you promise no one will take any pictures of me.” (She never did play dress up that year or any other year that she went to camp.)

Start up camps are often faced with obstacles when they begin, which is normally funding. For this camp, the challenge the first year, was actually getting children to go; despite the fact that there are anywhere from four hundred to four hundred and fifty children in the foster care system in our area at any given time. Getting kids is no longer the problem since that first year of only thirty four campers; our camp is always full and always has a waiting list. Word of mouth has assured that we will not have any problems getting kids who want to attend camp. As one little boy put it: “I wish I could live at camp!” Getting adults remains a challenge though, as many do not have the means to give up a week unpaid to go to camp and it is even more difficult to recruit men over women. Recruiting counselors and volunteers is a year round job, even falling onto the people who attend the camp as staff. For some of the toughest men in the area camp is the only time they seem to just melt, serving these kids puts their lives back into proper perspective and helps them see their own kids as God does. Just ask any man if it is worth the sacrifice he makes and most of them truly will ask, “What sacrifice?”

One dream that Wayne Tesch, the original founder of RFKC, has is that there be a camp in every corner for every kid to attend; Steve and Valerie are constantly vigilant to this call. 2008 will be the first time Bethel Church host its’ own camp after having gone threw the recruitment process of attending Faith’s camp for two years and attending Director’s training. The Burnette’s would love to see several more camps in the Eastern Washington area and remain committed to this dream, as well as committed to training up leadership to take over the camp should anything ever happen to them so that these kinds of comments aren’t lost forever:

“Camp is the only place I get spoiled.” 11 year old girl

“This is the second best birthday of my life. My best was last year at camp.”

“I’m just glad to have food.” 7 year old girl

“I never thought I’d say this, but Thank you!” 3^rd year ‘tough’ camper

Some kids get to return year after year until they reach the age of 11 and “age out” of our program, some only come to camp once. Our goal is to make the week that they are here one of the very best of their young lives and to give them a tangible proof of God’s love. Something they can hold on to, cling to. Cherish forever and give them hope for their futures. For many of us it is amazing to see the difference a week can make in their lives, one camp volunteer said; “What I was surprised by was not how much they needed us but by how much we needed them back.” The feeling of love and happiness are contagious. Many of the campers go home and talk about camp with everyone they meet from their foster parents, biological families, social workers and therapist to just other kids they know. One social worker sent this note: “This is awesome!!! Giving them memorable memories they will hold close to their heart for rest of their life. Thanks to all of you for caring enough to make a difference!!!”

Better than anything we could say one little boy, when signing in at registration for camp last year, correctly summed it all up like this:

“I’m a part of God’s Royal Family!”

{This is something I wrote for our camp directors to help advertise and promote our camp, what do you think?}

snowing

It has been snowing here again and causing me to just want to bundle up...we have been doing a well. Very well.

The freedom to write still scares me and I can not believe it to be real...like a caged animal who does not leave even though the door has been left open, my words are swirling furiously around in my soul but fear leaving the safety of my head.

What if.

What if.

What if.

The fear haunts me and in my dreams at night, people still show up and advise us to pack the children's bags because better parents have been found. People who could love them more.

The words of strangers are startling to my heart:
"You are so brave to do what you do, bless you."
" What a great thing to do, I don't think I could take in strangers to my home."
"Don't you worry about getting attached to them?"

There are not answers to some questions or comments that people make; but, what is true, what is right, is that it is incredibly easy to love little children. Easy to hold a crying little person close and just love him or her. It does not matter whether or not they will ever love you back or whether or not they will ever even know your name.

Even if it is only just for one day or for a lifetime...a child in need of a safe place to be is a child in need; I do not consider myself and my husband brave, just lucky. Besides we never met a kids that we did not just love to death!

Yes, one does get attached to the children we foster but how much depends on the context of the relationship; like when you are in school and you have a certain student for a while, you love them completely and know you have to send them on. That is what it like for us. We love them completely and then release them into their future.

Is that not what all parents do, really?

Freedom

Awhile back I posted a profile picture of a child in my blog a talked about how much I missed that child..at the time I thought that I broke no major confidentially laws anything since the picture was much less revealing than picture that are posted by State agencies of children in foster care... I also know that I am not the only blogger who blogs about being a foster parent or about adopting kids...goggle it.

Here is a few I found:
Foster Care
The journey to my child
Lauren Christianson
Adoption by Grace
Foster care Log !this one is written by a grown man who was himself a foster child.~~~
Lisa's Website ~~another site by a former foster child, now a grown woman
Janet


Even being involved in Royal Family Kid's Camp has taught me that pictures of children and even their full names are scared things that are to be protected with the fierceness of a lioness protecting her cubs. (The above picture is an example of a picture we CAN publish on our RFKC website of a child from camp, one that protects the child's identity but still shows a child being a child at camp. It shows more of the face than the picture I posted which showed only the underside of a chin.) When we are at camp we create memory books for our campers and we go to great lengths to ensure that no campers receives pictures of others campers but yet still appears to have been at camp with lots of other kids. That means there are profile shots and scrap booking things going on with the pictures to make sure you can not really tell who a person is UNLESS you are completely intimate with them.

Back to the picture thing, it caused me to loose the ability to write and I almost lost my blog in full because someone complained about the picture to my agency. (That is what I have meant by the blog police.) Anyway, threw process of elimination, I pretty much know who it was and now, because my adoptions are done, I am now free to write again. YEAH!!!!

That means I can blog again without constant fear of my words being used against me, even though I have not ever truly done anything wrong. Pettiness is a bitter root and I have been working hard at not being petty about this whole situation but I have been oh so bitter.

Bitter that some of my best writing and stories have been left unshared. Bitter that I have lost touch with my online friends and lost an outlet that I have cherished over the last four years of my life; a public blog. Bitter that another person's actions can in fact impact my freedom of speech and freedom of expression. I have always tried very hard to honor and respect any family member that I write about because I want to be able to look them in the eye and never, ever be ashamed of myself. Whenever I share things in my blog I am very sensitive about the nature of my life, the nature of my illness and the overall public life I live in a VERY small town. It is, in fact the main reason I have more than one site tracking system on my blog...so that I can tell who is looking. So that I can be wary of people who may be out there, lurking, seeking what they may use against me.


I digress, a little.

So I will write again with more regularity and less fearfulness. I will still not write about the children that are not mine is a way that would ever reveal their true gender, age or name but I can hardly hide the fact that I am a parent or even that I am a foster/ adoptive parent. I was told that for a short while I should not even mention the fact that I am a parent...all because I mentioned that I loved and missed a child that had been in my care and posted a picture of a baby chin and tummy. I use to talk often of Alexis, my teenage daughter who is not a foster child, but had to stop even that because my agency was not sure if how I parented her would be used against me. An example? One day she missed the school bus and I joked that I was going to make her walk, seems that state workers may not find that funny. Or blog police. First of all she has chosen to walk from school on her own several times before and second of all I was joking. I DID pick her up from school that day and every other day she chooses to miss the bus. (Do not bother looking for the entry because they told me to delete it.)


Over the last few days though I have been able to share my joy and show pictures of my life, without putting my children at risk or revealing confidential information that I would not ever share in such a public forum. I looked in the mirror today and Stupid was not on my forehead.

I love my kids, the ones we have adopted, the ones we will not adopt and the ones we are keeping until they can be reunited with their families of origin. It is those children I end up missing the most and grieving for the most...the ones that are returned home. When you consider that my husband and I are long term, adoptive foster parents that means we get the "lost cause" cases that the state feels there is little hope for. The kids who have been asked to have new placements found for...we adopted the first three "placements" we got and they had been in multiple homes in a short time before getting to us.

Here is the God part of the story: He had His hand in it all and led us to the right agency for He had the right children for us. When we were READY neither He or they were READY so he had to sabotage it the only it could happen.

Life is good, if you let it be.

All children deserve to be cherished and loved without having to earn the love. Thankfully we have had our greatest dream fulfilled despite all the things the enemy threw at us.

A happy New year to you...this one trumped watching Hanana Montana all night only because this year I knew that there would not be a kindly social worker showing up and moving the kids to a new home. And they knew it too so they were completely relaxed and fully at home.

xxoo