Q & A with Guest Writer, Barbara Meyer

Yesterday I had the privilege of introducing Barbara in this space, a 50+ woman writer willing to put herself out there and respond to my request for older women to step into this blog too. Her thoughts about Miriam yesterday came as a beacon of resilience and hope, fitting in this time where women are speaking out and listening to one another with great diligence and admiration. 

Tonight, please enjoy these candid responses from our guest, as though we were all on an evening walk together. I don’t know about you but I always want to know more about the author of an article, an actor in the drama, or the spouse the pastor introduced. I wrote yesterday that you won’t want to miss getting to know Barbara Meyer from this limited medium; here is your chance. Enjoy her wisdom and authenticity; I know I have. 

 

• Can you tell us a little about yourself? Where did you grow up, what’s your family system, etc?

I grew up in Southern California. I am the youngest in a family of four children in my birth family. Unfortunately — long story — my parents were working alcoholics. My father died of cirrhosis of the liver when I was four, leaving my mother alone and unable to cope. She went from, as I understand it, being a social drinker to becoming a helpless alcoholic. We were taken away by the state. At first, we went to live with my mother’s brother and his wife. They had four sons, and my uncle was also an alcoholic. Needless to say, my aunt could not cope with all that so we were placed in foster care. I was about seven. When I was about 10, my mother had remarried and we were brought back to live with her and her husband. Sadly she had remarried a man who was not just an alcoholic, but was also abusive. At 11, we went back into foster care.

The family that I went to was very conservative and patriarchal. After leaving the chaos of my family, this family seemed to me to be everything that was safe, good, and right. They were Christian by identity, but broken. I would love to give you a big picture sometime, but it was here that I was actually systematically taught the “right-wing, patriarchal party line:” women are biologically designed to be homemakers. Boys will be boys; they date one kind of girl but marry another kind. Women SHOULD make less money because it is unfair to employers to pay them a high salary when these women will ultimately leave and get married and have a family. With this grounding, when I became a Christian and went to a Christian college, it was easy for me to link my “role” as a woman with my standing and my righteousness before God.

• What has been one surprising thing about getting older?

Inside my soul–that is, the me that I am inside–I am 22. That is the last time I recognized changing as I grew older. However my body keeps aging. It is the difference between how I feel and what I see in the mirror that is shocking.

• What is something you’ve changed your mind about? What “fallout” or freedoms did this change allow?

The biggest change has been in the realizations about feminism I have come to as I dialogued with my brilliant daughters, Erica and Beth, and as I have searched deeply for what I actually believed (as opposed to what I thought I “should” believe). I saw that I did grow up never saying but actually believing and accepting that “women are second-class citizens in our country and in the church.” The particulars would be better explained in a conversation, however there is fallout. There are people in my family, people that I love, that are very uncomfortable with my ideas about women, roles, justice, political issues, etc. because I no longer just accept a “party line.” We avoid discussions, but disapproval is pretty palpable. The freedom I have gained is that I now feel like I am seeing a whole new world. I look back at what I “understood” about theology, history, society, etc. and I know that I am seeing a different world. My conclusions are different. My view of God is much bigger.

• What’s an important message you’d like to share with younger women? Or what do you wish you had understood sooner?

I wish I had understood that unless men and women walk in equality and as a team, they do not display an accurate image of God.

God created man[kind] in his own image,

in the image of God, he created him;

male and female he created them.

NIV Gen 1:27

I would love younger women to know that insecurity is lethal, that respect is an indispensible ingredient in love, that theology is not a men-only field, and that age is not something that diminishes us. I am hopeful because I believe many, many young women are growing up with these ideas as their foundational truths.

/ / / / /

If you didn’t read it yesterday, being saturated with news or stepping intentionally away from screens, be sure to check out Barbara’s connection with Miriam here. 

 

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Speaking of Brave Women: A Guest Post

We have all watched, read, and maybe even felt within ourselves today courage. It is not only a scary time of reckoning in our country, in our Church, and in our families; it is also a time where immense bravery …

Two Beds and 669 Kids

“Just do the next right thing.” Sign up for the resource (foster) family orientation class. Line up babysitting to attend 10 classes together on parenting. Fingerprints. Submit state paperwork. Submit county paperwork. Follow-upx100. Home inspections. Interviews. More home inspections. Post …

To my daughter // 9

A letter to my daughter for a time:

Today I am reminded of you. I remember the day you were torn from our home. Though you slept through the night, you were awake for much of that one. First for examination and a soothing bottle. As I fed you in front of a sympathetic police officer, I prayed and cried while your foster dad was interrogated by a very misguided lady. Then, after you had been placed back to bed and the officers had reassured us that there would be no removal or further problems, after over an hour later, you had to wake again. This time, because of that lady’s immovable choice. This time, for a final diaper change, a final hug and grasp. You were so disoriented as we placed you in that wonky car seat.

Why am I reminded of you today? Because now my son, my youngest, is the same age as you were then. 10 days shy of 9 months—that’s when your peace was disturbed and our protection was interrupted and we lost you, despite our best efforts. Now we will be with him longer than we had you.

Every day our youngest has been with us has been a gift, just like every day with you. He looks at me for reassurance when someone else holds him, just like you did. He crawls fast towards us, after venturing away for a brave minute, just like you did. That morning, we had a garage sale, and for an hour, I took you with me to a meeting and prayer time. Like him, you went with me just about everywhere. You were distractingly happy and playful, going back and forth from me to new items in the room. His glee at movement, at us, at life, are on par with yours. And today, he will go to bed and not wake up in foreign places, away from everything he’s known. Life will continue as it should. As it should have.

I’m also mindful of you today for another reason. I’m tender towards the young girls in my world who are growing up in a world that elected our next president, adamant that you deserve better. Young girls like your aunt-for-a-time, who is feeling defeat like a true, new agent of change, destined to make a difference for a long time. I know that you’re not my daughter, but you are the closest thing I’ve had to one, and I often think what it would be like to have a daughter in these times. You have always had many women who loved you and sought to meet your needs; I may be the one you’re never told about. But it doesn’t make me less true. Now, I want to tell you in a motherly way some truth: you, as a female, are worthy of respect, leadership, and choice, though many things will suggest otherwise.

I want to tell you, my daughter for only a time, that no matter what our culture, our courts, our elections say about women, we are made in the likeness of God, and resemble the Diety in unique and powerful ways. I want to tell you that no matter what popular vote happens, no matter what Donald Trumps and Brock Turners occur, that you are encumbered and covered with love, intelligence, power, volition and beauty, and these burdens behoove each of us to reject the narratives that would normalize misogyny and downplay our accomplishments. They implore us to insist on our God-given place at the table—every freaking table. It will be a fight and it will not be fair. Today I wish we had a better historic landmark to offer you—you at the age of 3. Our culture’s dirty laundry and resistance to change is out for all the world to see, and slaps the face of all of us women who know that sense of being better-qualified, under-appreciated, under-compensated, harder-working, less-safe, less-credible or defeated—lest we forget.

Dear sweet girl, do not forget this: you, as a woman, are equal in worth and standing in the eyes of God. I pray that the truth of who you are will echo more loudly than our misogynistic culture lies of who you should be. I am dedicated to raising sons who affirm these things about you, and your sisters, your mothers and your daughters. I am raising sons with daughters in mind. It is an upward battle; as young as they are, they are already absorbing the skewed gender slurs that mitigate our value. I am writing you, in this somewhat imaginary scenario, partly because I miss you and I still grieve you, but more so because I truly pray for your empowerment as a woman and especially as a woman of color. And on this day, the day after a set-back in this realm of things, you’re first on my list to cheer onward.

You were my daughter for a time and you are the symbol of our daughters—those girls we love, and make space for, and teach and parent, whether for an hour or 9 months. You are a face to those girls we would give anything for, that they would have the freedom and empowerment to be all they are created and capable of being, without fear and apology. I’m sorry it will take so much grit.

I write to you, from my grief and disappointment today, in hopes that tomorrow your stories, and those of your peers, would have the bearing and validation they deserve. I was blessed to be a part of your story for a time…until the very last minute. I continue to be inspired by you and love you.

Love,
a mother and woman
(proud to be both)

The fastest and slowest year.

The destination has become cloudy and the way there so long.

It’s been over 3 years that we have been actively pursuing adoption. It has been a year since the vulnerability of the children and foster parents in the system became all too clear. Unsuspecting, unprotected, and undone, we went into shock in the wee hours of June 15, 2014 and she was taken to strange places in an unsafe carseat, never to be returned and never to be told goodbye properly.

Among many of the lies we were told last June 14th, it was said that we could resolve the “problem” in the next week. Sunday was torture. Offices closed. Ryan nosedived. Monday was hopeful. There were things to do–people to pursue. Weeks turned into months and still no answers and no baby for the bottles in our drawer, no body for the pile of folded clothes on the couch. No explanations for the destruction of evidence that would release Ryan from the nightmare, no communication from the force that negligently and shamefully put our family and our foster daughter in danger. It took several months before the county decided “Inconclusive,” due to the reputable nature of the supposed reporting party mixed with the refusal of said person to ever comment or validate claims and the lack of evidence on 6 different visitations to find something wrong with our house, parenting and children. Don’t worry, we were told–some foster parents have 20 inconclusives in their files and were still caring for children. We did not find this comforting, but quite alarming. And it didn’t make this 1 right, and it didn’t guarantee our continued involvement in this system.

Sure enough, a month later, our license was revoked–unheard of for 1 inconclusive indictment. We contested; we asked for the review meeting. More letters, more references, more certified mail. A meeting was finally scheduled. Almost 4 months later, they changed their decision to hold us, with the caveat of an extra class for Ryan. 3 more months. Now we’re in line for another home study as all the ones during the investigation were for a different purpose. And time keeps marching on.

June 14th sticks out in my mind because it was unjust and the end of much naivety. And aside from all that it was the death of our care for a girl we loved. It started baby girl on the most traumatic month or more of her life. It began a series of exhausting initiatives that ultimately did not free us from two lying people with major baggage. There is no grave, and it was a slow death, but its severity still stings.

Protest Paint

Protest Pie

By today, I would have thought we would know more about our destination, this journey, this way that started so long ago, with the best intentions and tenderest of hopes. We still wait.

Another thing happened June 14th of last year.

While we were pleading for her to stay, being lied to and about, and packing a bag, a dear friend was finding hope. Her life in many ways had been smashed to smithereens by a person in whom she had trusted and with whom her life and identity were intertwined. She had been betrayed and left, and was in the fresh, fragile season of gathering her self back up under God’s grace. Unexpectedly, June 14th became a significant day for her too; she saw her offender. And, because there was a miracle and her heart was strong, she had compassion. That night, she told me months later, she experienced and extended God’s mercy and love in new ways and in the tumult of faith confronting real life, she forgave. She had a powerful initiation into a freedom and new chapter that began with seeing a broken person who had hurt her deeply with God’s eyes. It was liberating and necessary–she didn’t begin the day ready for that, and she didn’t orchestrate the destination; along the way, hope and new life took hold, and she was rescued. Easter happened again, and disorientation began to be designed into reorientation.

Her account of June 14th is also mine and mine is hers; they are both true. Juxtaposed on this anniversary is a cross of suffering and a lily of resurrection. I am so thankful for the gift of her memory–for that story that informs my own and helps us keep moving in the grief and confusion. That reminds me that we need each other, at our weakest and best, and that the goals and plans are simply kickstarts to us moving at all. Along the way, Grace is there. Along the way, we hurt and we laugh. Along the way, we see things we were not looking for, and perhaps would have never, ever, asked for. And along the way, we find we were not, and are not, alone.

Forward, onward, all of us, all that has been, together. Immanuel.

1 night, 1 4-inch binder, 1 gentleman and 87 days // 8

It has almost been 8 months since our eyes were changed permanently. When three strangers entered our home, after I had returned from a rare girls night out. We had watched The Fault in Our Stars. It was a late balmy night, unsuspecting and innocent. Almost 8 months since two strangers formed one opinion while the other came with her own established. 8 months since a child was taken and this clawing journey began.

Last night we received a uniformed visitor.

It was one of the strangers from June who has now been at our doorstep 5 times. He does not seem like a stranger any more. He, like she, also walked through our home, examined our children, spoke to each of us separately, and is in a profession of protection, service, and risk. He is a police officer.

His and his partner’s role that night was largely to protect the social worker should things go badly in this then-unknown home. They were not to weigh in on her decisions or process that night. He adhered to his role that night but has since allowed it to become much more.

This police officer and his partner expressed concern, disbelief and regret immediately after she left with the baby. He came by the next day to give us his card and offer help. He came by a few months later to check in after receiving a message at their office from us. He came by last night with a copy of an e-mail he had sent in response to a request for information from DCFS. It seemed that someone, somewhere, had received one of our many letters formally complaining of the conduct we experienced that night. Without him, we would have never known it, as USPS recipient receipts and personal requests for confirmation of our letters have not been returned.

Almost 8 months ago we found an unlikely friend, one of about three we have encountered in the dozens of people we’ve communicated with–in the Department and in the force–since that night. We have a 4-inch binder documenting all of our correspondence and the reports and visits that have occurred since we brought baby girl home to this day. We have been waiting 87 days to learn if the Department will correct its decision to put our home on hold, closed to children to need it, closing our hearts to this dream. Despite the state’s decision to re-license us, we may not be allowed to support the county family welfare system again. We don’t know if the long debate in the upper ranks is encouraging or alarming given the past 8 months.  We don’t know all that she endured since leaving and how she has developed and healed now. We don’t know if anything will come of this officer’s report that collaborates our own and if anyone is looking at both the social worker under question and our home approval at the same desk, though one certainly determined the other.

Much has happened in the past 8 months to change our understanding of law enforcement and power in our city. We have encountered many officers and read many news stories that have robbed us of prior confidence and a feeling of safety and justice. On a personal scale and on a grand scale, grave wrongs have occurred due to the negligence of officers and their organizations.

However, there is a foil to these accounts that we had the chance to encounter last night–someone we are happy to see at our doorstep and who has come to our aid in one way he can. He has seen this story and vouched for us, and this is no small thing. He is a leader and a gentleman and we are grateful–whatever the effect of his letter, whatever the decision is about the social worker or our own foster home status–we are grateful that he became involved. That he did not brush off the discomfort and offense to his integrity that started that night. That he did not let fear or the next call, the next task, the next drama, to sweep away his attention to the last. That he maintained his values and truth in a complicated situation just because it was the right thing to do. We are incredibly grateful for this hero in this story and for the contradiction he bravely offers to so much of our experience.

I am thankful that today I will add one more page to that binder that is truthful. That today I can write a personal and positive account of an officer in our city. That today I can know that there is one outside person added to our corner since we found out we needed a corner.

May light find a way.

Falling Through Staircases and Other Things I’d Like to Avoid

Sometimes the fragility is so suffocating. So ending. For so long, it feels like I am living on the verge. Of change, of heartbreak, of rage, of tears, of breakthrough. Of it all. And I hate heights and edges. As I kid, I thought I was one misstep away from falling through those staircases with no backs. It may have been physically impossible but it made me focus on the next step so hard. Clutch the railing so hard. That kid is not too far away.

The cracks in my cool also make me more tender to the beautiful notes, to the moments — and there really may just only be moments — in a day with children that delight my mom heart. The cracks make me painfully aware of my need for a Savior and that can’t be all bad. The cracks make me so grateful and relieved by small things. Coffee. An open parking space. A friend’s dropping by.

My life is so small and I think so big. I am professionally poised while constantly compelled to reveal, unearth, and challenge. It is a strange, exhausting stretch. Do you know it?

My short walk with foster care has so far shown me that our grasp on reality is very, very weak. The hours of certification classes do not make sense of the process we are in now. The barrage of comments on our “daughter,” on how she looks like me, on our family of five, are bittersweet and strange nods to the mystery of family. The confident assessments of her visiting family, of how she is and what she likes and what I am thinking. The reports turned in to court by strangers describing a child’s situation they have never asked about. It all nods to the mysteries behind any appearance, any situation, what we see and think we know.

She hugs me so tight and that is real, but knowing that she could also never know about me is also real. Praying for her is one of the most real things we can do for her, because our feet are planted in Now and our vision is nearsighted, and yet, I cannot tell, I cannot perceive, what is real about it. What it is doing, what He is doing, what They will do, for her life, for mine. What is praying like this, for this, doing in me, the pray-er and what on earth is it doing in the heavenlies. I am the pray-er afraid of the gaps, afraid of falling through and falling small. The pray-er of brokenness and poise, of long-winded comments and wordless wants.

I am so here. I am so temporal and human and here. Heartbroken over the unknowns facing my children, clutching the railings for fear of falling through. Heartbroken over the recent losses in the Church–my extended family–and the lost ground of the Kingdom. Heartbroken over my own inadequacy and mistakes. And so I am heart-surrendered. Heart-surrendered to more–to more than I can see, to more than seems so real, to more than the graves of today. Heart-surrendered to more than here.

Whenever I think of here, I remember that sweet, divine line of poetry: “And here in the dust and dirt, O here // The lilies of His love appear!”

Maybe there is room on the verge to dangle my restless legs. To sit and rest from the climb. Somehow, with all the loose pieces of my heart and all the sensitivities in my soul, I still hope there are lilies to be gained. I am banking on that poet’s forecast. That even though I could be on the verge of insanity and even more grief, I could also be nearer to love, to grace, that I have not learned, not lived, before.

Not because I have transcendent powers of reflection or meaning-making, no. I have these suspicions because Jesus is known for coming to the edges and ledges; He is the relentless Shepherd of my story that goes to the verge and enters the graves and finds the ones. The alones. The heartbroken. The sinners elevated and isolated as special. The children with gaps in their past. The big-thinking unavoidably-regular moms climbing scary staircases. Only because there is the I AM, the YHWH, the God with us here, the Counselor, could this space–this fragile verge–be redeemed. Not the end, but the middle.

Life on Trial

I have a real fear of inspiring people in all the wrong ways. Like the “what not to do” type of almost-cool/daring/yadahyadah Christian woman who tried a lot of things that did not go real well and therefore, inspiring people to not do x, y or z.

So there’s that.

One of those variables in the back of my lovely mind is foster care. Like, golly gee, in the midst of the advocating, the scheduling, the documenting, the crying, the monitoring of visits, the actual, you know, parenting, there’s this concern that someone in the crowd of witnesses is deciding if they will foster-to-adopt or not, and this uncontrolled mess of a scenario is screaming “NOT.” And, like the first-born, over-achieving child-in-a-big-body that I am, I would like to raise my hand and take responsibility for that. Somehow.

And then I think, maybe telling it like it is will only help people make a better decision, not necessarily a different one, than they were already going to make.

Or maybe not.

But this blog is about telling the truth and being open about crisis and struggles and victories and feelings. It is about permitting the ands of life to breathe in recognition that the Shepherd is good and close and big and that He sees things fully. That dichotomies are almost always false choices and there is so much stinkin’ room in Grace for and.

There are about 10-100 articles right now that you can read about the beauty of fostering and the meaning and purpose and theology of opening your home and your heart to a scenario beyond your control for whatever amount of time you are given to nurture and protect that child. They are great and compelling and they are true.

And this is also true: some days, I am a wreck. An externally-composed, inwardly-spiraling wreck.

Here are a few thorns:

• We feel that this baby is our child, our family, and she probably is not and there is nothing that we can do about either of those things.
• I have been made to repeatedly feel like I was on trial while trying to protect her from being hurt by someone who actually is.
• Being a foster parent includes all of the responsibility of being a parent to a child and an assistant to an array of social service professionals, with almost none of the power or choices of either role.
• Usually, we are her only worldly advocates. And our communication is mistaken for asserting our personal will and for a desire for convenience. Which is actually laughable.
• I am one of her birthparents’ only friends.
• One of our time-sensitive financial forms is currently frozen because of being given invalid information and then not finding any help from the powers-that-be in correcting that information.
• Our personal information was shared with others who should definitely not have received it period, let alone by mail.
• She has had as many social workers as the months she has been in foster care.
• We are expected to be highly-trained, capable parents coming into the game but on the field have to defend our spot and perspective in every scenario, in front of every walk-on, with no real back-up.
• Left at home, she enjoys 2-3 good naps each day but she usually cannot have more than one because of her demanding schedule.
• She, unlike thousands and thousands of children, has a line of people who want to care for and love her as long as (or as soon as) they possibly can.

Everyone knows that becoming involved in foster care or foster-to-adopt methods of family planning is risky and scary. In broad strokes, we knew it. We knew it would require more patience, more faith, more risk, than we could know. We knew that no matter what scenario we found ourselves in, that loss was part of the story. For the baby, for the birthparent(s), or for our family and our community.

What I didn’t know was all the specifics. (And I LOVE specifics.) All the ways that an originally straightforward case would unravel and unwind and extend and unwind me and extend me to the end of myself, over and over again. I couldn’t know some of the numb places, the silent places, and the yo-yoing of this lifestyle we were catapulted into. I also couldn’t know that peace could somehow touch me in the oddest, most awkward, and unsettling situations. I would have never thought we could do this. But this is something you don’t do until you have to. And even then, it’s through no strength or sometimes even willingness of your own.

I am traveling a mysterious marathon with no pace-setters and no mile markers and no medals. And I still don’t know the specifics I want to know.

Chances are, if you were not scared out of a desire to do foster care or foster-to-adopt by other information and the daunting approval process (“You want to examine my pen drawer?”), you won’t be deterred by our bouquet of and specifics–this and side dish to the beautiful entrée about love and meaning and tender moments. So here it is. In spite of that nagging fear of being the anti-inspirational writer, I share this part. This ashy, confusing and true part of a complicated blessing we treasure and walk through day by day.