Do you know there comes a time when you are so old you completely forgot you ever wrote a blog? Ha! Somehow I had a link to my blog up on my bookmarks bar and I accidentally clicked it and found dozens and dozens of entries over a ten year period and then nothing from the last five years. Wow. How our lives get complicated and busy and overrun with stuff and we just forget.
So I'm writing this update pretty much for myself but if anyone is still out there then it's for you too.
The last five years. Well, this is it in a nutshell...
Came home in June of 2016. Stayed at the Snow Mill Guest House for a month before returning to our home in Athens that had been rented the past 7 years. Spent some time fixing things up, working for the Great Exchange and other volunteer organizations or ministries. Started all the paperwork for fostering, attended impact training, got finger printed and took first aid courses. Did tons of training.
In March of 2017 Alan started his own business, "Rathbone Home Services" as a handyman, do it all sort'of business. Our goal was to support our supporters that had so faithfully and diligently helped us when we were missionaries and I prayed we would never have to advertise Alan's services to the general public. Due to their faithfulness and Alan's hard work and meticulous attention to getting everything just right for his customers the business took off well and God has blessed it.
Fast forward five years. We just got about a 5 minute breather between the dreaded Covid pandemic and WWIII. Russia is currently bearing down impossibly hard on the sovereign nation of Ukraine. The world has implemented sanctions on Putin and his cronies but hundreds of thousands of innocents are being killed to satisfy Putin's one man glory seeking mission. He wants the old Soviet Union back and he doesn't care who he kills to get it. The stock market has plummeted. The country is more divided than ever and the churches are lean to empty. It used to be that people would flock to churches during times of sickness and war but not anymore. I have to wonder why that is. I mean we can see the devil is crazy busy at his work given he is in his last days but how can people survive in this day and time without any hope? Without any community or instruction or life giving accountability and praise to the King of Kings? He's the only one that can fix this mess our world is in, the mess our hearts are in.
Alan's work has eased off due to covid and the war but like when God provided for Joseph and all of Egypt with 7 years of plenty, so too has God provided above and beyond what we need to see us through this time of famine.
In October of 2017 we took in our first foster sibling group which literally kicked our butt's. The last day of May (incidentally, Chloe's 7th birthday), we joyfully reunited them with their mom who had become like a daughter to me. Unfortunately it took over a year to realize that things were not nearly as good as we had hoped and we had allowed the kids to reenter her life WAY too soon. She was not off the drugs and was desperate to attach herself to any man that would take her and so the life of the kids went from hopeful to disaster in three short years. They missed more school than they attended, never went to the doctor or dentist after leaving us, were always left with their grandma who herself needed rehab and they did without food and housing and attention for way too long before God sent a judge to remove them from the bench again last May. They returned back to us and on the 21st of this month will have been with us for the second time another 10 months.
I am 51 one now and Alan is 58 and every day we wonder what in the world we were thinking becoming foster parents. It is absolutely NOT for the faint at heart but we have learned from painful experience that God is greater than all and any of our shortcomings and He will provide for all our needs according to HIS riches in Heaven. Fostering has taught us so much about the sinfulness of our own hearts. You can read about that in the bible but until you are really taken out of your comfort zone with children from trauma and their drug addicted parents, you never really realize how bad your own heart is. Fostering like nothing else brought all of that to the surface for us. So if you really don't want to learn patience and forgiveness and self control and unselfishness than definitely DO not fill out the application to foster because one way or another God will teach you those things whether you really want to learn them or not.
Of course it's not all bad. We are doing something for eternity that actually matters. Not many people chasing the mighty paycheck can say that. I know it because I chased the mighty paycheck at Microsoft and Expedia and in the end it left me empty. I did meet some great people and have some good stories to tell but it wasn't kingdom work and so it was always found lacking.
So here we are. 10 months into our second time fostering these four precious kids. We love them and they drive us nuts. We want to give them the world and we want them to learn to go after it themselves and really succeed on their own merits. No matter what the bio mom has done to us in the past I still love her and still want the very best for her and I pray God will keep his hand on this family for forever. I pray they will all give their lives to Jesus and become who God has called them to be and I pray this world will be just a little bit kinder to them than before so they will survive. It is not an easy time in the world to be separated from your kids and trying to restart your life but if God wants it he will do it.
God willing in July we will head back to England to see Alan's mom and sister and our friends. We also have a small cruise planned to see the fjord's of Norway for my 50th since our desired trip last year was impossible due to covid. We made a trip together as a family to New Zealand back in 2018 with Teen Missions and met some really great teenagers - some of which are engaged or married and going on to missions full time in the next year. It's great to see God continue to work in their lives.
My mom has suffered from Alzheimer's for the past 12 years but she fell in December of 2018 and again in January of 2019 and never recovered. She has now been bed-ridden for the past three years and two months. Absolutely heart breaking sadness and depression has overwhelmed our family during this time and yet we just keep going. One day, one week, one month at a time.
My dad continues his teaching on Monday nights to his faithful friends, attending his book club and tending to both his garden and his grandchildren. Moms illness has of course been the most difficult for him and some days I'm sure he wonders how he can go on without her. They have always been so in love.
Chloe is as precious as ever. She's a 5th grader at Westminster, moved from Timothy Road Elementary due to our lack of confidence in the leadership in the Clarke county school district during Covid. We also wanted her to have a biblically based education, be really pushed academically to learn cursive writing and Latin and to do more memory work and Westminster has not disappointed. She has participated in art competitions, safety patrol, quiz bowl, 4H and has had good success at each. Outside of school she has taken a series of gymnastics and horseback riding classes, some tennis, weekly piano, has participated in the swim team each summer and has been the best big sister to our foster kids imaginable. In the past five years we've had our current set of kids twice, then two single boys one right after the other, then a brother sister pair and another sibling pair but that was just for respite. We remember each child with such fondness and Chloe has made special memories with them all.
We pray God will watch over them and their families while they are not with us and may God watch over us all as the current world events swirl about us.
