"Losing Shania"

I'm now in the process of painting part of 1st Corinthians 13 on the walls in our cheery yellow bathroom. I haven't eaten dinner yet, 10:28 at night so I'm a little shaky. Probably go eat something after blogging.
I'm painting the scripture in a dark brown. It's a process. For example I've stood with one foot on a chair in the tub and one stuck in the little cubby for the soap, to paint above the bathtub. The chair in the tub isn't the most stable because the tubs walls aren't wide enough to have the chair standing directly on the bottem of the tub. So the feet of the chair are pressed up against the walls of the tub...
I've been thinking about painting walls quite a bit recently and finally took the plunge:) I take the plunge sometimes at night... a strange time... tonight I plunged probably sometime after 9.
I watch alot of movies. I watched Miracle today. It was pretty good. About the US Hockey team that took Gold in the 1980 Olympics(?)

Last night we watched "Losing Isaiah." It's a rough movie about a white family that adopted a black crack baby. The baby had been left in a box, basically in the trash. Garbage guys actually found the baby before they almost crushed it in the back of the garbage truck.
It's really sad! The crack mother goes to jail for stealing, while she was high... and ends up going through drug rehibilitation.
Eventually she's cleaned up enough that the people helping her help her track her baby. And she wants Isaiah back! He's been with the white family, his family for like 3 years... So there's a trial that happens... and the judge decides to take Isaiah from his home that he's always known and places him into his biological mother's home. He doesn't talk for like 2 weeks and has alot of fits.
It tears his "mama's" heart apart! It was alot like what my mom went through. It was really sad. Made me cry. Just the raw emotion of what the lady went through. The pain...you can't get away from it when you've poured yourself out into a child like she did and like my mom did.
It doesn't totally end on a negative note. You can watch it if you want, with TV G:)
We, my family, had our own story of losing a foster child. We had Shania Nicole McCutcheon for around 4 years. She came to us when she was 5 and left when she was 8.
We put alot of love into her. Alot of prayers. She was what social workers call theraputic foster care. Because she was "theraputic" my parents had to take more training classes to deal with her. It means that she has more baggage or bigger baggage than other foster care kids.
I remember the first day Shania came to us. She was wearing a yellow sundress. Adam said she had the look of a mute girl, I think in the sense of not really there. Or withdrawn...As we loved her and she knew she was safe with us she opened up and blossomed. She was very affectiaonate. She'd sing to me my name over and over again, "Mawee, Mawee, Mawee, Mawee..."
Even though she would be a really good girl at times, she'd also act out in very dramatic ways when she was bad. That's hard, especially if you can't discipline her the way God teaches us.
Near the end some really big things happened in the course of one week. Because of the way the circumstances played themselves out it was finally decided that Shania would leave us. It was very hard on my mother as it was on the lady in the movie.
We lived out certian scenarios that the movie showed.
The night before Shania left we went and watched a kids movie at the two dollar theather called, "Because of Winn Dixie." A heart warming storey about a girl who's dad is a pastor and she has no friends. At the beginning of the movie she's sitting in church and dubbed over everything is her praying to God that he'll give her some friends.
One day she's at a Winn Dixie, a southern grocery store and there's this dog, tearing through the store, making chaos. The dog's in big trouble. So to cover for the dog she says it's hers. So she comes home from the grocery store with a gangly mutt. She names him Winn Dixie, the place of his roots. Because of Winn Dixie she ends up with a number of really good friends. God answered her prayer through at dog. It's a pretty good movie.
After we ate out at Wendy's. A high falutin' restaurant! Than on the way home everyone of us in the car said something good about Shania. She ate that up. Really liked it:) Than she said something nice about us in how we related to her, for ex..."Marie is nice to me.":)
The next day the social service lady showed up around noon. She was there as our family got in a circle held hands and prayed for Shania.
We said Good bye to little Shania. Hugs and kisses. Than she got into the van with some of her belongings. It was very anticlimatical. I got the most emotional of anyone, kinda wet in the eyes...and felt sad. She was sitting in the back seat, seatbelted looking at us. I remember that clearly. She didn't show hardly any emotion, maybe a little uncertain. It was as if she was going to someone's house for the weekend.
Many people were praying for the whole situation that day... otherwise I'd wager it could've been a messy emotional time.
It's been tough for Shania to have to go another place. We heard some reports, but not very detailed at all. One time we heard that she was confused, another time that a lady that has connections with her "new family" heard Shania throwing a fit in the background... same thing she'd do with us....
She's a little girl that didn't have the blessing of really really belonging to a family... because her mom wasn't what Shania and her siblings needed. God led our family that it was time for her to go somewhere else. At least we gave her about 4 years of love and prayers, and quality family life... that is a lot actually.
Pray for Shania... I know the prayers wouldn't hurt. Ask God to bring her to your mind sometimes, she could use a network of praying people, her "christian family." I love her alot.
When she was here I'd put her to bed sometimes. We go through her nightly ritual... read a book, I'd sing her a number of songs... pray with her. Than I'd tell her what God thought about her. I told her that she would change the world. I believe God will use her to change the world. She gave her heart to Jesus and Jesus will always be with her, He won't let her go ever. These next years of her life, most likely will be really rough as she grows and matures... pray for Shania Nicole McCutcheon and her new family.
This is my story of "losing Shania."