My foster daughter left a few days ago. I announced her departure on social media as I often do with the comings and goings in our house. While it simplifies my life of not telling everyone every time they ask what’s new, I still feel strange broadcasting my life.

Being a foster parent can have it’s perks.  You’re a saint; an angel; you are must have a heart of gold to be able to love and let go. If you’re into that, it’s there.

I don’t offer my updates and the images I can share for recognition. I don’t need the commendation. It’s not like I’m doing this for attention or praise. Sometimes that makes me itchy because if you’ve spent enough time with me in person you know I’m as real as they come. I get mad. I lose my patience. I tire of driving to appointments, listening to children complain about oatmeal for breakfast, cleaning up messes and endless paperwork required to keep any child including the ones personally crafted.  I’m not a perfect parent or person (or wife or friend or daughter. . . the list is long). But, I do it all anyway (as most of us do).

I offer some of what I can (the updates and photos that don’t reveal their identities) because I know it will give someone else a window into what taking someone else into your life really looks like, and maybe they’ll reach out doing what they can where they can. Perhaps. Maybe.  Because they’re acquainted with what it looks like and the people who do these things aren’t extraordinary, but really normal people engaged in something good. I’ve met some of the best people I know through the foster care network. That’s reason enough to do this. And then those kids.

I cannot even promise I’ll be doing this for years to come. But I don’t believe I’m done yet. My kids are asking already. This is hard for them too, but it’s so good. I can’t quantify what we’ve learned. Heaven help us in the lessons ahead.

Maybe when you feel a call to do (whatever there is for you to do) rush through your veins, and the surge cannot be suppressed as you cannot stop your blood from flowing; maybe you’ll say yes. I hope you do. This is how I’m trying to answer one of mine. So please, don’t tell me I’m great or good. Be my friend, help me do this thing and I will help you as much as I can with yours.

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Today everyone at Segullah is delighted to share the happy news that one of contributing authors for the journal and a twice over guest poster on the blog, Sherilyn Olsen, has written and released her first book, Searched the World Over for Elie: An International Adoption Story. Reading the book I knew that not only is Sherilyn a good writer, but she too has felt that same electric energy to say yes,  to open her home to another child she did not know.

This book is an extension of her Segullah Journal essay, “The Day I Met Elie,”  and her own telling of saying “yes.” Olsen doesn’t gloss over the story of how she came to mothering her son. She offers the full story in all its grit, heartache and hope.  It’s astonishing how much is invested into an adoption. And astounding on an international level.
Olsen has a particular gift for setting the scene, her telling of Congo was enveloping. The descriptions of the sights and smells. The local flavor seeps through the text.  But her determination is even stronger, soaring through the text carrying her from her home in Utah to the other side of the world.  Love triumphs, entwining her and her family with their newest member the had known from a photograph. It’s compellingly fierce and tender.
Those who connect with her adoption experience will be compelled by the memoir and Sherilyn Olsen’s honest writing. For those considering a similar adoption, the book is filled with advice Sherilyn has learned by living it. It’s an incredible story of how her family began came to be.
Kudos to Sherilyn.

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