text of speech given on Sunday

There are things I don’t believe I do well, and don’t like to do (funny how those go hand in hand) and giving a speech is one of them. I’m grateful ….that this talk is limited to three minutes. It’s a measure of how much I love this church that I am up here speaking to you;Kevin and I feel that we receive so much more from Grace Church than we give. We give when we are asked, and ongoing, in whatever ways we can think of. It’s one of those principles of life that hopefully one discovers early on- the more you give of yourself, the more involved you are, the greater benefit you receive . This idea of giving is intrinsically linked to gratitude. Giving of oneself makes one more aware, more grateful for blessings. The more involved one is at Grace, the more blessed one feels, the more grateful. It’s a paradox, but that’s how it seems to work.

To me, gratitude is essentially an awareness.

Spiritual thinkers through the ages have posited that what we put our mind on grows, or becomes our reality. I can’t help but be reminded of those I work with as a mental health nurse…daily I meet folks who cannot stop thinking of ways to kill themselves, and sometimes they take action. In order to make an assessment, I have these odd conversations with folks in which we dispassionately discuss how they planned to jump off a bridge, take pills, or run their car into a bridge abutment. Taken out of context, anywhere else such sentences would appear as totally incongruous or even blasphemy…and yet they are spoken on the path to healing, or they wouldn’t be spoken at all, just suppressed. One has to acknowledge the present awareness in order to begin to think of living again.

On the gratitude scale, a person whose mind is constantly occupied by suicide cannot be simultaneously counting their blessings. As with many types of mental illness, a person’s equilibrium can be compromised because certain thoughts,certain emotions, predominate and become the entire awareness to the exclusion of others. It can become a negative habit of mind; the converse is also true, that maintaining a practice of gratitude is a habit of mind as well.

It’s possible that maintaining a mental stance of gratitude may even be self-protective, as it demonstrates awareness. Certainly, when we thank God in prayers, we are in this stance. Apparently the early American pilgrims built seven times more graves than they did houses, yet despite their losses, the enduring tradition they have bequeathed us is a day of Thanksgiving – fast approaching, I might add. Nor is it an accident that many of the words associated with gratitude speak to holy origins – words like benediction, invocation, blessing, and grace , to name a few.

We can demonstrate our practice of gratitude by giving, praying, doing good works, acknowledging, and maintaining awareness. I will close with these words from the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson:

'There are two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give.'

Evidence that I May Have Become an Old Fart

1)  I  email harangues to academic libraries who remove book jackets from all their books, arguing that it reduces visual appeal, promotes the use of e-books, deters browsing, and will put librarians out of work.

2)  I cannot abide the use of spandex in my long sleeve shirts, jeans or pants- nay, in any garment. Within an hour of wear my knees/elbows seem convinced they are undergoing selective waterboarding.

3) Recently attended the movie Pitch Perfect with our two female exchange students, along with a row of college girls seated behind us. At various moments, the actors would break into song. I knew not one of the words of any of the songs, but those around me enthusiastically sang everything, indicating these were major hits.

4) "Modern" cut pants liberally expose my middle-age spread. When one bends over, the 'coin slot' is revealed in all its glory.

5) I always pay the parking meter.

6) I vote in primary elections.

7) I tell my kids that when I was growing up, we didn't have malls, video recorders, cable TV, Old Navy, cell phones, or computers, let alone "social media". We played entire sides of  LPs and read the album covers, rode bikes and made brownies. The idea of always reaching people instantly was off the table. When you ran out of gas, you waited patiently for a good Samaritan. They can't conceive of this existence.

8) When I see women out shopping wearing kiddie-print flannel pajamas, I am horrified and think of them as slobs who can't bother to get dressed.

9) I just started texting in the past year.

10) My mother thought that only gypsies had pierced ears, thus when I finally got them, it was considered risque. Now they won't stay open so I can no longer wear the damn earrings anyway.

11)If I don't hit the hairdresser every three weeks, I sport a 1/2 inch silver skunk stripe as my part.

12) The sight of  men with tattoos is abhorrent to me, let alone women.

13) I  yearn for the days when major music artists actually had bands, and everyone knew how to play at least one instrument well. Today, that is a rarity.

14) I can't be bothered to download music online, and thus still buy CDs, which I find inadequate in fidelity compared to the sound of LPs.

15) I still read books.

16) I drive a 2004 Buick Century.

The Adventure Begins

So this is the year we take on two 17 year old female foreign exchange students from different countries, and I start  the second nursing job in  six months. September brandishes the starting gate; and truth be told, am I not just superimposing a waning bandage over a persistent case of empty nest syndrome? Mind you, the sixteen year-old is only in eleventh grade and  already I muffle rising panic.  The twenty-four year old is gone, the twenty-one year old rows away his senior year of college whilst polishing off  Arabic and eyeing Egypt with fervor... them's horses  are out 'o the bahn.

My year perrenials (a new verb I just coined) in September, even before I was an educator. For someone who attended no less than seven institutions of higher learning on her way to earning three degrees, the school calendar is hard-wired in. We won't count the half-finished technical writing masters at University of North Texas or the paralegal certificate, those educational u-turns... nay, verily  I proclaim with a straight face that every single learning experience continues to be utilized and applied to this very day.

As far as the premature case of empty nest, it may well be the result of  attempting to adopt a total of seven older children over six years and retaining just one. Have the other six been adopted by anyone? No, but  most would have if  the state Department of Children Youth and Families would just listen to their parents in the trenches. The photo above was taken three  kids ago. Do you think in the old days, when many offspring died, that parents marked the passage of time by using the deaths of their children? Instead of fall or spring or a number, that time would be known as "when Sandy left us" .... losing a child in a failed adoption is nearly as traumatizing as the death of a child. It has a way of stopping you in your tracks, putting life on hold.  This year alone, we'd  already lost two kids, following one last year...the most recent two I can't bear to talk about just yet.

They are not the reason we won't attempt to adopt again; that honor lies with the last, the final state social services caseworker who repeatedly lied and back-stabbed us over the course of 15 months. Lest you think I have it in for this class of person, I will say that my previous experiences with such workers had in fact been uniformly positive. Alas, this misguided woman was backed by her organization all the way to the very top. I was personally told by the head of the organization that the children would be taken away if I didn't toe the nonsensical party line,  and then, as they had repeatedly, the organization contradicted itself. They made up new rules that applied only to our family, and subsequently refused to honor those selfsame rules when the shoe was on the other foot. The subject defies sensibility; there's a book in it somewhere. Invariably, in my life when it's time  to move on and I still think this is something I need to be doing, it requires a whopping dose of something really nasty to turn me off. Finally I heeded the message, though I can't keep the kids out of my life just yet.

On a lighter note: our newfound international student exchange organization is dubiously blessed with an acronym that had to be penned by a non-English speaker. In all sincerity - phonetically, it is pronounced "Assy". Kevin and I run around the house making "assy" jokes and mimicking fake "assy" commercials, replete with butt shots, such as " Assy come home" which poses a nice double entendre on the international student side of things.  The poor girls haven't arrived yet, but when they do, it will be our special pleasure  to begin teaching them English slang.

According to a 2011 report by the Evan B. Donaldson foundation, http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/research/2011_07_never_too_old.php   ,

fewer older youth are  being adopted from foster care than at any time in the last ten years.

"Adoption of older youth, as well as subsidized guardianship (discussed later in this paper), are important ways to create such relationships for youth at risk of aging out of care. Each legally formalizes a relationship with an important adult or adults, removes the youth from direct involvement in the child welfare system, and typically continues state financial support, access to medical care through Medicaid, and ongoing services through the subsidy."

Numerous studies have shown that children who age out of foster care or emancipate will face high rates of homelessness (up to 49%) drug and alcohol addiction, and incarceration. Due to their lack of supports and previous emotional challenges, young adults who leave foster care without a family will disproportionately drain resources and end up costing 'the system'  or the state far more than children who have been adopted.

The Donaldson report highlights state efforts  such as "You Gotta Believe"  a New York based agency targeted solely to recruiting adoptive parents for older youth. How difficult would it be to form a similar agency for the five New England states, whose goal was to prevent ANY youth leaving care without a family?  Organizations such as Adopt Us Kids ostensibly serve the same purpose, but if my experience is any guide, they serve largely as a front. Over the course of two years I submitted more than ten homestudy packets  to social workers listed on that site for specific children  as 'requesting homestudy' . I heard back ONCE from one Ohio  social worker who said  the child pictured  was not yet available...and never heard from him again. From the rest I never heard anything, though the same children I inquired about (multi-racial sibling groups) continue to be pictured as available for adoption on the site YEAR AFTER YEAR (and today).  I had more luck using a state site  through Maine social services when I submitted requests, and also through the Maine Heart Gallery site which has since been eliminated ; in that instance I heard from workers by phone,and was even invited to two Maine 'adoption parties', but again that effort was not productive. If I, as an educated, motivated, trained foster parent with homestudy in hand, knocking hard on the door, cannot get through what reality faces other potential adoptive parents, who may not even be licensed foster parents yet?

My point is that states are not doing enough to get older children adopted, and in fact have made few changes to the way they operate social services  to specifically meet the needs of older children at risk of aging out. Programs such as You Gotta Believe  are an excellent response to this need; the question is, why is this organization such an isolated phenomenon?