Foster Blessings

By Angela Paganelli

Imagine for a moment, you are being whisked away from the only home you have ever known.  The future is uncertain and you aren't even aware of your destination.  The smell of train tracks carrying you farther and farther away as you clutch your favorite blanket, which is the only certain thing in your world at the moment.  You may ask why this is happening, but the only person who can answer that is silent.  That is the beginning of this story and one that is felt all over America as children are placed into foster care.  The deafening noise of uncertainty as they enter the unknown. What about the other side?  The foster parents who are just as nervous to open their door to a child that they just learned existed 3 hours ago. The unpredictability of knowing that they could love this child with every fiber of their being, and she could leave them in a moment's notice. There is also a broken first family somewhere who may not know where their child is sleeping.  Is he crying for me?  Is he thirsty and the family doesn't understand him?  They don't know he sleeps with his blanket every night.  The thoughts swirl as the lack of control as a parent weighs heavy.What is the responsibility of Christians in all of this?  Church, let's show up.  Let's be the voice they hear praying for them, loving them, and living out all that James 1:27 really encompasses.  This is the heart of Foster Blessings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886858297

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

About the Author

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Foster Blessings

Angela Paganelli

ISBN 979-8-88685-828-0 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88685-829-7 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Angela Paganelli

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

QR Code Giveaway!

Glancing down at your phone, you see that the home finding unit is calling you. You know what they want as your adrenaline starts running and your heart is pounding. You hear the story and it breaks your heart. How can you ensure that you get as much information as possible? We have your back! Having already printed out our free resource, you now have a list of questions to ask. Depending on the type of care, such as respite, short term or long term, you may need pediatrician information, where and when the child is to be picked up/dropped off, and even things like the caseworker's phone number. There are sheets that cover visitation, doctor's visits, as well as coming into care sheets. Many children have food insecurities from lack of choice or appropriate amounts of food, so we have also included a meal plan guide to display that will allow the child to know the schedule of meals. Have them build it with you, including food from their heritage and meals that are known to them! All of these reproducibles are waiting just for you as a thank you!

This code also allows you to connect with Foster Blessings's Blog, Fostering Conversations Support Group, Fostering our Faith Podcast, and all of our social media, podcast. See you there!

Chapter 1

Two. I was two. I was golden from the Miami Beach sun and was being whisked away, by train, from my biological father for a reason that would never be discovered. The culprit? My mother. We spent years hiding; from what, I didn't know. All I have to this day is a picture of him in his garage uniform. He had the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen. We never talked about him again. I would ask later in life and all I would hear is, When you are older. Apparently, I never got old enough.

I later found out from a distant uncle that my father had looked for me for years. My mother had changed my name and homeschooled me. Imagine my surprise at twenty, when I found out that the name Angelina wasn't what was on my birth certificate, despite that being what everyone called me.

Most of my family believed that the extremely protective nature that my mother held stemmed from my traumatic birth. In 1979, a two-month early preemie weighing under two pounds just didn't survive. I was given a tracheotomy and spent the first few months of my life in an incubator. There were no clothes for a baby that small, so the nurses bought socks, cut the bottoms off, and placed me in them. I was called Miracle Baby by the Dade County Herald newspaper.

As I grew, we moved to Pennsylvania into pure Amish country, surrounded by my mother's family. There were chickens, bare feet, horses, buggies, and life was about as perfect as you could ask for a kid. I had cousins that lived nearby, and our nights, weekends, and summers were filled with fireflies, bonfires, and a zipline that now, looking back, was a pretty dangerous piece of equipment, built by my late grandfather. Many times we found ourselves slamming into the tree at the end or getting deep cuts on our fingers from holding the handle at a bad angle, but you know what? It may have been the best part of my early childhood.

Around the age of seven, I'm not sure how because the internet was decades away, somehow my mother met a man in New York. He was going to be perfect, and we were going to be a family. I don't remember too much about the next few years except the birth of my sister, getting a ten-speed bike, and great Friday night television that would afford me glimpses of what life was supposed to look like.

Quite suddenly, things began to unravel. With the birth of my sister, my mother became ill, both physically and mentally. Her mental illness began to spill over into our home life as I watched our house deteriorate to a home that should probably have been condemned. I would watch my friends having birthday parties and sleepovers, just spending time listening to their pink boom boxes complete with tape recorders, and I would long for normalcy. We spent the next several years in her mentally unstable world, sleeping in cars, homeless/battered women's shelters, and even on the beach.

Every morning, we would wake up at 6:00 a.m. to our mother loading the car for a beach trip, hotel stay, or long drive. We were never home until she became too sick to care for us and would end up in the hospital, which was frequent. I'm not sure how family services never became involved, but I took over the role of mother to my younger sister. At eight, I was potty training, making the only two meals I knew how to (franks and beans and egg salad), learning to wash clothes, and putting her first. I was a mom. As the years went by and our mother was in and out of the hospital, my role as caretaker grew. The older my sister got, the closer we became.

Speaking of pink boom boxes, I had saved a bit of money and snuck away one afternoon to a store less than a mile from my house. Well, I don't know if it was a store so to speak. It was a buy, sell, and trade. I had my eye on that radio for weeks. I finally saved enough and, riding as fast as I could, bought it and rushed home. I couldn't wait to listen to the radio. I carried it outside, showing it off to everyone who passed by. I loved that radio with all of my heart.

Several months later, my mother ended up back in the hospital, and it was a long stay. It was most of the summer. I was so frightened that this was it, that I returned the boom box, got a small amount of my money back because the owner of the shop clearly didn't have a heart, and bought my mother a pack of her favorite candy. I figured, if she knew this was here, she would surely make her way back in anticipation. She eventually did, and I was so happy to present her with the present. It was well worth it to lose my prized possession and have her home with us.

Christmas was rolling around, and I would hear friends talking about all of the things Santa brought them. I often wondered why he seemed to skip my house. One year, I longed for a Caboodle (yes, I am aging myself). All of my friends had started wearing makeup. I saw them carrying their cases around, pulling different shades of lip gloss out, just to put them back into their perfect compartments. I begged my mother for months. Christmas morning, I woke up, and under the tree was one package for me. You guessed it. It was a Caboodle. A used, halfway broken one with no makeup inside. I put on a sweet smile, knowing that she had done her best, and vowed to never show anyone my gift.