Monday, June 14, 2010

Remembering My Dreams

Someone once said that nothing worth while is easy. Or maybe that it is everything worth while is worth a fight. Or maybe it was something about God gives us challenges and difficult times so we grow and recognize our blessings when we see them. Or maybe it is none of these statements but yet they all seem to ring true to me tonight.

It seems as though I have been "fighting" to get the life I want for awhile now. It actually started five years ago. I was sitting at my father's house talking to him about a potential job opportunity. I was nearing the end of the hiring process for a job in Sheboygan, Wisconsin as a police officer. It was my dream job. Or so I thought at the time. I had also been considering adopting my first child. My dad reminded me that if I moved three hours away, I would be on my own as a first time mom. I not only wouldn't have my parents nearby but I also wouldn't have the strong support network of friendships that take time to build. I thought about what he said and decided to pull out of the hiring process. I looked at it as a choice between becoming a mother and accepting a job I had been dreaming about for years. I chose my child and it was by far the right decision.

The decision was the right one but it didn't make my struggle to find a job I felt was right for me. Even five years ago, I knew that staying at my current job was not what God was calling me to do. HE has a different plan for me and for my family. Now, I'm not complaining. I went back to school while I waited for Jacob to come home and discovered that my dream job of teaching also wasn't right. While I enjoyed the children, I really didn't love it the way I knew I should. Or at least love it as a new teacher should. I stopped attending school once Jacob came home and decided to wait for the inspiration and to figure out what direction God was calling me in.

It wasn't long before I realized that it was time to begin the search for my next child. I knew he was out there waiting and I had a strong feeling he was going to come through foster care. I was right. M came to me almost two years ago. Yet I also knew God had more plans for me. So my quest to fulfill God's plans continued.

I finally found a career that I love and am passionate about. No, it's not a career many people choose. I do believe a trainer, Cornelius Bird, was correct. It is a career that chooses it's workers not one that workers choose. Yet somehow I have been chosen. I just struggle to ge that first job. I loved my internship. Every crazy moment of it. I wanted to have my own case load more than anything and to really build on those foundation skills I learned.

Tonight I hope I got one stepper closer. I had the chance to talk to the hiring supervisor and the subsitute care supervisor at the agency I really want to work for. I realize no job is perfect. I will have good days and bad days at any job. But to have the chance to start at a job I love and feel that passion again is something I really desire. Will I love a job in child protective services for the next thirty years? I don't know. But I do know I loved the "taste" that I got last year and dream of the chance to work in the field again.

Tonight was a chance to network. It was a chance to spend time listening to foster parents with a lot more experience than me talk about what they like and don't like about the current foster care system. I took careful notes when they spoke about what they like and don't like about the social workers on their foster children's cases. Insight that as a worker, I won't hear as candidly or very often. Yet insight that can only help me to be a better worker. That is if I ever get the chance.

The agency I hope to work for will begin a new hiring process later this month or next month. I don't know how well I will do. I do know that I will give it my best. I have let the people in charge know who I am. I have gotten the credential I need to start. Now, I just need to fill out the application and hope for the best. If it doesn't happen now, I will keep trying. If it is in God's plans for me to work there, I will eventually get the job. When the timing is right.

As far as my children go. I know the answer to that. They were each the right choice and sent to me by God. I don't beleive it was in His plans for the circumstances to happen surrounding their birth families. I won't begin to understand why they were sent to me. I do believe that while the reasons for the children needing new families may not have been God's will, their finding their way to my home and my arms was. It was God's second plan for these children and one that I am priviliged and blessed to be a part of. Now, is there a third child out there for me? If it is in God's plans it will be. Time will tell. For now, I am counting my blessings and not life's challenges and problems.

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