Nurturing Hope: The Trauma Informed Foster Parent, ft Laney Gibney

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How do you navigate the emotional labyrinth of foster parenting during a global pandemic? Join us for a special episode featuring Laney Gibney and her husband, Matt, as they unfold their inspiring journey into the world of fostering. Drawing from Laney's deep roots in social work and her personal experiences within the foster care system, this episode offers a raw and heartfelt look at the realities of becoming trauma-informed caregivers. From the initial decision to foster to the unexpected arrival of two young girls, Laney and Matt's story is a testament to the power of love, patience, and unwavering dedication.

Laney and Matt share the profound challenges and rewards they encountered while creating a safe and nurturing environment for children with traumatic backgrounds. We explore their experiences during the pandemic, the behavioral challenges they faced, and the critical role of trauma-informed care. Their narrative sheds light on how unconditional love and patience can transform not only the lives of foster children but also of foster parents themselves. The couple’s journey underscores the importance of specialized trauma training, maintaining a calm presence, and the healing power of play and art therapy.

As we delve deeper into the emotional complexities of fostering, Laney offers invaluable insights into the necessity of community support and practical ways to assist foster families. From personal anecdotes of unexpected blessings to the significance of self-care and grace, this episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for current and prospective foster parents. Tune in to grasp the profound impact of fostering personal growth and be inspired by the resilience and dedication required to uplift and support children in need.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I will love you for you, not for what you have done or what you will become. I will love you for you. I will give you the love, the love that you'll never know.

Speaker 2: 0:20

Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Wednesdays with Watson podcast. You know I always say it. I am so excited for you to be here today. I also say, but I'm especially excited for this episode, but I kind of am today. Today's guest is none other than Lainey Gibney.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Now, the reason why this is special to you guys today, because, for those of you who did not know me in my former life, I was a high school teacher and I had the privilege of having Eleni in my classes at Calvary Christian High School in Clearwater, florida, and so this is a special moment. I know it is for me and I hope it is for her. You know, eleni was there for some of those dark days and, as a 16-year-old, didn't understand what was going on, but she has gone on to do amazing things in ministry with her life, as we knew she would do back then. And so I would love for you to just welcome Lainey to the podcast, as we talk today about a sensitive subject, about foster parenting and how it is not the Cinderella story that we'd like it to be, how it isn't always beautiful, it isn't always easy and, in fact, most of the time it isn't so? With that being said, lainey, welcome to the Wednesdays with Watson podcast.

Speaker 3: 1:36

Thank you, what a kind introduction.

Speaker 2: 1:39

Well, it's very true, it's very good to be here. Well, I am so, so grateful that we were, we were able to make it happen and you know I would be remiss if I didn't say that. You know, it's interesting to me and we talked about this a little bit and, and when I, when I post this episode, I will I'll share some of the pictures, cause I found them.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:02

Yeah, Of you as a freshman in high school and we went on our and I air quote for those of you not watching on YouTube on our missions trip to the Keys when you were a freshman in high school and there were a couple of you you and Autumn and I've got pictures of you where all the other kids were out and about, you know, doing freshman-y things. You guys were sitting in the middle of the field with these kids who needed ministry and there you sat in the field with these kids hanging all over you, and so you know, I think, Lainey, the heart wants what the heart wants, and here we are. When did you graduate from high school? 2011, I think.

Speaker 1: 2:38

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:39

So a long time ago, 14 years ago, 13 years ago, here we are, we fast forward, and so, Lainey, I asked you to be on the podcast today because you and your husband, matt, who is our middle school pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, florida, are the foster parents of three beautiful children, and I just want to know that story first, and then we are going to really kind of give you the mic and help us understand, help people understand, what it means to be a trauma-informed foster parent. Both of us are educated you in social work, me in trauma and understanding what trauma is, but I don't think it's rocket science for anybody to know that if a child has been removed from their home and that most of the time is the reason that's not usually because their parent passed away. If a child is removed from their home, they are severely broken, and we've got to be prepared for that, and so, before we get into that, I would love, though, for you to tell me yours and Matt's journey into foster parenting.

Speaker 3: 3:47

Yeah, well, we, uh, we were married in 2018 and right off the bat, we were having conversations about what? What is our purpose, what is our ministry, what do we want to do? I had worked in the foster care system for several years and so I saw the need and I told myself then, as I was working in the system, one day I'll be a foster parent, one day I'll come back into the system as a foster parent. And those conversations just really happened organically in Matt and I's relationship. And after year one, I don't know if we just get bored easily, but we were like well, we've got a year down, so what?

Speaker 3: 4:34

do we do, and so we started talking about taking our licensing classes and training and doing all the paperwork, and so we were licensed in early March of 2020.

Speaker 2: 4:50

Wow, March of 2020. Nothing else happened in March of 2020. Nothing else at all.

Speaker 3: 4:57

Nothing significant other than us becoming foster parents. And yeah, so we had our last home visit. And yeah so we had our last home visit, our licensing specialist handed us our license and said congratulations. And that was before we knew the world was shutting down like the next week. And she said at that meeting with us, she said I have two girls who need a placement and we think that you would be perfect for them, which doesn't typically happen. That's not the, that's not kind of the typical process. Usually you get licensed and then the state agency calls you when a child comes into care and it's it's very immediate, like this child needs a home right now. Are you ready in the next couple hours?

Speaker 3: 5:39

type of thing, but this was a sibling set that we said we weren't going to do. Uh, I said we want one child around the age of four or five. That's all I felt comfortable doing, cause we didn't have any children of our own. We didn't know what parenting was.

Speaker 2: 5:56

We just been married a year.

Speaker 3: 5:58

We'd been married a year. Yeah, at that point it was yeah. At that point it had been two years by the time we got through our training and all that stuff and all we knew was we had open bedrooms in our house and I felt like I had time because we didn't have our own kids. So I thought this is perfect, let's give resources now. My perfect world was we'll foster for a year, we'll help these kids get back home to their parents and then we can start our little perfect white picket fence family of our own. God has such different plans.

Speaker 3: 6:32

So we we ended up accepting the placement of two girls that at the time were eight and 10, and they were coming from a different foster home that was disrupting their placement with them. So we had about six weeks to prepare for them. So it was really important. The system made sure that the girls could finish out the school year in that placement and stay stable, which I do give kudos to the system. They do try to make sure kids are as stable as possible. So we had about six weeks to prepare for them and then, may 1st, they moved in with us and there was no parks open, no restaurants open, the mall was not open, nothing like nothing. So we had intense bonding time for the first several months that they were with us.

Speaker 2: 7:30

I didn't realize that that is absolutely insane, like, yeah, I can't even imagine.

Speaker 3: 7:36

Yeah, like we would take them to. We're like let's go to a park, maybe a playground somewhere, and then they had the caution tape around the playground. So we just really the only thing that we could do was hang out with our extended family and be together in our house.

Speaker 2: 7:53

Yeah, I'm going to say something that I'm going to come back on and ask you a question, because I told you at the beginning of the podcast that I would share a few things that maybe you didn't know.

Speaker 2: 8:00

But I am a product of the of the foster care system in the state of Florida.

Speaker 2: 8:04

I was only in one foster home and I was 13 and stayed with them for a year and a half, and a lot of what we're going to be talking about today is how foster care, foster kids, bring in some behavioral issues.

Speaker 2: 8:21

I hesitate to even say that call it a behavioral issue, but that's what the scientific term is going to be when you talk about it. And I remember, lani, when I was placed in that home it was because my mom chose to marry my last abuser, and so I remember I was the kid because I was a good student which is unusual in these situations, but I was a good student and which is unusual in the false and in these situations, but I was a good student, for which I am grateful. But I remember coming into that home for the first time in my life I felt safe and for the first time in my life I felt loved, and I remember even asking them if I could call them mom and dad and of course they told they told me no. And I just wanted to be loved because I had not had that experience with my own mom.

Speaker 1: 9:09

And.

Speaker 2: 9:09

I had been severely abused and and anybody who knows my story and listeners you can go back to any number of podcasts to know my story. We're not here to rehash that. But here's my point is that I had some attention seeking behavior and for me it wasn't punching holes in walls, it wasn't acting out, it wasn't throwing temper tantrums, it was just simply lying Like I would lie all the time. I would lie about the dumbest things. And they couldn't. They felt like they couldn't handle that and so they put me in the children's home in Tampa, florida, which I'm grateful for, and to this day I would say to them one of them still alive, I'm grateful that you put me in the children's home because it was there that I did receive the unconditional love that I did not feel like. I got in your home because you couldn't handle my attention seeking behavior or something.

Speaker 2: 10:01

And, uh, literally the way it went down was this the, the social workers and, and and this happened to be my pastor and his wife that were my foster parents. They were not trained at all, they just stepped in when nobody else would, and when they took me, my mom said I'll get rid of that man. You could bring Amy back at, bring her back. And so I had a couple like Publix bags full of my stuff. That was all I had and I was so grateful that my mom chose me Like she chose me over that man, right. And we get there with the social workers and there's a note on the door gone to get married, mom. And so the social workers put me back in the car, we go to the courthouse and I literally watch the judge sign away parental rights and it took me a minute to recover from that because it was just another rejection that, as we talk about the trauma-informed foster parents, I want somebody who is actively doing it, because you still had you and Matt ended up adopting those two girls, right?

Speaker 3: 11:11

Yep. We adopted them in December of 2022 after like three years of a case for them, and we're now in a long-term foster placement. We've had a foster son for over two years now and we will most likely paperwork successful. We'll be adopting him in the near future.

Speaker 2: 11:35

Yeah, it's so precious, so that just tethers my heart to yours, because, again, you know, this was a long time ago and there was no training. Is there training for foster parents in terms of what to expect? Because, again, you know, this was a long time ago and there was no training. Is there training for foster parents in terms?

Speaker 3: 11:53

of what to expect. What kind of training did you guys receive before you got licensed? Yeah, there is. There's a state mandated training in order to get licensed. I want to say it's I'm going to get this wrong. I think it's like 40 hours of training that we have to go through. So we spent a month of Saturdays in training with our licensing agency. So we we got licensed through a Christian licensing agency a door of hope. But they're contracted with a state, so it's all kind of the same thing.

Speaker 3: 12:18

Um, and it's, it's trauma training. It is. Uh, what is trauma? Different types of trauma, how trauma manifests itself differently in different children, because it does, it does look different. I have two girls that have come from the same exact upbringing that have completely different, um, struggles and behaviors, so to speak. So it's it's all very customized to the child and we learn. We learn that and we learn, uh, really great interventions and techniques Like how do you build attachment with children that come from trauma, and, uh, it really takes. The goal of the training is to take your preconceived idea of parenting and just flip it upside down and say everything you think you know about parenting, throw it out the window and we're going to have to teach you something new, because that's what these kids need in order to be successful.

Speaker 2: 13:18

Yeah, and before we get into what that training actually was, because I want you to share some of that with us, because I want people, because you know fostering sounds like a great idea at the time right right and I think sometimes people even sitting in those trainings think, oh well, that won't be, that won't happen to us, we can love them enough. Yeah, so that, because what people don't understand at the foundation, when you strip all of the information about trauma down, it comes down to one thing, it comes down to safety.

Speaker 3: 13:48

Right.

Speaker 2: 13:50

And when you provide, as a foster parent, a safe environment, that child then has and will fall apart, so to speak, because they're safe and they can do that. And that falling apart often exhibits itself in a various and sundry things. And it's so interesting that you bring up that you have two girls same household, pretty much the same experiences, the same trauma that respond in different ways. That's because we're image bearers and God made us differently, right, and so one of the young ladies' window of tolerance, as we call it in the field for trauma, and her ability and her resilience is very different from the others. And so, as foster parents, you can't expect a one size fits all, and so, even though you had that training, it's not like you can go to page 36, you know 0.461.

Speaker 2: 14:42

Oh, they told me this was going to happen. It doesn't work. Work that way and we'll let you share that. But I, but I wanted to lead with something that you said to me, because the foster parenting is, is the gospel, it is the gospel at its finest. And you said to me on a text message you said the one thing that I had to learn was not really about foster parenting, but it was that I had to love humans, and I mean I really I had to love in all caps humans, when it's not the easy thing to do.

Speaker 3: 15:15

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:17

Expound on that for me a little bit.

Speaker 3: 15:19

Yeah, people ask me a lot what is the hardest part of fostering or what's the most difficult thing that you've encountered, and every single time my answer is the amount of sanctification that I have personally been put through. Um, it's not. It's not the kids, it's. It's not their behaviors, it's not their trauma and all all this stuff that maybe preconceived notions tell you is going to make fostering difficult. Um, it is having to really look at myself and look at the dark, sinful parts of my soul and work them out with the Lord. It's.

Speaker 3: 16:02

It's easy to love people that are easy to love. It is Someone who is reciprocal to you, has a healthy relationship with you, attaches to you, someone who looks and thinks like you. It's easy to love those people, but it's really hard to love a human who doesn't show that they love you back. Maybe they don't love you back, maybe they don't want you in their lives, they don't want you to be their parent, and rightfully so. We weren't intended to be their parents. They want their birth parents. And it comes with difficult behaviors, difficult thought processes that they have. And those are the times when, when I've had to really get with the Lord and go. Well, this is what you meant by like really loving our neighbor and really loving the least of these and the most vulnerable. Because it's not. It's not easy and I have. I have an inclination to withdraw from people who I feel like I can't connect with, to um be really defensive. That's just like the nature of I don't know how God created me or how I developed in my childhood mechanism yeah.

Speaker 3: 17:22

Yeah, yeah and um. So I've had to work really really hard and I still do. This is a daily thing. I still have to work really really hard to get with the lord and say, okay, I cannot. Okay, she told me she hates me today, she doesn't want anything to do with me, she's giving me the silent treatment, she's being completely irrational about how we're handling this situation.

Speaker 3: 17:45

But you can't disconnect from her, cannot. You cannot put your walls up and say, forget her, I'm not going to do it anymore, because it's just not an option. That's not an option with when you're parenting a child. You can't do that. So the sanctification has been so unexpected and so difficult, but so good. I mean, I wouldn't trade it for anything. If, if, looking like Jesus and becoming more like Jesus is the outcome, why, why would you give up that process?

Speaker 2: 18:15

You stole the words right out of my mouth. Jesus doesn't give up on us when we go. I don't want you to be my father. I don't want. I'm mad at you, I'm. He doesn't, he doesn't go. Okay, I don't love you anymore. And so I think that when we start this conversation with that foundation and I know there will be people listening to this podcast who are not Christians and there will be lots of information in this podcast that will help you.

Speaker 2: 18:38

But I think I led with that because I wanted to. I wanted to highlight the importance of lots of people foster because it's popular or because they they went to a meeting and something tugged on their heart. Some people foster because they can't have their own children. I'm sure that's a lot of a lot of people who foster. They can't have their own children and you go into it with this expectation that they're going to unconditionally love you, that they're going to accept you, that they're going to attach to you, that they're going to operate inside of a family like normal, like Lani, you come from a fantastic family and I don't know about Matt's family, but I know your family. You come from a fantastic family where all the experiences, even though you have a crazy brother. All the experiences were love Jamie. Shout out to Jamie this perception of frankly.

Speaker 2: 19:44

I think you would agree with me, and I hate this word because it's so overused, but almost a privileged family in so much as you had two parents who loved you, not talking money or any of that stuff. You had two parents that loved you. And then now you bring these two children into your lives, who have experienced trauma, and look, if nothing else, zero else happened to those two girls no abuse, no, you know, they were fed, they were housed, they were all of that. One thing happened to them that this love that you talk about, that you have to bring from the depths of your soul, is going to bring them back, is they were rejected by the person who brought them into this world, either by their behavior or by their choice, and really those two things are the same thing, and so I don't want to get too sciencey here. But but the majority of the issues that are going to be experienced side of a foster home is two things. One I just mentioned they feel safe, and so the body is going to be experienced.

Speaker 2: 20:44

Side of a foster home is two things. One I just mentioned they feel safe, and so the body is going to begin to bring down the fight, flight or freeze. The brain is going to begin to go. Okay, I don't need to worry about a roof, I don't need to worry about clothes, I don't need to worry about food, I don't need to worry about my dad hit my mom, I don't need to worry about my mom doing drugs, I don't need to worry about any of that stuff, because now I'm inside this safe home and there's, there's almost this moment in your brain and I I've both experienced this and educationally know this there's almost this part in the brain where it goes what, now, now what? And so attachments are the issue and oftentimes children will misbehave to get you to give up on them. How many times in your social work did you see parent, foster, parents lose that battle? Call, cry, uncle, because the kid will test you.

Speaker 3: 21:41

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you think about how much biological kids test their biological parents in just a typical family, how much more is a child who has no foundation of secure attachment, no experience of a healthy familial relationship in any way, how much more are they going to test and say put your money where your mouth is. You know, you say you love me, you say you care about me. Let's see.

Speaker 3: 22:16

Yeah, Well, you love me through this and and kids will actively try to destroy that relationship as a defense mechanism, they truly begin to believe the lie that they don't deserve anything good in life, that this, they are destined for chaos they are. They are only bad. They they deserve all the bad things that happened to them. So when you remove them from that environment and then put them in a healthy, safe and loving environment, their mind is still telling them you don't deserve this. Like you, you are supposed to live a life of chaos. You're supposed to experience negative things, so it becomes like love and safety and security is so foreign to them that they don't know what to do with it and they just default back to what they do know. This is becoming too comfortable. This is becoming too secure. I got it Like I'm going to have to do something to create chaos because that's where I'm comfortable and that's what I know.

Speaker 2: 23:36

That's such a valid point. It is what they know, and even I I am. I'm not a child. I have often been heard, and often corrected by my friends, as referring to myself as a throwaway kid because my mom threw me away, the foster parents threw me away, and then later I was in a domestic violence situation and so, yeah, even at 35 years old, when you would have met me, that was still my thought processes.

Speaker 2: 24:00

I don't deserve happiness. Chaos is where I thrive. Don't give me a healthy situation, because I have no idea how to operate inside of a healthy situation, a healthy relationship, a healthy of any of those things, and I think that what is required and you can help me with this is lots of patience with that Right, a little bit of slow roll, I think I I think that foster parents get excited and they roll out the red carpet and they give them everything that they've never, you know, ever had before, and it's overwhelming to them because, like you said, their experiences have have have indicated to them this is my lot in life. I don't deserve this. These things that have happened to me of mine are my fault, because the fact of the matter is and this is scientific proof is that children from a very early from, babies so babies, for example they literally think that they are the center of the universe.

Speaker 2: 25:01

This is, this is this is not just Watson pontificating, this is, this is truth. Okay, babies believe that they're the center of the universe because that's how God made them, because they have great needs. Well, after healthy parenting, they really, you know, after about three or four and lots of healthy parenting, they realize I'm not the center of the universe. But when they don't get out of that I'm the center of the universe mode, when they get abused, when they get left, when they get fill in the blank because they still think that they're the center of the universe, guess what? They think it's my fault. And so there's this. So there's these foster kids walking into these foster homes, still believing that they're the center of the universe, and not in the narcissistic kind of way. That's not what I mean they've just never been parented out of.

Speaker 2: 25:57

You're not the center of the universe. At one point, when you were nine months old, yes, you had needs and you were the center of the universe, but you're not now. So not everything that happens is attached to you, is about you or is your fault. So when the girls first came in and and and I want to be very respectful of them because they are now teenagers and they could very easily listen to this podcast what were those early days like for you and Matt?

Speaker 3: 26:25

Um, I think I cried every night for the first week and I looked at him and I said what have we done? And it was nothing that they had. The girls didn't do anything. I just said what have we done? Our lives will never be the same again and we had no idea at that time that we would be adopting them in the future. But even if they had left our home, our lives were forever marked by by the time that we would have had with them.

Speaker 3: 26:54

And those those first days were they were. I remember them being fine. They were very mellow. Um, the girls were very nervous, uh, very scared, and this is their personality types, cause I know not every every foster family or child has this experience. Some do come in like tornadoes. That's just the reality. They were just. They were nervous. This wasn't their home. We were complete strangers.

Speaker 3: 27:26

I just had, um, I was just writing the other day and I had a thought what would it be like as a child to be removed from everything? I had known, people that I was familiar with, and then I had to fall asleep in a stranger's house and I had no idea who they were. I had no idea if they would hurt me. I had no idea who they were. I had no idea if they would hurt me. I had no idea if they were safe, if they were nice. This isn't my bed. It doesn't smell like what I'm used to. It doesn't feel like what I'm used to. Personally, I'd be staring at the door all night Like are they going to come in to my room? You know, it's just.

Speaker 3: 28:00

There was just apprehension at the beginning on, I think on all sides, matt and I tried to play it cool. Looking back, I'm like there's no way we actually played it cool, but we tried to just like, okay, act normal, act normal, cause we have strangers in our home and they are in a stranger's home. So everyone was just kind of tiptoeing for a while, trying to figure out what are the rules here, like that's. The other thing is that every family and house has a culture, whether you realize it or not. Um, you can have a list on your refrigerator of rules of this house, but there's a thousand more unspoken. Yeah, there's a. There's a thousand unspoken rules for every rule that you put on the refrigerator. And that's what I saw all four of us trying to navigate of the girls being really hesitant because they didn't want to break any rules. They didn't want to upset us. They were really scared of what our reactions would be if they messed up.

Speaker 3: 28:59

And then it was really important for Matt and I, when something did go wrong or they did do something that like wasn't right for our home, to come in and approach it with grace. Hey, I know you, I know you don't know this rule. This is kind of you're not in trouble, but here's what we're expecting in the future and here's why we were always explaining. Here's why we do things this way, why we were always explaining here's why we do things this way. It's always for your safety, it's always for your wellbeing, it's for the stability of this home. This is why we have these rules. Um, and then it really made Matt and I evaluate what rules had nothing to do with the safety and stability of our home. Wow, those are probably really stupid rules for us to keep.

Speaker 2: 29:43

So you had to pick the hills. You were going to die on pretty much, yeah, and it came down to safety and stability. I think listeners because we are talking about a trauma-informed she just dropped a foster parent, she just dropped a gem on us in that it is like safety, security, stability are the most important things and everything that you do really needs to be driven in that direction, and so I think that that's so important. I remember, like I can remember in this moment, even in my body right now.

Speaker 2: 30:18

I remember what you were talking about, like the first time I ever had my own bed was in this foster home, and I remember laying in that bed, like moving and not touching another human, or the sheets were clean and, like you said, the smells were different and all the things. But but I also remember thinking to myself and, like you and it's very important that you just pointed out that everybody's going to be different so I was all about not screwing it up, like I was, like I am going to be the best kid ever, you know, and make my bed. I'm going to work hard, I'm going to do chores because I somehow could if they somehow could have and somehow let me know that I was unconditionally loved either by their, and I didn't know that.

Speaker 3: 31:13

Yeah, I was. That was exactly what I was thinking as you were talking, and I'm remembering all the conversations and still, this is four years later, we are still teaching our girls what unconditional love is. Because I remember the first time we had a major, like a major blow up and one of them was weeping, crying in her bed and she said I'll just pack my bags, I'll just pack my bags. And I'm like what are you talking about? You know, I had been upset, I had been angry, but when she said that, I was like what are you talking about? She goes, it's fine, it's fine, I'll just leave. Like I've messed it up, it's, you know, I'll find somewhere else. And I said that's not, this isn't how we operate here. You're, first of all, you're, stuck with us, sorry. But secondly, she was.

Speaker 3: 32:05

She started articulating that she really thought that we didn't love her anymore because, because she had messed up and because we were angry, so being upset and being angry equated in her mind there's no more love here anymore. Um, and we had to really teach them unconditional love and unconditional love of the father. And nothing you do can earn our love and nothing you do can lose our love. Like it goes both ways. You don't have to be perfect, you don't have to do all your chores and say all the right things. And you know I don't want you walking on eggshells here in order to earn our love. And you know I don't want you walking on eggshells here in order to earn our love. But also, if you mess up, we do reserve the right to be upset and possibly provide consequences if appropriate, but that doesn't mean we don't love you at all. Yeah, unconditional love.

Speaker 2: 32:58

And some kids with attachment disorders, you know, will, will balk against that and they will. They will do whatever they can steal, runaway. I mean I'm talking massive, massive behaviors that it doesn't sound like you guys had, and and those cases and and I think this might be more more true about teenage boys in the home. I don't want foster parents to walk into it and I hope everybody gets training on trauma. Um, that's, I've just spent thousands and thousands of thousands of dollars to get a doctorate degree just on trauma, because that's how vast it is. And so I think part of the takeaway here is you got to know your kid and you got to know them quickly, like you don't get the eight years that you would have had with the youngest one to learn her personality. You have to understand and it goes back to your quote I had to understand that I have to love people, and when I say love people, I mean really love people. And for those of you out there listening who are fostering, you're like well, I didn't have that experience because my kids weren't timid and scared. They ran away or they took a baseball bat to their room or they harmed another person in the home. Those things happen In your experience?

Speaker 2: 34:23

What are the kind of supports that those kind of foster parents that are having massive issues like these, these children and sometimes we're talking we can range from significant learning disorders to defiance disorder, any of the conduct-related disorders, because what happens for the listeners and Lani I know you probably know this is what happens when there is trauma, especially early trauma. This is why there's so much focus on early childhood and adolescent trauma is that the significant brain changes happen in the brain. For example, when a child is harmed at any developmental stage, and particularly before the age of six years old, the brain will begin to actually prune away the things that we need later in life, like executive function, like what's appropriate, like when your prefrontal cortex is online that makes us not hit. You know, punch walls and hit people and those kinds of things. The brain actually prunes away those things in deference to survival.

Speaker 3: 35:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:32

And so when these kids are in these homes, they're not lost causes.

Speaker 1: 35:37

Their brain.

Speaker 2: 35:39

their brains are literally damaged and and that's when we got to call in the big guns and get, get help for them.

Speaker 1: 35:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:48

How long did it take for them to? And you said you're four years later and you're still still working through some of the stuff, as would be expected. Did you find that just kind of the stability and the consistency of the discipline in the home and the stability of the? We love you? I love what you just said because it's such a picture of Christ. It is Jesus's love. You can't do anything to earn it, you can't do anything to lose it Reminds me of the Corey Corey Asbury song reckless love.

Speaker 2: 36:20

What a great way to explain foster parent love. I didn't't earn it. I can't lose it, so I give myself away. Talk to us about some more experiences and, more particularly, knowing that there are people with children who are really demonstrating some yeah some issues that could be safety issues and um what? What are your thoughts on how to help them navigate that without giving them away?

Speaker 3: 36:50

gosh that I have so many thoughts on that because I do I empathize so deeply with families who genuinely not every child or, let me put it this way, not every family is equipped for every child. There are very legitimate reasons that maybe a child may no longer be able to safely stay in your home, but I would challenge and say that those reasons should never be because a foster parent just doesn't feel like doing the work, like it's just it feels too hard, or it just I'm frustrated or I don't have the patience for this, like it should never be a foster parent just giving up on this child, not what I signed up for, kind of thing Right.

Speaker 3: 37:46

Right, um, but also to say there are reasons that some children can't be with some families, um, and that should also be honored because that can end up being damaging to everyone, including the foster child, uh. So, with that prefaced, I will say we have had some pretty intense behaviors in our house from all three of our children, and none of them started right off the bat. We had a pretty good honeymoon period with all of them and I would say, when you ask when did we start feeling stability? And you know routine, it's almost hard to say because I feel like as soon as that started happening is when our kids started getting really comfortable in expressing the issues that they were holding inside. So it started to feel like chaos, even though I do believe that for them, they were feeling more stable and secure, which is why why these things are coming out.

Speaker 3: 38:52

Yeah, and on a subconscious level they were able to, you know, realize okay, this is a place where I can start working through some stuff and start healing. And part of healing from trauma is is working through it and the age old saying of it'll get worse before it gets better. They've got to get that stuff out and express it and then realize that some of the greatest, greatest lesson that I have been taught in being trained by a play therapist was that we have to make our kids know that their feelings are not bad. You have very legitimate reasons for having these feelings and if you're angry every minute of every day, that is a very legitimate feeling that you're having and it's not bad. But you also want kids to know that you're not scared of their feelings. So I am an adult and I'm healthy and I can regulate my emotions, so I'm not scared of you trying to work out your emotions and so you become that safe, validating place for a child of I know you're really angry right now. I can see that you're really trying to work through some stuff right now. I'm not scared of it. I you're really angry right now. I can see that you're really trying to work through some stuff. Right now, I'm not scared of it, I don't feel angry. I'm not angry at you. This is a safe place for you to be able to work these things out and it's not a magic pill, like it's not an instant fix pixie dust but over time, a child learning that I can, I can get these emotions out and I can express them and feel them. And my parent or foster parent or however they see you is still loves me and still cares about me and is not scared of those things and doesn't try to make me stuff it back down inside, um, that's what brings healing and that's where you see children start to heal and stabilize. And again, I don't want to paint this perfect picture, fairy tale, because we're going to be doing this for the rest of our lives until Jesus comes back and makes all things new. But it does get better when you have the correct approach, when you have trauma, informed approach, when you know how to be a stable regulatory force for this child, um, and you don't punish them.

Speaker 3: 41:14

I think that that's where a lot of foster parents get tripped up. Is they they want to punish and consequence for a child expressing and trying to like work through what they've experienced. And I see you've been talking about kind of like the fairy tale, rose colored glasses, foster parents, and that's so true. Love is not a miracle drug. Like we're, you're not gonna. You're not gonna love a child out of trauma.

Speaker 3: 41:45

But I see another type of foster parent as well that is very rigid and, uh, what I would consider like traditional American old school parenting. Uh, I'm going to hold really firm boundaries. I run a tight ship. Um, I'm very strict and this, it's almost going in of this child's going to learn. Like, I'm going to, I'm going to whip them into shape, we have high expectations here and you're going to, you're going to fall in line. And so then, when a child doesn't do that because it's literally impossible for them to do that you start giving them consequences, and consequencing a child who has experienced trauma almost never works, because they're either not scared of consequences Like these kids aren't fearful of you and your consequences Like they don't they've been through worse.

Speaker 3: 42:41

They've experienced the horrors of life, like they don't care that you took their TV away. They don't care you took their cell phone away, like they're not scared of these things. They will figure out a different way of surviving. Um, or they just don't connect that this consequence is happening because I did this. If I do something different, then I won't get a consequence. They don't have that cause and effect development in their brains.

Speaker 3: 43:09

So a therapist has told me always, always, always, connection over consequence. You always want to connect with a child through their struggles over choosing a consequence and it just is the most backwards way of parenting. I genuinely think that we have never had this type of parenting in our American society. I'm not a societal history buff, but if we think about our parents and our grandparents and maybe even our great grandparents' style of parenting, this idea of allowing a child to feel big feelings and then connecting with them through it, connecting with them through that, it's brand new.

Speaker 3: 43:55

And I have foster moms that are. They're in community with me and they're all the time they're like this is so hard, this is so difficult, I don't know what to do. I think I just messed this up. I think I shouldn't have said that, or I shouldn't have done that, and I've missed my opportunity for connection here and I've had to tell myself and these other moms we have to give ourselves grace because we are pioneering this type of parenting Like most likely, we have never seen this type of like, trust-based relationship, connected parenting before modeled for us. So we're fighting against our instincts and we're fighting against what we have known and how we've been raised and we're trying to do something totally new and different for the sake of these kids.

Speaker 2: 44:45

Yeah, wow, you said so much there with the thing that you basically just explained to me. That's that, that style of parenting and, by the way, that style of living and community in general with people that have been through trauma, and I'm grateful. But I have a team, literally a team of people we call them team Amy, from life coaches to I have somebody that I completely work with, just on nervous system regulation, to my counselor, to my friends, but the Lawrence Starnes, who was on the last episode well, by the time this one it would be two episodes ago talked a lot about nervous system regulation and so I worked with her for a full year because, whether you remember how type a I am or not, I don't know, I don't even know that I was alert enough to be type a when you knew me. But but I'm very high strung because I have a deep, deep history of trauma and no one and that was my experience was, walking into rigid environments, expected to be a normal child normal and again we're air quoting, if you're, if you're not on YouTube a normal child without any normal experience. And so what?

Speaker 2: 45:52

What Lauren did for me over the course of a year and this is the way she worded. She said I, I'm going to let my nervous system hold yours, and so what you explained is being this constant, steady presence of this regulated nervous system and I'm going to get to making sure you stay there in a minute because I love you. But yeah, you come to them cool, calm, collected, and now we say connected, I love it, connection over consequences, but cool, calm and connected. And you say to the child hey, I know you're feeling big things right now and you know what that is so good, I'm so proud of you for feeling those feelings and I want you to know that, as out of control as you feel right now, I'm good. I'm good over here.

Speaker 2: 46:48

Like I'm chill as a cucumber, so I can take it. So I'm here to help, help you process those big feelings whether that means you don't speak to me at all. You mentioned play therapy huge, huge. I just I did a lot of research for a recent class that I did on both play and art therapy, and in both of those therapies you will often get out of those children things that you would never get out of their mouths, their mouths. And so it's in those moments and I'm talking something, as I am talking very practical things at this point because they're borrowing your nervous system to regulate theirs and they're, and because what they're used to is, they'll react. And then whoever was in their life before and he's up, doubles down, then they react, and now you've got all the cortisol, the norepinephrine, all the chemicals are just dumping in both of you, and then it's kind of like you know, pointing a gun at each other and wondering who's going to point first.

Speaker 2: 47:55

And so what you just described to us and I do agree with you that it's a pioneering is a new way of thinking about not only parenting, foster children, but about existing in general. It's like in the body of Christ. We're all going to have these times when it's chaotic, when our enemy who is the prince of chaos? Because we do not serve a God of confusion. He is not the prince of confusion, that would be Satan.

Speaker 2: 48:21

And so when we in your case, foster parents and me, just as a normal human in society can provide this calm presence for people, it gives them the permission to fall apart because they'll know in your case, they'll know okay, she's not losing her, her stuff she's. She's not losing it, even though I am. She's not. There's no yelling, there's no throwing things, she's just kind of absorbing whatever's going on and she's accepting that. And she's teaching me to be neutral about what I feel like. These big feelings aren't bad, these big feelings aren't wrong. These big feelings are just what they are. This is how God made me, and so what you just described to us is so important in working with children is that you have to remain the calm, steady presence at all times. And when you can't be that calm, steady presence and you need to be self-aware enough to know when you've had it up to here and again on YouTube, I'm just doing the normal had it up to here when you're in that space.

Speaker 2: 49:30

You need to walk away, you need to separate yourself from the situation, because you're only going to do more harm. Yelling at them is not going to do anything. Responding in kind to them is going to just harm them, and so what you just described to us is so huge and so hard to do.

Speaker 3: 49:46

Yeah, you said yelling at them won't won't do anything, and it's, it's so true. You, you've got yelling. Uh, I won't take a deep dive into physical discipline of foster children or children, children from trauma in general. No, I mean, that's a, that's a whole can of worms. Like yelling at a child, putting your hands on them in a way that is aggressive or threatening or dominating in any way, threatening their basic needs. Safety, like withholding food? I can't think of many isolated him from their friends.

Speaker 3: 50:25

I isolate, you know, locking them from their friends. I isolate, you know, locking them in their room, making them stare at a wall in the corner until they've learned their lesson. You know, it's all of those things I always try to imagine myself as an adult right now, receiving whatever consequence I would give to my child. And how would that make me feel right now as a healthy adult? If someone told me I couldn't have food, if someone forced me to sit in my room by myself while I was struggling, if someone physically put their hands on me, like we would? Immediately our brains would trigger this is a major threat. We would go into fight, flight or freeze mode we, you know and all the chemicals that you were talking about would just dump into our brain.

Speaker 3: 51:16

And at what point do we think a child is going to be able to regulate and learn any type of lesson in that moment? It will always 100 percent create more issue. Now you'll either have a child who will escalate because they are a fighter in those moments, and then you've just got a battle of who's going to escalate more, or you have a child who has freeze responses and they will completely withdraw, completely shut down and become fearful of you and in both of those cases you you don't have a child who's progressing in healing and you're just going to keep coming back and revisiting the same issues over and over and over again. So having these consequences, it just oh. I don't want to get on a soapbox here, but it just crushes me. When I hear stories of parents who I think they're good intention, I like I don't want they're not trying to hurt children, but they really think like if I just give them this intense enough of a consequence they will learn. And it's just not how the human brain works.

Speaker 2: 52:24

It's not how the human brain works the end. And it's just not how the human brain works. It's not how the human brain works the end. And it's definitely not how a traumatic human brain works, because you mentioned a few minutes ago and so I'm going to go sciency here for just a second what we need to understand is that when trauma occurs and so for people on youtube you, you'll be able to see this, other people you've seen.

Speaker 2: 52:43

Let me do it before, but this is dr uh vesselessel van der Kolk who wrote the Body Keeps the Score talks about the brain, right. So you have, I'm holding up my fists with all of my fingers and my thumb is in the middle. And so this right here is what we call my fingers, my four fingers is what's called the prefrontal cortex. This is what tells us to be appropriate. This is what tells us that this is so when you get dementia here, this is why they you know we get some bizarre behaviors. Well, when trauma happens, dr Vessel calls it flipping your lid Boom, psc comes offline. Now I've raised my hands up, like I have four fingers up.

Speaker 2: 53:20

Now, if you imagine, my thumb is a hypothalamus excuse me, not the hypothalamus, the hippocampus and the amygdala. So the hippocampus being the fear center and the amygdala being the one that does what we call the adrenal renal hypothalamus cortex, which tells the brain dump all the chemicals, we're going to die, mm. Hmm, that is what you're doing when you're reacting like that to a child is now they're operating and I'm going to die and they're like a wounded animal backed in a corner and they're going to act like they're a wounded animal backed in a corner. So you talk about a soapbox. I could get on that all day long because we were expecting. We were expecting these children who, for the state, especially the state of Florida, because I saw what it took for the state of florida to take me from my mom.

Speaker 2: 54:08

It's bad, lanny, you know this for them to take parental rights they have been through more than many adults could ever dream in a million years, and so you can't.

Speaker 2: 54:21

And so my point in saying that is that then there's also this right brain, left brain thought processes, right brain being completely emotional, left brain being linear logic list, that kind of thing. Those, those things are supposed to talk to each other, but when they are in what I call trauma brain and I think that's actually a technical term when any any of us are in trauma, trauma brain, you don't have access to the left linear side of your brain. You don't have access to the left linear side of your brain. You don't have access. So two plus two will always be six to you until we get them out of trauma brain, until we get the prefrontal cortex back online and what you're talking about. I can envision you sitting on the couch with one of those young ladies having the big feelings and something like even just a touch. Now some, some, some kids will be like don't touch me, but a touch. They are going to receive that calmness.

Speaker 2: 55:15

Their body's going to be like oh okay, we're not on the battlefield, oh okay not on the battle and you can almost see this click down of the escalation of whatever's going on, and and then you simply look at them and say, okay, I know that this was about the fact that I told you you couldn't wear that to school, right, but let's talk about what it's really about. Can you tell me what's really going on and you notice me lowering my voice because they're borrowing my nervous system Can you tell me what happened, what happened in your brain, what triggered? Because that matters, that matters and what you get from that is healing and you get adults. That is healing and you get adults who will look back and go. I remember when my did they call you mom.

Speaker 3: 56:14

They don't. They call us Matt and Lainey. Okay so that's their choice, yeah.

Speaker 2: 56:18

Got you. So I remember when, when Lainey sat on the couch with me, when I freaked out because she wouldn't let me wear that to to church, we just sat there in some awkward silence, but she, she wouldn't respond to me in anger. She wouldn't respond to me and she didn't give me a consequence. She didn't make me stand in a corner, she didn't. She didn't send me to my room until I thought it out. She didn't do any of these things because, lani, the best thing that we can give people and, more importantly, the best thing we can give kids is our time and our regulated nervous system time. And so, for foster parents out there, you know, I don't think there's enough trauma training to teach them these things.

Speaker 3: 57:03

Right, no, I agree.

Speaker 2: 57:05

Like I think you probably did a bunch of deep. I had you as a student, so I know this is true. Not only did you have some education coming into it, but you're constantly taking a deep dive like on what can I do? How can we do this better? How can we be different, how could their story be different? And I think that that's important. And this brings me to an important point, and especially for you, but for also foster parents but you're human.

Speaker 1: 57:31

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:32

So how do you self-care so that your nervous system can handle theirs?

Speaker 3: 57:39

Well, I don't know if I'm the expert on that. I'm the expert on that. I'm sitting here thinking of all of these examples we've given all of the. This is the right way to respond Continuously keep teaching yourself, keep trying to learn, be flexible. You can't be rigid. You can't think that you know everything, because you're never going to know everything. But I'm also thinking of, like, what happened to my house last night and I'm also thinking of when I was really dysregulated in this moment and when I just lashed out and started screaming at them and I went and I slammed my bedroom door and you know I'm thinking of all of these moments in my head that I've.

Speaker 3: 58:26

I've read a ton of books. I've sat through live trainings. I've worked with multiple different kinds of therapists. I got a master's degree in child abuse and family violence. Like I feel very book equipped for this job.

Speaker 3: 58:42

But it's not just a job Like. This is now my life and this is my home and I'm a human and I can know every right answer in the world. But I'm still a human and I'm still going to have a defense mechanisms and I'm still going to have really crappy coping skills sometimes and I'm going my own lid is going to flip at times, right, so it's. There's also a lot of need for grace for yourself in these moments that you could quite literally have a ton of answers and know what to do and still not do it correctly. But the beauty is that you're the. A singular failure is not final. There's always room for healing after that and I think it's been.

Speaker 3: 59:29

I've seen really beautiful moments when I have really really messed up with my kids, like I have been the reason that they had a fight or flight freeze response. I've been the reason that they have flipped their lid Right and I. That is not the good thing, that is the failure and that is, uh, damaging to them. But then I think about the response after that when we've both taken time apart and I, as the adult, come back to them and I sit down and I have a regulated voice and I have a kind affect on my face, which is really important. Your, your unspoken body language. Communication is so important. These kids perceive everything about your facial features and body language.

Speaker 3: 1:00:20

Um, but I come back to them and I say I really messed that one up Like I should not have said that.

Speaker 3: 1:00:27

I should not have spoken to you like that. I should not have fill in the blank. That's not who I want to be, and I value your safety and your wellbeing way more than when I lost my mind in that moment. Can you forgive me? Can we move on? Do you know that? I still love you and I hope that you feel the same way back towards me, even though we had this rough patch. And that also teaches them. When I lose my cool, when I feel these big emotions and I don't handle myself in the right way. There are ways to restore relationships even after you've messed up, and I think that that is so important that the way you are going to fail in certain ways as a parent, you are going to have moments that you're not proud of and you're not going to do it by the textbook, but the way you respond and recover from those moments can be a lot more healing than maybe even if you had responded correctly the first time.

Speaker 2: 1:01:29

Right and a teachable moment. It makes them feel less alone, like, oh, you mean, you don't have to have gone through all these things to feel these big emotions and to slam doors and to throw them at. Through my the other day, something happened and I literally threw my phone. First of all, it's a thousand dollar phone, watson, what are you doing? But secondly, completely flipped my lid, and it's a human response.

Speaker 2: 1:01:53

It's particularly a response to those of us with trauma in our background, and so I don't want people listening to this to think that they have to do it perfectly. But I think what you've said here today is so valuable in that you can't walk into this with a rigid because, by the way, a child's response to trauma is often rigid. Being rigid, it's being perfectionist, like they need to be perfect to themselves, they're going to be hard on themselves, all of those things, and so I think for them to to have modeled in front of them hey, when, when you do flip your lid, when you do lose it because you're not perfect, and particularly some things that are going to set you off, and especially, as you know, for those of you foster parents who are raising them, you know, when they hit puberty and all of the things I mean, all of the normal issues with raising kids, are still there.

Speaker 1: 1:02:45

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:02:46

And then you have these trauma issues that are attachment issues, and the sad part, lani, is some kids will never attach. Some foster parents need to hear me say that you could do everything we're talking about here today and we're not perfect and we're here for educational and entertainment purposes only, but I think there's been some good wisdom shared here. You could do all of those things right, like you said, and it's still unfortunately not work out. But at the end of the day, if you're going to foster a child and you're buying into the white picket fence dream, then you might need to spend your money and your time elsewhere, like supporting foster care organizations or volunteering in a children's home or volunteering in something, because this is a calling, this is a hot calling.

Speaker 2: 1:03:40

We talk a lot at our church in particular, about unreached people, groups, and these are they. Yeah, have they heard the gospel? Sure, but they're. They're unreached in the sense that and their brains. It all doesn't make sense. Like.

Speaker 2: 1:04:00

I'm going to church learning about a good god. I'm learning. I'm going to church learning about faith and love and how much Jesus loves me. Well, if he loves me, why did he let this happen to me? And so it's complicated and it's not for the faint of heart and it's a mission field. And that mission field, as the Bible says, the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few, few. So thank you for being one of those laborers as a product of this system.

Speaker 2: 1:04:32

And, like I said, the best thing that ever happened to me was I went to the children's home and so I didn't bounce from children from foster home to foster home, and this was in the 80s when, yeah, that was exactly how it was done staying in the corner, physical punishment, isolating from friends, none of this stuff. This is why I wanted this podcast to be the trauma-informed foster parent, because there's foster parents out there. They're doing some of the things that we've talked about that you might do in a normal family, though I would argue that some of the things and I'm on the same soapbox as you are, as that pertains to physical we should we probably should just not do that period. I loved what you said like what if we did that to a full-grown adult with a fully formed brain? Like how would that work out for us, you know? And so it is such a calling and.

Speaker 2: 1:05:24

I I'm so proud of. For what? For what you're doing and what you will continue to do. I guess my last question to you is, as a part of we both go to again I mentioned this already we both go to the same church. It's a rather large church. How can we, as your community? We already pray for you, so don't don't go for the low hanging fruit community. We already pray for you, so don't don't go for the low hanging fruit.

Speaker 3: 1:05:53

How can we practically come alongside you? That's a that's a great question and I I appreciate how many people ask that question because I do believe that people's minds are in the right place, that their hearts are in the right place when they hear about foster care, they hear about the needs. So many times their question is what can I do? I can't take a child into my home. I'm not called to do that. If you think it's a good thing to do, don't do it. If it's a calling on your life.

Speaker 3: 1:06:25

Very practical ways of helping. Probably the greatest blessing and maybe it's because just it's fresh on my mind Just last week someone paid for a house cleaner to come to my house and deep clean my home. That was the greatest blessing I have received in a really long time, because this house is a mess with three kids in it and for someone to just say I have the means to do this and I want to bless you. And maybe, if they didn't have the means for it, someone says, hey, can I come vacuum your house today? And I know that's a little. Some foster families might not want that. Some foster families might just don't want you in their house and that's okay too. We have a great group of people surrounding our family who give us gift cards food gift cards so we've given a list to this group of people of our kids' favorite fast food places. So they just give us support that way and that feels really you can email us that list. Email me that list.

Speaker 3: 1:07:28

Yeah, absolutely yeah, and it's just such a blessing because our kids see that we're getting these gift cards. They know that there are people outside of our family who care. Um, one really sweet high school girl from Matt's student ministry told us when we first started fostering. She said I want to babysit for you for free, anytime that I'm available and you need it. And we have tried to pay her a dozen times and she always no, absolutely refuses. She said this is my service to you as a foster family. So there are just. There are so many different, unique ways and I think the most important way to find out I know a foster family, or I want to know who a foster family is how can I help them, build a relationship with them and find out what their needs are. It's like we've said, it's community, it's relationship, it's intimacy and knowing people, and that's where needs get met.

Speaker 2: 1:08:27

Great practical suggestions and I want you to send me that list, but I think it's important for you and Matt to be able to have date nights. That's a very millennial thing to do, but I love it. I think that it's important. I think it's important that you guys stay as a unified front because, yeah, you're going to have a bad day, he's going to have a good day, and hopefully you don't both have a bad day at the same time, although that happens. But we do want to practically help you. Those of us who are not able or called to foster, we can help.

Speaker 3: 1:08:58

And.

Speaker 2: 1:08:58

I hope that podcasts like this help people understand what it looks like inside a foster care, a foster home, and how we can help.

Speaker 2: 1:09:09

And, of course, we're praying of course we're praying, because we know, lanny, and I want to encourage you of one of my favorite verses and I just named my my 501c3. After this is one of my favorite verses in the bible is joel 225 when he will redeem the years that the locusts have stolen and that is true for your three kids he will redeem those years that the locusts have stolen. And we don't get to pick what that looks like. And there are foster kid parents out there saying I did all of that and my foster kid is still on drugs or didn't make it.

Speaker 2: 1:09:42

Because the sad part is that's probably the majority of the story, because sometimes the damage is so, so bad by the time they get into the foster care system that it's just, it's almost a point of no return, unless just the Lord does a miraculous. Miraculous and and and fortunately we live in a world where at some point harmed children and I was one of these you have to make a decision. Okay, I know what's right and wrong now and I have to choose. I didn't get to choose what happened to me back then, and one of my favorite therapists I think I posted it on Facebook this morning your trauma is not your fault, but healing is your responsibility. And so to raise these children to know your trauma is not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility. And so to raise these children to know your trauma is not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility.

Speaker 2: 1:10:29

And here's some tools that you've outlined for us here today, to move towards healing, to give them the best chance of a good life. Because, you see, it wasn't until I was 35 years old that I didn't think that I was the problem, that I didn't seek chaos, that I didn't some of those things that you're describing in your teenagers. When I was standing in front of you teaching at Calvary, I was still thriving in chaos. I was still thriving in a world where I thought I didn't deserve anything except for bad things, because that never got unbroken in my brain. It is now, which is why I'm so passionate about what I'm doing, and I've abandoned my entire career and made a hard right turn because I believe that there is hope in Jesus, there's hope in the power of choosing him, but there are so many people that I could just name off that led me to him and allowed me to make that choice, and so thank you for being here today.

Speaker 2: 1:11:24

We could talk forever and maybe we'll have another episode, but I always give the mic to the guests at the end for parting words. And so when you think about your why the foster parent that you want to minister to that's in a dark room, maybe hiding from their said foster child. So they don't slam doors with an earbud in their ear. What do you say to them? So they don't slam doors with an earbud in their ear? What do?

Speaker 3: 1:11:45

you say to them, remembering your why, as you said, is so important, remembering why you're doing this. For those of us who do live in the Christian world and who have spiritual beliefs, my why has always been the enemy is out. For the souls of our children, that's what he wants. If he can take a child when they're young and he can hurt them and break them and change their entire belief system about who they are and what their purpose and place is in the world, then he has a better chance of being successful with them for the rest of their lives. And that is why Matt and I stepped into this place. That's why we're doing what we're doing, because we have the hope of the gospel. We have a message of healing. We have a message of a God who unconditionally loves us, who does not forsake us when we have messed up or when we are dirty. We have a God who, who runs and pursues us to come home. And that is what we want to display to these kids who, if we didn't step into this place, then who will? If? If we're not going to do it, then who's going to do it?

Speaker 3: 1:13:22

And there are times where there are there are intense struggles there. These are the deepest um emotional struggles. These are some of the darkest places that I have found myself in trying to like, you're looking. You're looking evil in the face a lot, and I'm not saying that these children are evil, but what they have experienced is evil. And you are coming into a place where you're looking it in the eye and you're saying you don't rule here, you don't own this place and you don't own this child. So, remembering why we're doing this, it's not self-serving.

Speaker 3: 1:14:02

And a lot of times Matt and I have had conversations where we've said man, I just wish that they would have a little more gratitude.

Speaker 3: 1:14:10

The other night I found myself saying you're welcome for giving you a totally different life when you could have been abandoned for forever. And I have to catch myself in those moments, because it's not about me receiving a thank you back and it's not about me receiving, like, a pat on the back and a warm hug from a child that says thank you so much for being my savior, because it's not us Like. We are not the savior. We are the vessel in which the savior can work if we are willing. And so that's what I would say Hold fast to what your convictions are. Hold fast to what you know you are called to do in life, even when it gets hard, and continue to read books and listen to podcasts and educate yourself and never think that you've come to the end, because there is always something new to learn and something new to implement and your children your children or child are always in the process of healing you. You have not come to the end.

Speaker 2: 1:15:14

Right and very similar to us. You know we we think, because we're adults, that that this isn't how God deals with us. You know he lets us borrow his nervous system. He hangs, he holds on to us, he deals gently with us. He loves us unconditionally. You know, I think of the movie Sound of Freedom and as you were talking, I just kept thinking this is the message to Satan is God's children are not for sale. They're not yours.

Speaker 1: 1:15:41

No.

Speaker 2: 1:15:42

And we will step up there.

Speaker 2: 1:15:44

There will be those of us that step up in whatever capacity God wants us to, whether it's somebody sleeping in our home or a podcast like this, or money, or time or effort or prayers or whatever.

Speaker 2: 1:15:55

But this is the opportunity to change the world because he, satan, wants them and, especially in this culture, more than ever. They are faced with more things than we ever could imagine. Even as a huge age difference between you and me, these kids right now are dealing with things that we never even could have dreamt of, and so I love that, remembering that Satan is our enemy. But the star of the story as we talk about in this podcast, jesus, will be glorified, and he will. He will make all things new and until that day, we can remember that he will also redeem all the years of the that the locusts have stolen. Because, again, those of you listening to the sound of my voice and to lanny, you see and you hear a child, an adult child, who watched judge sign away your mom's criminal rights, effectively saying she didn't want you. And here I am and I am not perfect and I am so in counseling, and I have team Amy, as I mentioned, but I'm OK, satan didn't win.

Speaker 1: 1:17:01

Does it?

Speaker 2: 1:17:01

mean that he's not still trying, that Satan didn't win, and so thank you for what you do, thank you for being here today. You know I am always here, I am praying for you and Matt and in any way practically I can help you at any time. You let me know that I'm so, so grateful for you. Never in a million years did I dream 14 years ago, when I looked out the right side of my eye and saw you sitting in my chemistry and anatomy class, that we would be sitting here today having such a kingdom advancing conversation. I'm so proud of you, I'm so grateful for you, and those kids one day will stand before God because of you at that, and you will stand before God and Matt will stand before God and hear well done. So you keep fighting, girl. You keep fighting and know that we're here for you.

Speaker 3: 1:17:48

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:17:49

Thanks for being here. Okay, guys, we will be back in two weeks. We are jumping in to a couple more trauma informed series. I don't quite know what I have for you next, and so you will just have to tune in to be surprised.

Speaker 2: 1:18:04

I did want to mention, as I did at the beginning of the podcast, that there is a brand new feature in the show notes. So if you look in the show notes, there will be an opportunity for you. It'll say send a text message. So if you have a question for Lani or for me, hit that button, send a text message, give us your Instagram handle and we will answer your questions at the best of our ability on Instagram. And so again, just right there in your app, open it up, hit send a text message, give us your Instagram question, instagram handle with your question, and we will answer that to the best of our ability. Until then, lani, I'm going to say to you, and I want you to say this there's three precious children, and Matt too, and I say it to our audience. I don't close a podcast without saying it. I believe it with my whole heart.

Speaker 1: 1:18:57

Lani, you're seen, you're known, you're heard, you're loved and you're valued. We'll see you guys in two weeks. Who will love me for me, not for what I have done or what I will become. Who will love me for me, cause nobody has shown me what love, what love really means, what love really means. He's waiting to die as he sits all alone.

Speaker 1: 1:19:34

He's a man in a cell who regrets what he's done. He utters a cry from the depths of his soul oh Lord, forgive me me, I wanna go home. Then he heard a voice somewhere deep inside and it said I know you've murdered and I know you've lied and I have watched you suffer all of your life. And now that you're the singer, I'll tell you that I, I will love you for you, not for what you have done or what you will become. I will love you for you. I will give you for you. I will give you the love, the love that you never knew. I will love you for you, not for what you've done or what you will become. I will love you for you. I will love you for you. I will give you the love, the love that you never knew. Thank you.