By Analiz González
Buckner International
Mona Harvey opens a Bible and reads to her two foster children from the first story she finds.
“Hannah had no children and that made her very sad.” Mona pauses to laugh. “How ironic,” she says, and goes back to reading. “But in time, God gave her Samuel.”
Harvey, age 54, is a single career woman. She has a law degree and two-story suburban home. But before Brian, 8, and Avery, 6, it was empty. And quiet.
Today, the sibling pair wrestles on the living room floor and performs Jesus Loves the Little Children with singing and sign language. Every couple of minutes, Avery bursts out with her latest vocabulary word: “Hideous!”
Harvey listens patiently. Her voice wouldn’t put out a candle if she held it to her lips when she spoke.
Harvey’s life was once a mixture of social gatherings, church meetings and work. Now it consists of Boy and Girl Scout meetings, homework assignments, play therapy sessions and doctor’s appointments, not to mention the extra loads of laundry. Oh, and she still works, too.
“It’s fun but there are sacrifices,” Harvey said. “Sometimes I’m so exhausted. I’m sleepy in staff meetings. … Their schedule has consumed my schedule. I had thought when I was working full time and going to graduate school part time that I was busy. But this is much more demanding. ”
Harvey first considered fostering after meeting a lady who was selling pins of children’s faces to raise funds for an adoptions agency. Harvey said the woman clarified some of her questions on foster care and adoption.
“I had thought fostering wasn’t an option after age 40 and I didn’t know singles could do it,” Harvey said. “So I kept it in the back of my mind because at the time I was traveling and wouldn’t have been able to care properly for the kids.”
A few years later, she got connected to Buckner and decided that she wanted to be a foster parent. It turned out to be different from what she had anticipated, she said.
“I went into foster parenting thinking that it was all about me,” Harvey said. “This is what I want. I have this void at this time and this how I can fill it. But after I went through the six-week orientation course, I realized that none of it is about me. You are doing it for the children and it’s all about what’s best for them. In fact, a huge goal in fostering is to support reunification, if possible, with the children’s family.
“When they first arrived, people referred to them as ‘Mona’s kids.’ And I would think, ‘Yes, they are my kids. I don’t want to let go of them.’ But I need to be careful to not put myself between them and their mom. I can’t see myself as their mom’s rival.”
Harvey recently ordered the children’s school pictures and framed them for their mother. “Because I can’t imagine how hard that must be, not being able to live with your kids,” she said.
Avery will draw pictures of her family: her father, who is in prison, her mother, whom she can’t live with, her older brother, living with her in Harvey’s home and her little sister, in another foster home. But she draws them all together. And sometimes, when she’s in school or daycare, she’ll cry because she misses her mom, Harvey said.
“No matter how happy they are here, there will always be that void. When Avery makes something, it’s for her mom. But I understand that and I accept that.”
Yet, she still finds herself planning for their future.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen. They may go back to their mom or they may go home to another relative. I’ve gotten really attached. I realize that they might go and that I’ll never see them again. But I don’t know how I’ll feel if they go. And they probably will.
As Harvey finishes the bedtime story, with one little head on each of her shoulders, it’s hard to miss the irony.
“This is the son God gave me,” she says, quoting Hannah. “Now I am giving him back to God.”
The Gift of Children
