Funny Socks

I'm an older mom with a large family of nine children, and also a foster mom for the state. Sometimes the sheer amount of caring for others, makes us moms of big families neglect ourselves a little bit.

Recently, I remarked to three of my children, two boys ages 16 and 14, and a girl age 11, that I was not feeling pretty anymore. As children will, they began to tell me that I wore drab, uncolorful clothes, and that I was always bending over taking care of some child, so when people looked at me, that's what they saw. My drab, uncolorful behind.

Okay, that was the wrong thing to say. That afternoon, I got on ebay, and I bought some colorful cow socks. See, I told my children!! Drab ladies don't wear cow socks. From now on, I will buy funny, colorful socks, and I won't be drab anymore. My children MOANED!!!

I wrote the ladies on my email list about my idea. They thought I had lost my mind, too, but they were a little nicer in the way they tried to tell me...

A couple of weeks went by, my cow socks came in the mail, I continued my quest to find other undrab socks. But soon that was all pushed aside by the fact that my beautiful little two year old foster daughter, who had lived with us for 20 of her 26 month old life, would be leaving soon in a relative placement in another state. My heart was broken, and I wondered how I would ever live through losing her. There was no changing it, though, and soon the day came, and she left. The ladies on my email list walked through it all with me, from the day she came, to the day of her leaving.

Our family was already planning a small vacation, and they decided leaving the same day our little foster daughter left would be a good idea. I agreed, because I knew that I would see her everywhere I looked in those first few days of missing her. I wrote the ladies on my list the night before the baby left, pouring out my heart, and then I went 'no mail' and clicked off the computer until we got back home.

The next week was one of the hardest of my life. I spent much time in tears and prayer, as I tried to reconcile my heart with letting my little foster daughter go. I had loved her so much. Being away from home did help, but finally the week ended, and we came back. Going back into what I called the 'babies room' and seeing her empty bed was so very hard. I decided the next day I would take it down until a new foster child came to live with us. In tears, the bed went out to the storage shed. I came back in, and took up my life without my foster baby.

Later that day, my son went to get the mail, and he came in and wanted to know what I had ordered. "Nothing," I said. "Well, you got two packages." He tossed them on the table. Puzzled, I looked. One had a return name that I recognized from my email list, the other one didn't have any name. I opened them, and out fell a pair of bear socks from one, and a pair of fuzzy brown socks from another one. I laughed outloud for the first time in a week. They were sending me socks to cheer me up. Over the next week, socks kept coming: cat socks, fruit socks, all kinds of socks. I don't know what they could have done that would have cheered me up more. It was such a sweet thing to do, with such sweet timing!

Matthew 5:4 says blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Thank you to my friends who comforted me in my latest trial. It worked, and it taught me a good lesson in reaching out!