Between a rock and a hard place...

On Monday evening my cell phone rang and it was a number from Northern Virginia I didn't recognize. I don't answer calls from numbers I don't know so I let it go to voice mail. Only they didn't leave a message, but called back. Again I ignored it (while doing a reverse telephone number search online to determine if it was a land line or cell phone to see if I could figure out who was calling me) again allowing it to go to voice mail.

This time the caller left a message. It was Joshua and Luke's (half - same biological mother, different dads - but we don't do "halves" or "steps", believing that ALL sibling relationships have equal value and importance) little sister who is just shy of 12 years old. She sounded so sad and unsure of what to say and said she was calling to wish Josh and Luke a Merry Christmas. I pulled out an old letter from bio mom and sure enough it was the little girl's personal cell phone number. We are wondering if she found the number and snuck and called it on her own or if someone (her mother) put her up to it. Likely it was the later.

As parents this sent our emotions into a tizzy. Our heart goes out to this little girl - while we don't know exactly what goes on in that home we have a good idea and we know it to not be a healthy environment for a child to grow up in. Her life lacks stability and she is being raised with a very shaky foundation. Not to mention she has spent her entire childhood seperated from her siblings. She has two big brothers who are powerless to protect her as big brothers do and she has absolutely no concept of what a sibling relationship is all about. At no point in her life has she ever spent more than a couple of hours at a time in the same room as them (unless you count bio mom abducting Josh and Luke when they were 3 and 2 and running off with them and their sister who was an infant, but she was caught in less than a month and it was 2 years before the siblings were reunited and even then visits have always been sketchy and irregular.

Our initial knee-jerk reaction was to wonder if we could find some way for their sister to have contact with Joshua and Luke. We have practically begged and pleaded with the grandmother to work with us to facilitate a relationship between them even if bio mom is unwilling to be part of the boy's lives. We are stonewalled at every turn and because this is someone else's minor child. There is nothing we can do. And it breaks our hearts.

We have offered visits to the grandmother (Bio mom stopped doing her visits 3 years ago. Again.) for herself and the sister. We created email accounts for the boys so that they could easily contact them. Nothing.

My heart aches for this little girl. I wish there was some way that we could reach her, but sadly at the age she is now the damage is already done. What will be will be... we just have to wait for them to come of age so they can have a relationship separate from their mother. My mother heart worries that that will never happen. There will always be room here for her if she wants to be a part of us, but with the lies she is being told that may never happen. But I know that God is bigger than this situation. I pray a hedge of protection around her. I pray that He will guard her jealously for Himself and that she will come to know Him personally. I pray that her heart will find Him, the truth, and a close loving relationship with her big brothers.