Planning for the Future

About a year ago I told my sister-in-law and her husband that I'd talk to them about how they were doing at the end of the year. These are the parents of the four children of which we have legal custody. That means it's about meeting time. My goal in doing that was to add a little bit of evaluating and reporting to their lives outside of court. Maybe they would change their behavior knowing that they would be responsible to talk about it later. They had asked at Christmas time if we could delay for a month and talk things over at the end of January, so I agreed to their request.

The reason for the review is that we'd seen them struggle over the previous 18 months or so that we'd had their children living with us. They'd split up, gotten back together, been deep into the drug scene, been homeless, wrecked the vehicle they'd neglected to insure, and who knows what else. I wasn't documenting things as well back then.

I'd hoped to give them another reason to do better, but the truth is that nothing significant seems to have changed this past year. Maybe they're keeping some big success story back so they can spring it on me and say "See? I won the lottery," or something like that, but I doubt it. The mom has shown some effort starting rehab again this month, but she's done that before too.

So how do you go about planning for the future when you have no idea what's coming down the road next? The only way we've found that works is to assume that the parents will take care of themselves for good or ill, and plan as if we will have custody of the children until they are adults.

Given this viewpoint, what happens if we're wrong and the parents straighten out, solving all their legal, moral and financial issues, and become paragons of virtue and pillars of society? Everyone is happy, we have a big family reunion, fill out any necessary paperwork, and Bam. Happy families for everyone.

So, what happens if we're right and progress is insufficient? The parents keep on doing whatever it is that they do, and we keep on planning for school activities, summer vacations, piano lessons, church, and all the other things that make up our normal lives. No waiting, no hanging out in the breeze until something happens. No second guessing. Life is consistent, and often very good to us.

I'm sure you've heard the expression "Pray as if everything depends on God, and work as if everything depends on you." We've taken that to heart, and plan our lives with our expanded collection of children as if this is normal life, and by doing so it really becomes normal life. Oh, and we won't stop praying for their parents either.