Last night on Nov 13 was a big step for my 4-year-old boy. He slept by himself in his own bed, in his own room for the very first time. This morning when I saw him, I asked him, “Did you sleep in your own bed last night?” He beamed with a big smile and was so proud of himself, raising his hands in the air to celebrate and saying, “Yes, I did! Yayee! And I wasn’t lonely!” I gave him a high-ten and told him I was so proud of him. It was such a huge step for him in his process of growing up. I know there are a lot of various theories about co-sleeping, whether should or should not and until what age. Having our son sleep in our bed was a judgment call we made because sleeping in company for him helped him to rest much more than if he were by himself. And repeated good night’s rests were essential to the healing of his body.

Leading up to this significant night were many conversations about how sleeping in your own bed and in your own room was part of growing up, that there was nothing to be afraid of and his bed and room were especially for him. There were several attempts by him to sleep on his own but they were not fulfilled. He found himself back in our bed. We didn’t forced or pressure him. We gave him the choice if he wanted to sleep that night in our bed he could or if he wanted to try sleeping in his own bed he could. My wife would read to him his night time story, say his nightly prayers with him and sleep in his bed with him until he fell asleep.  But many times, he would get up and come back to our bed. We knew he would do it when he was ready for it. We talked it over with him many times before he finally did it. But as we were coaching him, he asked a question that stumped me: “So growing up means being alone?” “Well, no, that’s not it,” I said, fumbling over my words because I knew what the physical action of no longer sleeping with mommy and daddy as a family symbolically looked like – what sleeping in his own bed alone looked like. Of course this made me think about the importance of growing up as an individual and progressively developing one’s independence as not equating to being alone. And yet, I’ve wondered how much our culture promotes that exact message, that our highly valued form of individualism actually creates more aloneness.   And, what would it essentially mean to communicate to a child that you’re growing up into your own person which means some separation from mom and dad as life progresses and yet you’re never really alone or detached from mom and dad on a meaningful, practical level? I said to him that, “You’re not alone. Mommy and Daddy are always here for you.” Those are the words. But as something physical has been removed from him (a physical thing that meant a lot to him in these early years of his life), I feel the importance of emphasizing something else that’s physical, tangible that conveys to him that he is not alone – that familial community is still essentially a part of his life and to the development of his identity. I want to convey to him in a felt way that increasing levels of independence and individualism doesn’t mean finding yourself in a vacuum. I believe a strong, loving and healthy family (as healthy as any family can actually be) and being deeply connected to that family is insurmountably vital to a person, especially to a young soul that’s growing up.  I don’t want him to think that independence means aloneness.  The two don’t have to be equated.

Well, you may think that perhaps him sleeping in his own bed for the first time is more of a significant step for me than it is for him!  Yeah, it is.

I wanted to take my 2.5-year-old son on an adventure in Stanley Park, Vancouver to find a big head, about the size of a person, carved out of a tree trunk. I showed a picture of it that I found online to my son. He immediately got excited. I asked him if he wanted to go on an adventure to find this “Big Head,” and he was ecstatic. This is my and my son’s first time to Vancouver. My wife’s second time but she had not been to Stanley Park.

When I showed the picture of the carved head to a staff person operating a tour service in Stanley Park and asked her where I could find this, she was shocked that she had never seen this before. That made finding it more intriguing.  I asked the woman at the information booth and she said, “Finding it will be tough, but I can point out the area it is located in.” The mystery enticed me even more to find this head, accentuating the feeling of going on an adventure with my son. She marked it off on the map for us and off we went! I showed the map to my son, told him this was our “treasure map” and pointed out the spot on the map. He would from time-to-time hold the map, walk with it, and pretend to read it. He ran on the trail, chasing me and me chasing him. We saw colorful ducks.  We saw a swan sitting in a huge nest it made for itself. We came across a turtle, held it, and took pictures with it. A very well-mannered raccoon kindly approached us, and we took pictures with it. After an hour and a half of trekking, we finally came to the area. I said to my son, “We’re here. The Big Head is in here somewhere. Let’s look for it!” That’s when we entered the unexpectedly disturbing.

The area was just off the main path. A couple of dirt paths led into the woods. The paths criss-cross and wound this way and that. So we wandered around in there, looking at the picture shown online and tried to find the tree trunk with the giant head. Inside the woods, I was reminded of Fangorn Forest in Lord of the Rings – Two Towers. There were other people in the woods as well. My first thought was that these people were also here looking for the giant head! We followed one or two of them, thinking they knew where it was, but it turned out that they would back track the way they came. In fact, there were quite a number of individuals meandering in these woods. They appeared to be walking aimlessly. Of course, I think we appeared to be walking aimlessly as we searched for this head. Some individuals that sat on logs and others wandered. I thought they were there for some solitude. There was a tent pitched in one area. And there were some that walked together in two’s. After 20 minutes of us searching with no success, an older man approached me.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

I kind of didn’t want the reward of discovery to be taken from me, so I didn’t say I was looking for a giant, wooden head, carved in a tree trunk. “We’re just looking around,” I said with a smile.

He took a couple steps closer and said, “This area isn’t safe.”

That was weird, because I thought, Well, what are you doing here then? “Not safe from what?” I asked, thinking maybe he was referring to animals, like snakes, or the ground being too uneven and slippery. But again, what was he doing here then?

“What?”

“Not safe from what?” I repeated. “What’s not safe here?”

“This area is for men,” he stated.

Now I was puzzled.  I looked around the woods. “What do you mean it’s for men?”  Were these guys monks?

“You figure it out.”

My wife, who had been searching in another spot not far from me, approached. I said to her, “He says this area is not safe, that it’s only for men.” My wife had the same surprised, puzzled look I had.

I asked, “Why would an area for men be unsafe.” I know. I wanted to really drill in on this and get to the bottom.

“This is place is for gay men,” he clarified. “By law, you have a right to be here, but I’m letting you know that it’s not safe for your wife and your son. You should stay on the main path.”

I politely thanked him for letting us know, because we were clueless about what we walked into. I suddenly did notice that there were only men in this area.  We came across more than a dozen. I was reluctant to leave still, because we had an adventure to accomplish with our son! But nonetheless, we started to make our way out. And sure enough, as we were about to exit the area, a man who was wrapping up his tent shouted something belligerent at us. Once we were back out on to the main path, we saw one stranger walk up to another stranger, exchange a few words briefly, and walked off into the woods together.

My wife and I were disturbed by the experience. I was extremely perturbed that a group of people could capture a beautiful, public area for themselves for their diabolical purposes, adulterate it, and prevent others from being able to share this place. This was Stanley Park, one of the main attractions of Vancouver! We had more than a legal right, by law, to be there.  We had an inherent right to the beauty of the place that is part of this earth.  The man who warned me was respectful, but he made it clear to my family and me that we were not welcomed. We didn’t belong, as that was reinforced by the other man shouting at us. There was a part of me that wanted to finish our search for my son, but I didn’t know what we could’ve walked into while peeking around in the woods. So we did the prudent thing and walked away. My heart sink the most when our son asked where the big head was, and I told him that we couldn’t find it. We couldn’t complete our adventure.

Nearly three hours from the time we started on our adventure, we made our way back to our rental car and drove to our next destination – the famous Totem Poles in Stanley Park. When our son got out of the car, he saw the totem poles and said, “I found the big head!” He ran to the wooden totem poles with the many large heads carved into them, thinking that was what we had been looking for all along. My heart was lifted at seeing his joy and his sense of completing our adventure. On our drive back to the hotel, he said with reassurance, “Daddy, Daddy, we found the big head.”

I replied, “Yes, we did.”

Dear Josiah,

My little Jai Jai, adoption is something that is still not understood very well these days. Adoption is not common. So, one day when you go to school, some of your schoolmates or friends might ask you questions that could bother you. They aren’t being mean. They just don’t understand. Some of your friends may ask you, “Why don’t you look like your daddy?” They may say, “I look like my daddy. People say I have his eyes.” You might feel bothered, maybe even hurt, and wonder, “Why don’t I look like Dada?” You might say, “Dada, I don’t have your eyes. Mine are rounder and yours are narrower. Dada, I don’t have your hair. Your hair is black and straight, and mine is brown and curly. Dada, I don’t have your nose. Your nose is bigger. I don’t have your eyebrows. Yours are bushy and mine are thin. I don’t have your height. I’m going to be so much taller than you. (And you will be). I don’t have your color. You’re darker and I’m lighter. You look Chinese, and I don’t.” I know one day you will likely have these questions about your differences from me. And they are all true. Our differences may make you feel bad and that you would want to have the same traits as your Dada as other kids do with their daddies.

But I will say to you, “Jai Jai, you have Dada’s corky laugh and silly sense of humor. You might not have Dada’s mouth, but you have Dada’s cheesy smile. You don’t have my arms and legs, but you have my silly dance moves. You’re affectionate like I am. You love to love like I do. You like superheroes like I do.  You like books, comics, and cartoons, like I do (or maybe I like them like you do!).  You like art, painting, and drawing like I do. You like martial arts like I do.  You like ketchup like I do.  You have my curiosity and will explore everything. You have my imagination and will dream up anything. You have my spirit and will live life as an adventure.  You have my faith, as even now you like to learn about God.  You love your Mama like I do. You do outrageous things that drive your Mama nuts like I do.  And yes, you will grow up to be different from me in many ways, and that’s okay, because you will become your own person.  In whatever ways we are alike or not, you are my son and will always be.  But I do want you to be different from me in one way, that you would be a far greater man than me.”

Exactly a month ago, we adopted our little foster son after raising him for 2 years and 20 days! It took some time for me to process over for what the legal conclusion of adopting our son meant to us. The weightiest factor that sunk in was that we couldn’t lose him anymore. For the two-plus years that we raised him, there was the possibility looming in the back of our minds that he could leave our care. Within the fostering life, anything can happen until it is made legal – an unknown relative steps forward to fight the case, a new judge takes over the case, no attorneys get into the picture, biological parents appeal the termination sending the case to an appeals court… My wife and I had given up our first foster son after raising him for 8 months and 1 day, and, boy, did that wrench our hearts! We were proud of his biological mother for doing what was right to get her son back, but it was still hard after loving a child as your own. I still remember the look on his face on the day I delivered him over to his birth mother. Loving with a disclaimer that you may lose the one you’re loving is part of foster parenting, and it’s a risk that is assumed with full awareness. But, man, it’s hard, especially after raising a child for over two years. I think loving and losing is one of the hardest things in the world. Although, we do it all the time.

Permanency is powerful, isn’t it? It means getting married with the intention that you and the other person would never leave each other or break your commitments to each other. It means investing into a relationship with someone who becomes your best friend, and you hope to be best friends for life. It means having a parent-child relationship and not fearing that you should one day lose your child or that the child would lose you. Permanency translates to us as lasting, enduring, or unending. The permanency of relationships – permanency of love – is not only something we deeply desire. It also grounds us, giving us a kind of stable framework for our lives. I think we crave for permanency, because deep inside of us we have a desire for eternity, for good things and genuinely loving relationships to last. I pray for permanency of love in everyone’s lives. We can work hard to gain success, wealth, accolades, fun, and gadgets, but investing into loving relationships that become lasting is crucial. I’m deeply glad that God promises to never stop loving us. I love that my wife and I can’t lose our adopted son and that he can’t lose us. As a new adoptive dad, I celebrate the permanency I have with my son, whom we named Josiah.

Dear Peanut,

Two years ago on this day, July 30, you came into our lives and a new story began. You are now two years and ten days old. It started with a call from our foster agency that told us there was a little boy in the hospital looking for a loving mom and dad. We said yes and drove to the hospital within an hour. Your mama went into the NICU to meet you while I waited outside with our other foster son, like an expectant dad in a waiting room. I waited for an hour and a half before I got to see you. You looked like a peanut, hence your nickname. The first word I used to describe you was, “spirited.” When you were sad, it was dramatic. When you were happy, you were exuberant. When you were excited, you were passionate. Spirited. You didn’t sleep or eat well for the first six months. We worked hard at creating a safe, warm, and creative environment for you so you could rest and feel confident in exploring your world. I wanted you to know you were loved by your mama and dada, yes, but through us also by God.  So many people love you, including your Jei Jei. I wanted you to have the freedom and desire to be curious, to explore, experiment, and enjoy the things in creation and culture. So throughout the first two years of your life, we regularly took you to the L.A. zoo, the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, and The Huntington Library. You explored the world of nature and art. At 20 months old, you could recognize a statue from going to The Huntington Library, and say, “Sta-ue,” or a painting and say, “Awtwok.” You could point out a gazebo and say, “a-ebo.” You can experience something wonderful and say, “Beau-iful.” We introduced you to music in the park, at festivals, through videos, at church services, and by singing with you. You’ve watched bears with us in Alaska, played at the beaches in Maui, and been to geeky comic conventions.  You’ve ridden a horse in Arizona and you’ve ridden a favorite train in the mall. As of a month ago, you love going to Disneyland where you enjoy the rides and the musical shows. It’s really funny to see you amazed. Rarely do we see you in complete silence. But when you watch a show that has music and dancing, you are silent and motionless. You hardly blink. You love to sing and dance. Some mornings, you get up from bed and want me to dance with you. You learn my corky moves very well. You’ve learned to “pray, pray” before meals and to have your nightly prayers with Mama before bedtime. I am thrilled to introduce you to this world, though it can be a tough world. I want to shield you from the ugliness, some of which is in me, but I know I can’t shield you forever. I can show you that there is also tremendous beauty in this world by God’s grace and how you can deal with the ugliness.

You discovered a lot by age 2 and 10 days. You can sing most of the ABC song, the classic version and the Usher version!  You can count to 14. You know at least ten colors. You know all the Avenger characters. You’re obsessed with Superman and Spiderman. You like pretending to be Superman, having me fly you through the air while you extend your arms straight out. You even toot the theme song! You’re great at using your imagination. You like to wrestle me on the bed, jump on top of me on the bed, and push me off the bed so you can roll off the bed and land on me. You like to hug other kids you just meet, maybe because we’re always hugging and kissing you. Your favorite movie is Frozen, which is the only movie you’ve seen. You get excited at Disneyland when we say we’re going to see Elsa. Don’t worry. It’s totally fine for boys to like Elsa. You like Mickey and Goofy. You spontaneously dance, like you have music in your heart. You like doing things together – Play-Doh, Legos, playing with blocks or trains, dancing, singing, drawing, painting, reading (especially pop-up books), and reading from your children’s Bible. Your favorite go-to story is David and Goliath. You really, really love bubbles, watching bubbles, blowing bubbles, making bubbles… You are a very picky and peculiar eater. Your favorite foods are spaghetti, pizza, hot dog, spam, chicken, egg, fries, sashimi, edamame, and most things with soup or sauce. You hate vegetables, and will pick them out no matter how small they are. I mince the vegetables finely to blend it into the sauce to “trick” you into eating your greens! You skipped the baby food stage. And milk is your absolute comfort food. You really don’t like going to bed. You fight it every night and it drives your mama nuts, because it will take her up to 2 hours to get you to sleep. But it’s because you don’t want the day to end. You want to play and live! Your tantrums are apocalyptically terrible! We’re teaching you about calmness and peace, and you’re learning about limits and patience.  You’re getting there.

One day you will read this. And it may be at a time when you question whether you’re really our son and if we’re really your mom and dad. I understand if you have to wrestle with this. You’re not our biological son. We didn’t start off that way. You being born was a miracle in itself. God knit your soul and body and brought you into this world. Never doubt the miracle you are. Then God sovereignly placed you into our lives. Though biology does not connect us, our love united us. The love between a parent and child is unbreakable. I can’t love you anymore than I have and do right now. Even if you had my biology, it wouldn’t change a thing. I can’t tell you how much it melts my heart to see you love your mama and me. Now, we’re looking towards formally adopting you. But that’s just paperwork. Because your mama and I adopted you in our hearts and into our lives a long, long time ago. You can be sure that you were never without a family. Some stories begin differently, but they’re really great stories.

I can’t express to you how proud I am of the beautiful, little boy you’re becoming. I can’t express to you how excited I am about the man you will become. I can’t express to you how deeply honored I am to be your father. And I want the world to know it.  – Love, DaDa

I hadn’t written about my journey as a foster father in a while, and the thought of getting back into it after so long felt daunting. It had to do with my emotional capacity. After my first foster son reunified with his birth mother, there was more for me to process than I expected. My wife and I developed a great relationship with the birth mother. She was very thankful for what we did and encouraged us to stay in her son’s life. We visited about once per month for the first few months to encourage them, but it was harder for me than I would’ve guessed. I think I was depressed for the first couple of months after the reunification. How can you not be when you genuinely love a child as a child is supposed to be loved and then suddenly to not have him in your care? At the same time, we took in a second foster son, for those of you who remember me writing about it, and I had to shift gears to be there for this little one, whom we named Peanut because that’s what he looked like when we took him from the hospital. There was a lot going on inside of me. As I was trying to emotionally find respite and sort through all that was going on inside, I found blogging about my foster parenting to be emotionally draining. Usually writing is a good thing for me, but at the place where I was at, it took more out of me. Instead, I found other creative avenues to process, mainly through painting and writing a story (which turned into a novel and should be coming out in print soon).

What we do as foster parents, and if done right, requires a lot of giving of ourselves. I think sometimes you can be so committed to something, give all you have to it, and not realize how much you gave. The quantity and quality of what was given is not in question, because some things (like children who come into your care) deserve that kind of giving. But we’re not invincible, and we’re not limitless. We have an emotional capacity. We all have a different capacity. It’s important to be aware of when that emotional capacity is low or empty. Some of us keep doing what we’re doing while running on empty without change or recourse, and that’s dangerous, even self-destructive. We have to not only know how to recharge our emotional capacity in terms of quantity, but grow in our emotional state in terms of quality – to become more mature than where we were before. And, it’s no defeat to sometimes have to admit that some things require more emotional capacity than we actually have – perhaps pertaining to certain relationships, situations, or conditions. We’re not invincible, and we’re not limitless. But we are pretty resilient. The human spirit was designed to bear more than we sometimes expect. Wisdom is required to understand your emotional capacity and what’s needed to replenish yourself.   Replenishment means knowing what is restful for your soul. Doing nothing is not always the most restful thing for the soul. Doing what replenishes is restful. Maybe it’s reading a good book, going to an art show, enjoying a jazz band, writing a short story, or having dinner with that friend who always refuels you. Most of all, it’s prayer. Prayer is that communication with the Divine, the ultimate creative Being who not only knows the inner-workings of your soul but is masterful in forming and healing it. If you don’t know what to say, one of the most powerful opening lines in a prayer from a soul running on low is, “God, I’m tired.” If we don’t know how to replenish our emotional capacity or if we simply neglect it, we cannot go on doing the most important and necessary things we’re meant to do, like pursuing our calling, living out our vision, or loving someone who desperately needs our love.

My wife and I appreciate the many praises we receive for being foster parents. People call us guardian angels of the two children we fostered. People say we’re amazing for doing what we do. They say they don’t know how we do it and we must have special hearts. They say we made an incredible difference in the souls of these children. The praises mean a lot to us especially during the trying times of this experience. But other foster parents amaze us and you would be too if you hear what we hear.

We hear from foster parents who have fostered 8, 25 or 44 children, and they adopted from 1 to 8 of them. We read about the horror stories, the tragedies and the heartbreaks that other foster parents go through, whether it’s returning a child to the biological parent after raising the child for 3 years or dealing with the anger issues and reattachment disorders of older children. We read about the wisdom and intuition foster parents exercised that made a difference in a child’s life or development. We read the heartbreaking outcome of some cases and there’s nothing a foster parent can do about it, but they accept it and go on to love the next child. We read about hateful criticisms foster parents of multiple children receive from ignorant strangers, who prejudge in error the situation of the foster family, and the humility the foster parents show in response. We are amazed by the perseverance of foster parents who fight for the well-being of their foster child while facing ongoing ordeals with the system. We are astonished – puzzled even – by the inhumanly enduring love of foster parents who don’t give up on their foster child even when the case stretches for years. Where my wife and I have whined and moaned over some of our experiences, we are silenced by the trials and display of character by other foster parents. Their stories grant me a healthy perspective of my own.

So, to my fellow foster parents out there who have strived, struggled, endured, triumphed, been broken, cried, and loved, you inspire me as a foster father. You remind me of the incredible good that can be found in this world, which the Bible claims as evidences of God’s grace in a broken world. You are evidences of God’s grace. As a foster parent, I share a glimpse of what you experience – the joys and the pains – but I know that there is a realm of challenges you have weathered that I cannot fathom. Thank you for sharing your stories of redemption, for being heroes to the helpless, and for giving a measure of goodness out of your extraordinary spirits to make our world a better place. What I find amidst all the praises my wife and I receive is that we are humbly in the company of amazing foster parents. You are silent heroes of society who don’t get the spotlight, cheering crowds, or wealth for doing what you do. Most will never see all of your tears or know all the details of your fostering struggles. Yet day-by-day you’re saving someone. And at the end of the day, I know you wouldn’t even think of yourselves as heroes. Well, to that child you’re parenting, you are his/her hero. I salute you and I thank God that there are people like you in this world.

How we see ourselves in light of another is fascinating.  Given what I know about where my foster son has come from, I look forward to what he can become.  But when I look at my foster son’s face, I realize the things in myself that I wouldn’t want him to model after.  When I picture my foster son doing life with me, watching me, following me, and learning from me, everything I do feels weightier.  By “do,” I include actions, choices, pursuits, attitudes, expressions, etc.  The things that I wouldn’t want to be true in my foster son’s character or life shouldn’t be true in mine.  It’s rare that sin doesn’t hurt anyone else but yourself.  Hurting yourself should be reason enough to deal with your sin.  But when sins affect others intimately involved in your life, there is all the more reason to decisively deal with those sins before God’s throne of grace.  I can’t be a perfect man, but I can be a man committed to redemption and transformation.

The kind of man Peanut would become would be a beautiful story of redemption.  As I picture the man my foster son would become, I’m compelled to picture the man I must be.

The parents of Lil Guy wrote something to my wife and I that we never expected to read, but was the best thing they could ever tell us.  We’re about to visit Lil Guy this weekend for the second time, since we returned him to his parents over a month and half ago.  This visit will be for his infant baptism.  You never really know what to expect when you have to give people back their child after you raised the child as your own.  My wife and I had heard the terrible stories of envy, jealousy and sense of competition from the parents toward foster parents.  We were warned by our social worker that typically the parents will want to put as much distance as possible between them and the foster parents because they don’t want to be reminded of the awful experience of not being with their child.  The parents generally would want to focus on being their own family and forget all that fostering mess.  That’s what we were told.  Even though the mother had told us that she wanted us to remain in Lil Guy’s life, we were warned that initially the parents may welcome us to visit but we shouldn’t be surprised if they started tapering away from us so they could pursue their own lives.  Parents often viewed foster parents as intruders or the ones who took their baby away.

It made sense to us.  We wanted to respect whatever space they desired.  So when we try to visit, we respectfully asked for their permission.  This time, we wanted to bring a few gifts for Lil Guy – a toy that I found at Costco, which I knew he would like, and a few books that my wife picked out for his mother to be able to read to him.  But we didn’t know how the parents might feel about us bringing gifts.  Would it make them feel bad if they’re not buying these things for him?  Would it cause envy?  Would it make things awkward?  So I emailed the dad and asked him if he and the mother would be comfortable with us giving Lil Guy a few gifts when we come see him at his baptism.  Here’s what he emailed back to us: “Im ok with any help from you B. Remember you and your wife are and will always be his parents as well.”

My wife cried.  I didn’t know what to say.  I’m sure this isn’t usual.  Honestly, I felt undeserving.  He didn’t have to grant us that honor.  They could move on without us.  You know, they really hardly know us.  They don’t know where we’re from, where we live, what we do for a living, or what our actual ethnicity is (other some sort of Asian).  All they know about us is we parented their child for 8 months and a day.  Through that process, I think I was quite selfish about Lil Guy.  But they welcome us.  I felt undeserving.  Though we didn’t get to keep Lil Guy in our home, the beauty of how this is turning out is beyond my imagination.

A week ago, I felt a burden in my heart for my wife and I to write a card to the mother to encourage her because we knew she was encountering some hard moments.  I thought maybe our words could offer her some strength.  I think we’ll show up to our second visit this weekend with a toy and some books for Lil Guy and a lot of encouragement for the mother and father.

(in case you ask, all the things we got for Lil Guy, we also got for Peanut, our second foster son, who is growing, smiling, and started to talk up a storm.  More on him later.)