Tag Archives: fostering

A Traditional American Easter 

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Apparently, American Easter is different than St. Maarten Easter. So, we had a lot of fun introducing R to American-style Easter celebrations!


I chattered all weekend about dying eggs. Anything artsy is fun for me, so I was excited to do some egg decorating with my family! R isn’t particularly talkative, so it wasn’t until Ben started mixing the vinegar and egg dye that R asked us what in the world we were doing! “Dying eggs,” I told him. His look of confusion prompted me to ask, “Have you ever dyed eggs?” “What’s that?” He asked. Ah ha! A new and fun thing to introduce my son to. Part of the joy of being a foster parent is learning about my kid’s traditions and sharing mine.


In St. Maarten, apparently, kids still hunt for eggs (which are not left by a bunny), but only plastic eggs. They get lots of chocolate, something I unfortunately forgot to buy! There’s also an underwater egg hunt, which I did last year.


As it turned out, R loved decorating the eggs. He didn’t really get the point, since they were just going to become deviled eggs in a few hours. But he had fun in the process!


Speaking of deviled eggs, those were totally new to R, as well. So was jello. I don’t know if jello is a part of your Easter celebration, but it’s always been a part of mine! R really thought it was strange– a little bit inedible, even– but despite his initial disgust at its look, he enjoyed it. He probably didn’t enjoy the rest of us staring at him while he tried it, but someone’s first taste of jello is an epic moment, people.


Also epic was the fact that my “bunny bread” didn’t look like a disoriented demon for the first time ever.

Aside from traditional Easter dinner, we also went to church in the morning. R usually goes to church on Easter, but our church is different from his other church. I’m guessing they don’t serve hot dogs for brunch at his other church!

That night, we watched “The Passion of Christ.” It was the first time for both R and I. Wow, is it good! It’s also really intense as tough to watch. It’s about as realistic as you can get as far as crucifixion goes. That movie made the whole Easter story come alive to me again! For R, it seemed to really cause him to think. He was on the edge of his seat the whole time, and had some deep comments during the film. During the whipping scene, he remarked, “Jesus could have stopped that any time he wanted. But he didn’t, because he wanted to die even for those people who were hurting him.” Wow, that is exactly what Easter is all about! No matter how rotten any of us has been, Jesus still made the choice to sacrifice himself instead of letting us be punished. He loves us that much.

We’re Foster Parents

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If you haven’t figured in out by now, Ben and I are foster parents! We’ve been enjoying the company of a teen boy for about six months, who you may have seen mentioned vaguely as “R” in some of my recent posts. I haven’t talked about this explicitly, mostly because I’m not really sure how to talk about it in a public forum. For one thing, our son is a teenager in a small community, we’re Facebook friends with a lot of his friends, and all the kids around here are all over the internet. I don’t really want to be “that mom” and write things that are potentially embarrassing. Secondly, as the rest of you foster moms know, there’s a lot of obligatory privacy when it comes to foster kids. You have to follow the rules, and you have to be respectful. So I’ve opted not to talk about it thus far. However, this is a really big part of my life, and I think it’s good to talk about the foster parent experience. So I’m going to be posting a lot more about foster parenting here, and hopefully creating an element of camaraderie with other foster moms.

So what is it like to be a foster parent? Well, that’s hard to answer. Our situation is very, very different than most peoples’. However, I’d be kidding myself if I said that being a unique foster family is, well, unique. Everybody has a distinct experience with its own joys and challenges. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t put the foster-family lifestyle in a box!

For us, we’re a cross-cultural family. This wasn’t much of a stretch for us. Ben and I already have learned to enjoy and appreciate our own cultural differences. With our son, there’s also a difference in nationality. Ben and I are expats in the Caribbean, and our son is from here. We’ve had to learn to navigate the system in a place that is very different from the United States, but thankfully we’ve had wonderful people from the children’s service organization who are very kind to us as we pick through the cultural obstacle course.

We’re also a young couple fostering a teen. We’ve experienced some judgement from people who don’t think we should be taking on this kind of responsibility, but ultimately, we don’t dwell on those voices. Fostering has taught me that no matter what you do and no matter what your motives are, people are going to find fault with you. You can’t let it get you down. Listen to concerns of people who care about you, but in the end you just have to do what you know is right for your family. And guess what? It’s gone beautifully. If you’ve never considered fostering teens, why not look into it? I never thought I’d be good at this, but it’s one of the best experiences of my life.

We’re in med school. As one of my college professors used to say, “It will never be the ideal time to start having kids.” Doesn’t matter if they’re biological or not. Of course, there are some things that have to be in place, by law, in order for you to foster. But you don’t have to have a house or a massive income! You just have to have an extra room and be able to take care of yourself. Med school isn’t the ideal time to do anything, really, but we decided we just have to live our lives and not act like we’re on pause.

We’re pioneers. As far as I know, we’re the first foreigners to foster here. I think we’re the first who ever asked. Also, the program is fairly new. So learning how this works for us is a process. There’s a lot of uncertainty about things. We just have to take stuff day by day, which is hard for me to process—I love planning everything about two years in advance! It’s a learning experience for me, and a growing experience. I never know what to expect and I’m learning to walk in faith.

We’re Living by Faith. I have to take every step before I can see where it will land, which is scary. It’s easy to say that I know God will lead me and take care of me, but it’s hard to act on it. However, as Pricilla Shirer teaches in The Armor of God (my current Bible study book), faith is an ACTION. Faith has little to do with my ability to believe really hard and everything to do with God’s faithfulness. If I trust in that faithfulness, I can take the action God is asking me to take before I see the outcome. So that is what we are doing. We have to live by faith and do the things God wants us to do. Ever since we first felt God leading us in that direction, we’ve had to take steps before we had assurance that things were going to work out. Financial commitments and time commitments had to be made before we even knew if we were going to be certified. And it worked out. We’re still up against unknowns every day, but we are trusting God to work those out, too.

What about you? Are there any other foster families out there? I’d love to hear your story, too!

Plantains, Love Languages, and Cross-Cultural Mentoring

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Here’s something you never thought you’d hear an American say: I do not actually know that much. It’s no secret that we Americans in the international realm don’t have the greatest reputation for admitting when we need advice or help. Instead, we’re always like, hey, let me come fix your government, your way of life, and your opinions. Don’t worry world, America’s got this.

So how does American arrogance connect to plantains? Read on.

In college, I took several missions classes that taught me a lot about what it looks like to live overseas in a service capacity. A lot of Americans in my generation have sort of a Superman complex when it comes to expat life– we went on a mission trip with our youth group, built an orphanage, and were inspired to go save the world. There is certainly an element of wonderful altruism to this attitude, but it’s missing something: humility.

The most practical class I took in undergrad was called Missions: Aspects and Relationships. The best thing I learned from this class is that in a cross-cultural situation, you shouldn’t come in armed with all the answers. You come in as a learner, asking questions and building trust. You want to convince someone in a African bush that Western remedies can save their kids from malaria? Cool. Start with hanging with them and finding out their way of life, their challenges, and their own solutions. Once they know that you care about who they are culturally and personally, once they see that you respect them, then they are more than willing to listen to what you have to say. Because who wants to take instruction from a random outsider who disrespects you? Plus, you’ll probably end up learning some pretty cool things from people in the process. On a less exotic, more ordinary mentoring level, just finding out about a person and respecting their skills is imperative before you can start offering free advice.

Ok, we’re getting to the plantain part soon, I promise.

plantain slices

Living on the island of Saint Martin, I haven’t really been in the position of doing developmental work or helping with anything like that, other than general things like tutoring kids in reading. Still, I’ve found the “come as a learner” principle to be super helpful even in everyday expat sorts of situations. Like if I’m going to teach a kid from the Dominican Republic how to speak English, I’m going to ask him how to teach me Spanish at the same time. I’ve found the role-reversal to be a helpful confidence booster when it comes to language skills.

So here come the plantains.

R, a teen who we mentor, spends a lot of time at our house, so naturally I do everything I can to make him comfortable and at home. My mom is really good at making people comfortable, and the way she does it is by offering a place to relax while she makes iced tea, cooks a dinner everyone likes, and serves in whatever capacity she can think of. People really appreciate it. Naturally, this is what I try to do, too. I pour glasses of water, I make the dinner, I clean up, I offer dessert (if I remembered to go shopping and get it), I do R’s laundry, even if it’s only a t-shirt, just to offer whatever love and care I can.

Now, if you’ve read the The Five Love Languages book, you’ll be familiar with the idea that everyone is inclined to love in one or two ways of the following: words of affirmation, acts of service, physical touch, quality time, and gifts. To really communicate love, it’s good to show you care on the other person’s terms, and not just your own.

My love language is acts of service. That’s how I communicate love. The more weeks that went by, the more I realized that R’s love language is not acts of service. I could tell he felt a little funny about chilling while I banged around in the kitchen. I thought maybe I’d try offering to teach him to cook, but it turns out he already knows how to do that. This is when I remembered the principle of being a learner.

This is the part about the plantains.

Cooking

I found out that R knows how to cook plantains and fried chicken, and I do not. Rather than be the grown-up who knows everything and takes care of everybody, it was time for me to put on my learning hat and ask for help. And do you know what? It worked out well.

I stopped at the roadside fruit vendor on my way home the next day and picked up some plantains. A few hours later, we had a fabulous dinner that everyone had contributed to. Matt, Ben, and R brought home the fish they caught. I prepared the fish and veggies, and Ben created an African fish sauce. Ray taught me how to cook plantains and made rice. Tati helped clean up made us feel like we had some seriously mad cooking skills. Everybody was happy, and we had a lot of fun in the process.

I learned a few things from making dinner with R: First, I learned how to fry plantains, which is awesome because I only knew how to make plantain chips before, and they’re totally not the same thing. I also learned that in our case, an invitation to help out (quality time) and a “Good job, this tastes great!” (words of affirmation) can be more valuable than acts of service. Finally, I learned that mentoring is not just about giving of myself in the role of an authority figure. It’s also about being willing to step into the role of a learner and show that my mentee’s skills and knowledge are valuable. The process of building a mentoring relationship is a journey, and one that is full of wonderful surprises.

dinner

By the way, are you as clueless about plantains as I was? Stay tuned for a recipe post on how to make Caribbean-style plantains and Tanzanian-style fish! Subscribe or like the 3rd Culture Wife Facebook page so that you don’t miss it.