A Poem for National Foster Care Day

When we were training for foster care, we were asked to list our five most sustaining relationships, comforts, or interests. Then the trainer called out numbers, and we had to cross off things. I had to cross off my husband, my home, my books. The trainer called out another number. I crossed off my church family.

This is what happens to every child in foster care. It’s what happens to a child every time he or she is placed in a different home.

If you are, or were, a foster child—Jesus is so much closer than you think. 

“But to our wounds, only God’s wounds can speak.”

—Edward Shillito

Up the hard remembered hill
weighted with new loss

your little stumbling figure still
drags a heavy cross.

Could we have shouldered the whole load—
at least, the larger end—

we had to watch beside your road.
You had no Simon.

So little, faltering, and tear-blind,
dragging such heavy wood—

I pray that on the hill you find
Someone with your same wound.

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Isabel Chenot

Isabel Chenot's first poem as a little girl was about marrying her cat Tig when she grew up: she married a good man instead, but kept scribbling poems and stories.

The Joseph Tree, a collection of poems, is available from Wiseblood. For a preview of West of Moonlight, East of Dawn, her retelling of an old fairy tale, visit westofmoonlight.art.

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