Is there a easy way?

When did you take the easy way?

I think most of the time I think of “taking the easy way” as the way I talk about not doing what I should have or “cheating” through.  Like the times when I take my laundry to get done for me for 55 cents a pound, hiring a cleaning service, a moving company instead of doing my laundry, cleaning or moving.

That is the easy way out.  However, and maybe this is just my rich self talking, what if that is the best way to deal.  I can’t justify having others do my laundry (well Jim does most of the laundry, but paying someone to do my laundry) as anything but “the easy way”  and the cleaning – but moving  - my 2 back surgeries have allowed me to see this as the easy, but necessary, way.

But what about the thing that has been haunting me since thinking about this post’s questions – asking our foster daughter to leave.

Yes, in some ways it was the easy way out.  I feel like it was, and yet…it was really really hard.

Our daughter had stopped going to school, we worked for a month and half to get her back to school.  We finally gave her a week to show intent to get to school on time or we would ask her to leave.  School is just that important to us.  She didn't make an attempt.  So, instead of fighting the battle anymore, we did ask her to leave along with our 2 foster grandchildren.

It was hard, but easy.  We were getting out of parenting, but on the other hand it could have been easier to just have her in our house doing what she wanted.

It was hard to tell a social worker who was begging us to keep her , “Look, we all try to teach her to be consistent with what she says to her children and what she does.  What are we teaching her if we are not consistent with her.”  

It was hard to think that people probably thought less of us because it looked from the outside like we were giving up on her.

But what if the easy way is sometimes the best way?

Our daughter was moved to another foster care place much much closer to her school – and she went once she moved.   We have a better understanding of who we are as foster parents because we stood up to the agency and to our daughter.  I would have felt we were not being good parents if we had done it any other way.

I spend a lot of time talking with young adults about their passion is probably their calling – easy may mean God made it just for you.  I speak to teens about learning when they are outside their comfort zone.  Both the easy way and the hard way may be teaching me this year.