Murder, Motherhood, and Miraculous Grace

by Debra Moerke

  Giving our foster children a warm welcome and a sense of belonging was always our first priority when we brought them into our home. The Bower children were no exception. Just as we had for her siblings earlier that week, we all showed Hannah her new bedroom—the cozy first-floor room with four youth beds that we called the “little room.” Andrew pointed out whose bed was whose and in a heartbeat was bouncing on his bed in the corner and needed to be coaxed off. Fortunately, the promise of cookies waiting was enough to entice him to follow us all into the kitchen.

  Our own three children still living at home—Sadie, Helen, and Charles—knew the routine well. They understood that this was a time to put the new foster children at ease. Ally was stirring from all the energy in the room, so Helen fixed her bottle and fed her while the rest of us chattered and chowed down on chocolate chip cookies.

  That night, as was my practice every night, after everyone was settled in their beds, I went from child to child for bedtime prayers. I saved Hannah for last so she could watch me pray for each of her siblings first. Finally, I knelt by her bed. “Hannah, in our home we pray, and I’d like to pray for you now. Is that okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Dear Lord, thank you for bringing Hannah into our home so we can show her your love. Help her mommy to come to know you so that she can be the best mommy she can be for her children. We love you, Lord. Amen.”

  When I was finished, I kissed her on the forehead as I had with each of her siblings. Later that evening I did the same for our own kids before crawling into bed to cuddle with Al.

  Before I fell asleep, I silently prayed again and thanked God for bringing the Bower children into our home and asked him to use us to introduce them to his love. That prompted me to remember a little boy we had fostered several years before. His name was Brandon.

  When the caseworker first called us about Brandon, she explained that though he was only five, he’d been institutionalized a few times because his mother couldn’t handle him. “He is currently on three medications. We are working with a local counselor and doctor, trying to get his meds sorted out so we can get him back home. Would you be willing to take him while we do that?”

  “Sure, bring him to us, and we’ll see what we can do,” I replied.

  Brandon looked like he’d stepped right out of a storybook. His blond hair was cut short, parted neatly on the side, and he had freckles across his cute little nose.

  “One thing you need to know about Brandon,” the caseworker said before leaving. “He does not want anyone touching him. You cannot touch this child.”

  Brandon had been taught to comb his own hair once it was parted and the first time I parted it for him I was exceedingly careful not to touch him with my hands. A few times when I accidently touched him he recoiled dramatically.

  At the time, we had two foster girls in the first floor “little room” with the youth beds, so we placed Brandon’s bed upstairs in Charles’s room, where we also had two other young boys. We needed to do some furniture rearranging before Brandon got into his bed. He refused to crawl into it until the bed was positioned in the middle of the room, far from anyone else.

  On Brandon’s first night, he watched as I covered each of the other boys with their blankets, including Charles, then knelt by their bedsides, placed my hand on their forehead or chest or arm, and prayed for them. Then I’d kiss them on the forehead and move on to the next boy. Brandon’s eyes watched my every move, and I couldn’t help but notice the anxiety on his face. When I’d finished praying for the others, I came to Brandon’s side. As I pulled up his covers, he lifted his arms, then laid them stiffly by his sides on top of the blanket, his eyes studying my face.

  “Brandon, we pray in our home,” I said in a near whisper, standing by his bedside rather than kneeling. “Is it all right if I pray over you? I will not touch you.”

  He looked at me silently. I held my hand out in the air high above his chest and closed my eyes. “Dear Jesus, thank you for bringing Brandon to our home. Thank you that he is safe. Help him not to be afraid and to know that you love him. Give him sweet dreams tonight. Amen.”

  When I opened my eyes, his were wide open, locked on mine. “Good night, Brandon.” As much as I wanted to kiss his little forehead, I knew better, so I smiled at him and left the room.

  I had no idea what Brandon had experienced his first five years of life. I could only surrender him to God and trust that my heavenly Father would help me to love this little boy as he did. Night after night I repeated the same ritual and Brandon watched my every move.

  After several nights, I decided to kneel by his bed, still keeping space between us. “I know you see me touch the other children when I pray for them. I want them to feel my love as well as Jesus’ love. I will not touch you. I’m going to put my hand over you here.”

  I placed my hand in the air about a foot above his chest. “Is this okay?” Brandon nodded yes and I prayed.

  After another two weeks, I asked him if I could move my hand closer to his chest, and he nodded.

  Then one night, while I was praying with my eyes closed and my hand hovering several inches above his chest, I felt his small hand atop mine. He pressed my hand gently toward him until my hand rested on his chest. Tears sprung to my eyes, but I forced myself to maintain my composure and continue to pray in a steady voice. I could feel his little heart pounding as I said, “I pray, Lord, that you would touch Brandon’s heart. Let him know how much you love him.”

  I opened my eyes and said, “Amen.” Brandon was looking right at me, his little hand continuing to press against mine. We stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, then I took my other hand and patted his. “Goodnight, Brandon.”

  I wanted to dance, to sing, to wake everyone in the house and announce this breathtaking breakthrough, but my celebration needed to remain tucked inside my heart as I slipped out of the room.

  The following night when I knelt by his side I placed my hand barely a few inches above his chest. This time, before I even closed my eyes to pray, Brandon placed his hand on mine and drew it down to his chest, leaving his hand on mine as I prayed. This happened for the next several nights.

  Then, at the end of the week, as I gently pulled my hand away, Brandon touched his forehead, his eyes expectant. At first, I didn’t understand.

  “What is it, Brandon?”

  He touched his forehead again, and I teared up. He wants me to kiss him.

  “Do I have your permission to kiss you on the forehead?”

  He nodded, and so I did. Every night after that, for the next few months that Brandon lived with us, each night’s prayer ended with a good-night kiss on the forehead of the little boy who couldn’t be touched.

  Praying over our own children and our foster children had always been a great honor and responsibility, but Brandon showed me it was also a sacred trust.

  Lord, I prayed silently as I lay in Al’s embrace reminiscing about Brandon, show your love, through our family, to Kyle, Kyra, Hannah, Andrew, and Ally. Let them know they are deeply loved.

  July proved to be a wonderful time for the Bower children to settle into our home. With school out for the summer, Helen, Sadie, and Charles were available to help me with the little ones. Over the years, we’d found that contributing to our family by doing small chores, assigned according to a child’s age and capability, was a marvelous way to help each child feel a part of the family.

  My own kids taught them how to do their special tasks. All the children made their own beds each morning and picked up their rooms. They soon learned that the daily morning routine was to brush their teeth and hair and get dressed. Kyra and Hannah helped Helen and Sadie gather dirty laundry from the rooms and, after I laundered and folded it, they distributed it to each child’s bed. Kyle and Andrew assisted Charles with emptying trash throughout the house, sweeping the garage and patio, and vacuuming. Three-year-old Andrew loved to vacuum. Pride was written all over his face as he pushed the wand back and forth.
He didn’t get very far, but he did a great job in the small area he was given. At mealtimes, all the kids cleared the table, and Helen and Sadie lent me a hand cleaning up the kitchen.

  I switched up the chores a little bit each week so the children could learn how to do different jobs that helped keep a home clean and orderly. With everyone working together all week, Saturday morning cleanings went very quickly after our big family breakfast. Each child received an allowance at the end of the week for work done. I could see the sense of pride in the faces of the Bower siblings when I handed them their first “reward” for hard work.

  After their first reward, the Bowers took obvious new joy in their jobs. I could see it gave them a sense of pride knowing they each had a job to do like the rest of us. This training applied to all our foster children over the years, unless they were too little to participate. For many foster children, ours was the first home they’d known where everyone, adults and children alike, had responsibilities and learned to take care of themselves.

  Al and I explained that our jobs outside the home were part of our grown-up chores. Al worked long hours at the Casper Events Center, where he was the food and catering manager. I worked a few days a week at The Caring Center, a Christian crisis pregnancy center in Casper. I’d been the director for nearly a decade, starting a year after becoming a Christian.

  I was also a volunteer lay chaplain at the Natrona County Detention Center, the local jail about twelve miles from our home. In addition to being on call for inmates who requested a chaplain, I led a biweekly Bible study for inmates before work. A few times each year I also spoke at the Wyoming Women’s Center, a women’s prison in Lusk, about one hundred miles away. God had given me a heart for prisoners.

  At mealtimes, whether at home or at a restaurant, our family joined hands and thanked the Lord for our blessings and for the food. After the first few weeks in our home, it was Andrew who liked to do the “pwaying” whenever given the opportunity. He was usually the first one to put his hands out to whoever sat next to him. Then he’d smile and say, “Let’s pway.”

  I bought some summer dresses for Hannah and Kyra and dressier shirts for the boys to wear to church on Sundays. They sat with our family in the sanctuary for a few Sundays until they felt comfortable to go to Sunday school on their own. Our congregation was full of huggers, and the children responded well to the warmth and affection they received.

  Days at the local pool, picnics at Beartrap Meadow on Casper Mountain, running through sprinklers in the yard, cookouts around our backyard grill, and TV movie nights with plenty of popcorn filled the summer. The kids squealed at the July Fourth fireworks that lit up the sky over the whole community, and we all enjoyed the annual Casper parade. Streets were blocked off, and most businesses downtown didn’t open until noon on that day. Casper’s residents lined the quaint downtown streets with folding chairs and baby strollers, doing their best to beat the heat with cool drinks and mini umbrellas to block the sun.

  On the heels of the parade was the annual Central Wyoming Fair and Rodeo in Casper. The Bower children had never been to the fair before and were excited that we went every day. They reveled in carnival rides and cotton candy, and whooped and hollered at the bull- and bronco-riding cowboys and barrel-racing cowgirls competing in the arena. I was the loudest of all, jumping up and down and screaming in my seat, a reaction the Bower children certainly didn’t expect from me.

  One summer morning while most of us were still at the breakfast table, Kyle came tearing into the kitchen. “There are huge horses in our front yard!” he yelled, causing a stampede from the kitchen to the front door.

  Must be the Percherons again.

  Sure enough, our neighbors’ two draft horses had managed to escape their barn and wander onto our property. While I called the neighbors, the Bower children crept outside to get an up-close look at the magnificent animals. Helen made sure that everyone kept their distance and spoke softly.

  Charles loved masterminding imaginative outdoor games of hide-and-seek, cops and robbers, cowboy fun, and leading the gang on an exploration of our ten acres. The children entertained us at mealtime with reports of spotting soaring eagles and watching mule deer and antelope grazing; at night we sat together in the backyard to stargaze and listen to the coyotes howl. I was delighted the children found country living a wondrous adventure.

  As with most foster children, the Bowers were on their good behavior for the first few weeks—the honeymoon period—then the time of testing began, but no behaviors were out of the ordinary. Squabbles over toys, occasional temper flare-ups, mean words said to one another or to our children—but years of experience had taught us to take it all in stride. We’d learned to stay calm, quickly correct and communicate what was not acceptable in our home, and move on, expecting the best. Experience had been an effective teacher, and our own children, from years of modeling good behavior, were truly our allies in these efforts. We had dealt with some very challenging and troubled children over the years, and in comparison, the Bower children were a cooperative sibling group and adjusted well.

  It helped immensely that the Bowers were all younger than our own children. When we’d first begun fostering we’d naively taken in older children as well, including teenagers. Sadly, we’d learned the hard way that having older troubled kids influencing our own was not workable for our family. One summer we had five teenage girls. One was always causing problems and was disliked by our children, as well as by the other four teens. Al and I thought that sending them all to a Christian camp for a week would be a great idea. We told them that if any of them acted out at the camp and had to be sent home, they would have to go to another foster family. Our reasoning was that it would serve as a serious warning for the other four. Not one of our wisest choices. Unfortunately, the one sent home for bad behavior wasn’t the one we thought it would be, and we were sad to see the girl go from our home.

  Another time there was a teen who lived with us for several years, and we became very fond of her. One day she decided to run away to another state with some friends from high school. We were crushed. That hurt our children deeply, and we all felt rejection from a girl we loved and thought loved us. In another situation, we had some teenage girls who climbed out the window to see some boys one night. When the police brought them home at 2:00 a.m., the girls told us that there was nothing on our rule list that said they couldn’t do such a thing.

  Some children fit in well with our family, some did not, and we had to decide how much we were willing to put our family through in helping the children who came to our home. Heartbreak is a very real part of foster parenting. We learned there is a time to show grace but also a time for tough love, but that when showing tough love, it affected all of us, not just the one receiving the discipline. We didn’t like seeing our own children suffer as the older children learned their costly lessons. So after a number of such challenging situations in our early fostering years, we made a decision that we’d never take in children older than our own, and that proved to be a very helpful boundary.

  Once we had a few years fostering some tough kids in our home and saw them doing better after living with us and experiencing rules, structure, and love, we received training to become specialized therapeutic foster parents. That meant we could take failure to thrive infants as well as fetal alcohol syndrome and drug-born children and were equipped to address some of their special needs. We learned the right way to restrain a child if needed, and when to ask for help when we did not see success with a child.

  As the laid-back summer rolled to a close, DFS informed us we’d have the Bowers at least into the fall, so we went shopping for the ’96-’97 school year, purchasing school supplies and clothes for everyone. Next came the challenge of working out the plans for our morning routine and transportation to and from school and day care. Sadie was in high school, Helen went to junior high, and Charles was in sixth grade at an elementary school. The two oldest Bower children were in elementary schoo
l, too, but in a different one from Charles. Since Kyle and Kyra had undergone enough change in their lives already, we wanted them to return to the same school where they knew teachers and had friends. In the mornings, Hannah went to a Head Start preschool program in downtown Casper, while Andrew and Ally went to the home of Starla, our dearly loved day care provider. Each morning after lunches were packed and backpacks checked, all the kids piled into our blue Toyota Previa van, and I began the morning drive.

  Once the kids were dropped off at their various locations, I went to work at The Caring Center. Around noon, I picked up Hannah and took her to Starla’s to join her siblings until the end of the day. After work I made the rounds again, picking up all the kids, from day care to high school, and heading home. I had it down to a science—as long as no one got sick.

  The early fall months went as smoothly with the Bower children as summer had gone. The occasional sibling squabbles were dealt with quickly, with apologies offered and forgiveness given. On school nights, everyone was busy with homework, and on the weekends we played board games and watched TV together. Elizabeth occasionally came home from college for long weekends and took the children for a wild, vigorous ride in our old pickup over the sage-covered prairie on our property. We could hear them all laugh and scream until after dark as the truck lights flashed up and down with each turn and dirt hill they drove over. Even though Jason was in the air force and Elizabeth was in college, when they came home to visit, all the kids would snuggle under blankets and grab pillows and popcorn and lie across the living room floor watching old movies together. Anne of Green Gables, The Goonies, and The Sandlot were some of their favorites.

  As we had discovered over the years with our other foster children, a familiar family routine with clear expectations and healthy doses of lots of love and laughter kept our household running smoothly.