Visit from One of My First Foster Kids

This evening I got a surprise visit from my first foster daughter. She is now a lovely eighteen year old young lady.

I was so completely speechless as I looked at her. My mind drifted back to the first time I laid eyes on her. Seven years old, being moved from a foster home she had been in since birth. Her hair was matted in thick braids and she was so lost and forlorn looking. A tiny wisp of a child. She came with all her belongings, seven years of stuff tossed into two trash bags. Clothes that clearly were not hers and toys that looked like they were scavenged from a dumpster.

I took her shopping our first evening together. We went to Sears. I bought toys and clothes and shoes for her. On the bus ride back home she laid her head against my arm and sighed contently.

She was with me two and a half years. I gave her her first birthday party, her first pair of glasses, sat with her while she had minor surgery. I read to her, bought her her first bicycle. I loved her as if she were my own.
She brought me so much joy.

I looked at her today and it was hard to look at her.
It made my heart hurt.

Someone made a decision that caused her to have to leave my home, so she could be with a sibling.
It seems like it was so long ago and yet it feels like it happened yesterday.

I cannot change the past, but it's days like this that I wish I could.