the phone rang

I was waiting on a phone call from the vet, so I answered the ring coming from the unfamiliar number with that expectation in mind.  

It wasn't the vet.  

It was the Department of Social Services.

"We have a sibling set of three children," she said. The voice coming from a woman whose name was mentioned just the week before in our home in different context.

"Do you think I should call them and tell them to take our name off the "list"?" I asked My Love.  He said no.  If the phone rang, we would deal with it when it came.  Even though it had been nearly two years since we started the process of foster care without a single placement.  I was ready to close the door completely.  He told me to leave it ajar.

"We will be bringing them into care tomorrow afternoon," she continued.  More details were shared.  The children were 5, 2, and 1.  It would likely be temporary.

I was shocked to say the least.  I mean, we were just talking about this very moment.  What we would do when the phone rang.  The thing was, I knew My Love would be unreachable for the next few hours.  I knew he would be calling at some point to find out if the vet had called yet.  I knew it would be difficult to make this decision over the phone.

He finally did call in one of his classic I-can-only-talk-for-a-second calls.  They don't happen often but when they do I have to cram as much information into two sentences as I possibly can.  By then the vet had called so I shared that news and then I told him DSS had called and literally had no time to elaborate beyond that.  He responded with "I have to run back in now.  Can you please pray for me?  I am about to do my briefing and I am really not feeling well."  Um.

Poor guy called me an hour or so later.  I told him what I knew about the potential placement.  He was on a longish commute back to our area and asked if he could call me back after he had time to pray and think about it.

The phone rang thirty minutes later.  We were on the same page.  The page we had kind of been on from the beginning of this process.  We decided to say yes.  Little did we know what was to come...