It was two days before Christmas when she came to me bedraggled, wearing an over-sized dress and pants too large for her short pudgy frame. Her hair, uneven and stringy. hung in dirty blond strands halfway down her back. Her few possessions were stuffed inside a stained cosmetic case scented with the choking odor of stale smoke. She seemed tentative and shy when I kneeled to introduce myself. I was now her foster mother, the adult who would care for her in place of her mother who, a week earlier, she had been taken from quite suddenly by child protective services. She knew me only as the person her baby brother went to live with when"they" took him away, too. I took her home, fed her, and put her to bed where she fell to sleep without a struggle, exhausted and scared.

In the beginning, especially in contrast to her brother who expressed his anger quite openly, this four and a half year old child seemed compliant and well mannered. She was reserved in her requests and undemanding. But, it was not long before the impression of passivity she presented during our introductory period, rapidly changed into an image of anxiety and repressed fury.

Her quiet requests became demands, and her compliance became chronic complaining. Almost immediately she began to call me "mom", but I felt more like an employee, or a rival with her "real" mother. She would say, "I love you" but it was always quick and insincere, as when she hoped to distract me from an anticipated wrath. As if possessing royal blood and status, she seemed to expect the finest of everything on her terms, in her time, and at the inconvenience of everyone around her. We called her "Princess Joanie."

She would fuss, lie to my face, refuse discipline, dirty her pants on purpose, and almost failed kindergarten. She expected to get her way, and when I insisted that she receive the consequence of her actions, she became furious with me. And to my shame, as she learned to frustrate me, I became furious with her. "Oh Lord," I prayed, time after time, "help me to be fair to this child, to love her as you do, to guide her appropriately." Many times I wondered if she'd be better off elsewhere, with someone who was willing to completely pamper her and smother her with the attention she seemed to crave. Through this little girl, I learned the humbling lesson of how spiritual I was not.

She had been my foster child for two years when the Department of Health and Welfare determined that her parents had sufficiently rehabilitated and Joanie could go home on a trial basis, but she would visit us one day a week. For the first several visits she continued to be demanding and difficult. It wasn't easy, but I remained consistent, refusing to surrender queenship. Then her attitude began to change. She suddenly seemed to be benefiting from the best of both worlds; she had been reunited with her biological mother and father, yet she had the security of my husband and I and the material comforts her parents couldn't give her, plus she got to see her brother. She began to relax and seem happy for the first time since I'd met her. She excelled in first grade and seemed to posses a joy for life.

For more than a year now her parents have been dropping her off at church and she spends Sundays with us. She comes bedraggled, her clothes, too small on her now, are scented with the choking odor of stale smoke. There are runs in her tights, or she wears socks that are dirty and twisted. When we get home, I give her a bath. I comb her hair. I feed her. Sometimes I resist the knowledge that it is no longer my responsibility to buy her clothes, and I do it anyway. She accepts the limits of our home with obedience and even expresses, dare I say, gratitude at times. Often she will peer into my eyes with what seems like admiration. I see love and trust, and I love her. I want to hold her tight and protect her from the world. I pray for her future; her walk with the Lord, her husband-to-be, her children. She still calls me "mom" but its different now. For I realize now that I am.