Who Needs a Hero

I ran across an interesting article yesterday about the traits of “heroes”.  You can read the full text here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/are-you-a-hero-or-a-bystander-.html  The article details what kind of character traits are common to people who take risks to help others.  It also has some compelling stories about normal people who have done heroic acts.  It made me wonder- am I a hero?

I am not a risk taker.  Almost to the extreme.    I will confess there are times I am living so that nobody looks at my obituary and thinks, “Well, there’s your problem.”  I don’t want to die doing something a person of average intelligence would have known not to do.  This is also why I refuse to use the bathroom during thunderstorms.  If I’m going to get struck by lightening, I’d prefer to have my pants on when they find me.  I think this concern keeps me from assuming I’d be the kind of person who would take the necessary risks in a time of crisis.  I am cool under pressure, but being cool and being smart are not the same thing.  I wouldn’t get overly emotional, but I also wouldn’t trust myself to know what to do.  Am I CPR certified?  Yes.  Do I hate that I am CPR certified because then I’d feel accountable if somebody should collapse around me?  Also yes.

My husband is the opposite.  Brian seems to get smarter in times of crisis where I tend to go into this denial mode.  He loves being CPR certified and always seems to be expecting he’ll need to use it.  If a kid gets a cut in this house, they go looking for Daddy.  Mommy might slap a band-aid on it if you’re really bleeding, but Daddy will clean it, dry it, and has almost an obsession with getting the right size dressing for the wound.  And he does it all with a calmness and presence that is soothing to the little patient.

As I looked over the character traits of heroes listed in the article, I realized it was a pretty good description of my husband.  The more I read, the more I kept thinking about how this plays out in our day-to-day life.  We aren’t often in a position to pull a confused woman from her car before a train hits it or catch a little boy who has fallen from his apartment window.  So how do I see this heroism playing out in my life?

Maybe it sounds cliched, but I think it’s these hero traits that make Brian a good foster parent.  I’ve been reading Michael Oher’s book “I Beat the Odds” (his story is told in the movie “The Blind Side”) and it’s been a fascinating look at the foster care system from the perspective of a child who lived in it during a very tumultuous time.  He talks about the two kinds of foster parents he encountered- foster parents who were doing it to help a child and foster parents who were doing it for the money.  It kills me that children from abusive homes are sometimes placed in foster homes that are equally (or even more) abusive than the homes they left where at least they felt some sense of normalcy.  But so many people I speak with who have loving homes and the means to care for foster kids can’t be bothered to take the risk.  You know, maybe they just aren’t the hero types.

The article says heroism is liked with traits like empathy, bravery, hopefulness and coping ability.  These are the same traits I believe are absolutely essential in foster parents.  Empathy to help you think about how a child feels coming into your home for the first time and being removed from everything (good or bad) that is familiar to them.  AND empathy for how a parent feels who has just lost custody of their baby.  Bravery to take on the risks these children bring into your family and to help you be a strong advocate for their needs.  Hopefulness that this parent may make the changes to succeed.  And hopefulness that this child can be reached by your love.  Coping ability?  There may be no more important trait.  Foster parenting requires flexibility and an ability to cope just to deal with the daily challenges of a hurt child’s needs, visitation schedules, team meetings, paperwork, and the uncertainty of the future.

I think it’s my love of kids that has propelled me to be involved with hurting children, but I think Brian says “yes” when many others have said “no” because he is a hero.  We need more heroes to step up.  You may not see the child dangling from his apartment window, but you may have seen a child in need of a hero at the grocery store or the park or on the school bus.  By investing in that child you may have an opportunity to help an entire family make changes and consider a new normal in their lives.  And you know what?  You may be amazingly blessed in the process.

If you have questions about foster parenting, please feel free to contact me!  You can leave a comment here or contact me through the A Musing Maralee facebook page.