When that little boy told me he hated God, I realized he had seen more than I knew.
I’m from Phillipsburg, out in Laclede County. Youngest of six. My dad made my mom wait until the playoff game was over before he took her to the hospital. Growing up he had a nickname for me, Warthog. Took me years to understand that was just bullying with enough of a twist to make it seem cute. He went to rehab once, back when I was in kindergarten. He stayed sober a good long while.
There used to be a school in Phillipsburg, but it shut down by the time I went to school. So I went to Conway. Just another small town. A lot of people there are dealing with the same things as me, generation after generation.
In my 20s, I started having terrible headaches, the kind that just won’t let up. One morning the pain was so bad, it knocked me out cold. Turned out I had a brain tumor. They went in through my mouth to get it out. Doctors told me I’d probably never carry a baby because of the damage to the part of my brain that regulates hormones. I made my peace with it as best I could.
I met Dean around then. He knew from the start kids likely weren’t happening for us. We figured we were too poor to even look into adopting, so we just left it alone.
Our home was always open, though. There came a time when someone in our lives needed a place for her baby to go, and we were there. There wasn’t anything official at first, just people taking care of each other when they needed it. That baby is a part of our family now. We did eventually make it legal through adoption.
I was working in home health care. Through one of my clients, I became close with a family that was really struggling. I was around as much as I could be. The boys started calling me “Aunt Carrie.”
Their mom was raising three boys mostly by herself. I’d take the two older ones for the day sometimes. Just to get them out of the house for a while. Give her a break. Give them one too.
She went away for a little while to get herself well. I took care of the littlest one while she was gone. Nothing official about it. Just people taking care of each other, same as always.
I prayed for her as much as I prayed for those boys. I wanted her to make it more than I wanted almost anything else.
But then I watched it get harder for her once she came home. I told myself God was working on it, and I trusted that more than I trusted myself. I told the two older boys, if you’re ever scared, you go next door. You’ll be safe there.
I was never shy about my faith around those boys. As they got older, one of them started to ask me hard questions. One day he just blurted out that he hated God. That’s the day I realized in my gut how much those boys had already seen.
One Saturday morning, the boys showed up at the neighbor’s house and said their Aunt Carrie had told them they could come there if they were ever scared.
The police and Children’s Division got involved. The boys went to their grandparents. But raising a baby full time isn’t the same as having them over on weekends. That wasn’t something the grandparents could take on.
The next week or so was a blur. A caseworker came to my house. Said she already knew I’d been keeping an eye on the boys. Wasn’t anything I’d asked for, they just needed somewhere for him to go right then, and I was already there. A background check, a walk through my house, and a couple hours later I had their baby brother in my arms.
The goal was always to get him back home with his mom safely. I prayed for that as much as anybody.
Some months later, she had another baby. Because I was already caring for his half sibling, they asked me to bring him home from the hospital. I’d never had that experience before.
We had him for two months. Long enough to know him.
His father came forward. I was truly happy, for that baby’s sake. But I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt to let him go.
There’s a hearing this summer on whether to end her rights. Nobody wants it to come to that. I don’t. I’ve prayed since the day I met her that she’d be the one who got to raise them.
Everything I’ve gone through in my own life, it was always pushing me somewhere. I don’t get to decide how these stories end. I just stay as long as I’m needed.
Carrie Howerton
foster, kinship, and adoptive parent
Voices of Hope
Every person in this community carries a story worth telling. Voices of Hope features the real people of the Missouri Ozarks who show up for children and families — foster parents, caseworkers, volunteers, survivors, and neighbors who simply refused to look away.
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