foster parenting

So, I was offered a foster baby today.

"Do you still want to be a foster parent?"

I received this text from my friend this morning and returned it with a phone call. I'm thinking she's asking theoretically, but she was talking about someone today, now, who was giving her baby up.

I told my friend, "Don’t tempt me."

It’s ridiculous that as God started putting something on my heart about this time last year, at the same time, I kept meeting family after family that fosters children or has adopted children they first foster parented.

I am blessed to have several families on my support team who have given me real life examples to what this actually looks like, as they have invited me into their lives as I've invited them into mine and I am so blessed beyond measure. The first family I met with on an appointment and met three children they were fostering at the time as well opened up a whole new world to me... fostering/adopting was a dream on my heart I was unaware of until recently.

Called.

There is a similar in each of these very different families. All families have expressed this is a calling.

They feel CALLED to foster these children.

One family I met, and one that still floors me today, as they showed me a photo album of over 20 kids they have fostered over the years.

“We just really want to provide a safe place for them.”

They are like a shelter, I thought to myself. They feel called to serve as an emergency shelter for children. I was floored. This couple actually used to be house parents at our local shelter for abused and neglected children, Rainbow House. Now, they provide the same services in the context of a Christian home, by foster parenting.

Today as I spent an extended period of time with the kids of one of the families while their parents were moving stuff between houses, I realized more of the depths of this calling.

Alright, I've been a part of several pockets of women that I call "the mom club" and I spend time with these moms on a regular basis to see now more of the daily ins and outs of parenting and marriage in ways that are invaluable. So from that perspective...

Parenting is hard enough. But foster parenting adds a set of challenges on to an already emotionally taxing, yes rewarding, but intensely sacrificial job: mothering.

People do not realize how much mothers give up, how much they give of their time, their emotional energy, their EVERYTHING for the sake of their children. And for their husbands. You are a living sacrifice I have come to believe that beyond a shadow of a doubt and know that reality from witnessing it. Whereas I've always loved kids and have a special connection with one family I've known for 7 years now, even that family could contribute to my romanticized view of parenting. Now there are no illusions.

I'm finding I have a connection with "troubled" youth more so than "normal" kids that cannot really be explained, but it is something that can only be given, not anything I would have conjured up on my own. Not that "normal" even really exists, but "normal" in the sense of being free from a traumatic home life in which there was abuse or neglect.

These are the kids no one wants. This struck me as I drove away today. I learned so much in four short hours with these kids. I lived it in a way I’ll never forget. Shoot, I can normally spend a long time with kids, but after four hours, after even the first couple, I was mentally, physically, emotionally exhausted, but trying not to show it, it was unreal. The majority of kids who are foster kids are abused and neglected and have a whole host of behavioral issues that complicate their lives.

It is also ironic that my friend texted me this morning, BEFORE I saw the kids today, and my friend is someone completely separate who doesn't know these families, and that I didn't get a chance to call her back until after my experiences this afternoon.

Funny you should ask, I told her.

But, the desire and convictions remain. I find a heart for these kids that I cannot take credit for. With one of the boys, the little one who is usually not the trouble maker, I was having a particular problem with. Yet I realized how much he was trying to earn my attention and affection while he was pushing me away.

He had always warmed up to me, when I’d see them in brief interactions after bible study, but now that I was at his house, he was pushing me away and would not back down.

This was strange, because as I was pulling into the long acres of driveway (they live in the country, it was SO beautiful), I could see him running from hundreds of feet back, shouting my name. I could hardly keep him from opening my car door as soon as I parked.

Yet he was acting out the whole time I was there. But as I was leaving, it was almost as if I have proved to him that I really loved him. I didn’t change how I treated him the entire time. As much as he acted out, yes I didn’t let him get away with it, but my love towards him didn’t change. He hugged me when I left and it struck me what had just happened between us.

I'm reminded of something Beth Moore always points out, "We all long for unconditional love...

We all crave a love that is

unfailing."

It’s something that happens daily in their houses, though. As they’re daily being restored and growing in the safety of love for the first time.

These Christian families don’t feel these kids are just additions to their families, they feel they are gifts, that they were always supposed to be a part of their family.

It breaks my heart when I’m around foster kids who endured severe abuse either in these families or children at the shelter who flinch any time someone reaches out to hug them.

It’s like a wounded puppy that won’t receive love.
It is heart-breaking.

The complexity of their issues is taxing on anyone who takes on the challenge of fostering. I’ve seen some of these parents at the end of their rope, I see the frustration, yet I also see the deep love they have for these kids.

They feel deeply that these kids deserve love too. That’s incredible.

I’ve gone back and forth on whether I would foster as single or married, (given if and only if marriage is something God wills for my life.) I’ve seen it done well both ways, yet know right now it wouldn’t be realistic for my lifestyle and job as I know I'm called to full-time vocational ministry right now, but it’s days like this when I’m filled with a dose of reality yet also the deep need and desire that is there. This is something I've explored and won't go into the details of here, but I'm not sure when the time will be right or if my marital status will matter but those are things I don't have to worry about right now. God will take care of it and reveal to me when it's time what to do.

They deserve to be loved too.
Yes, they’re messy and they’re broken, but there is hope for them.
They can have a new life. A different life from the environments they grew up in. There's so much potential for their lives to be turned around. So much

hope.

Every child needs to know they are not an accident; that they have a place in this world. But more important that they have a place in the very heart of God.

We all know what it's like to feel unwanted. Mother Teresa says the rich are poor in other ways, we "Westerners" are rich beyond belief.

Yet we share a poverty that is universal to any culture.
The poverty of feeling unloved.
Unwanted.

Lord, come for your children. And raise up your Church and your followers to do your will in the midst of these young lives.

*pictured is not a foster child, but another precious child i know, his name is caden. i met this little man during my last support raising trip to st. louis. can't wait to see them again!