Sometime in the next few months, our family will go through one of the things that scares people away from foster care. We will have cared for a child for years and that child will leave our home. When people list reasons that they feel they couldn't be foster parents, this one usually makes the top three. "What if we have a child in our home for a year or even years and they still leave?"
So today, I'm writing from that place of knowing that we will soon face this reality. I should preface this by saying that I have known of this reality for a little bit. The place I am in right now does not reflect my immediate reaction to this news. The place I am in now comes from much prayer and stepping back to remember why we started the process to become foster parents. I have drawn close to God, and in some ways asked Him "why?"
I'm not a stranger to really painful circumstances related to children and my desire to have a family. At 24 years old I stood alone with a surgeon and received heart breaking news about our ability to have children. Several years later I received more heart breaking news about our attempts to adopt our now son from Guatemala. Several years after that we were looked over and turned down many times over in an attempt to adopt domestically. And all of those moments led us to and prepared us for foster care. I know that. If you have talked to me in the last three years about our decision to become foster parents you have heard parts of the circumstances I just listed. They are the life events that step by step led us to where we are today. God used the hard to bring us to His best. A life I would have never planned on my own. I would have said, "how can I love and care for a child for years and then let them go? It will kill me. Especially after living through infertility, that's just crazy talk.. "
But I was wrong. It wasn't crazy. It was our path that taught us to trust God, to trust His promises, His timing, His correction, His guidance, and His love for us. Oh how I have questioned all of those things. I have been sure that if God loved me He would allow me to get pregnant again, or bring my son home on my timetable, or have a surprise pregnancy against all odds, or not have a child stay in our home so long and still leave. But the reality is His love for me is not based on my current circumstances. That was settled a long time ago. When he chose to send His son for a pitiful sinner like me. When he chose not to spare His son the hurt and humiliation of the cross in order to reconcile me to himself. God is good. God loves me. These things are not influenced by whether life is going my way at the moment. They are truth.
I'm not going to lie about this. I have had a hard time adjusting back to my initial thoughts about foster care. When a child lives with you for an extended period of time, case workers do ask a about adoption. It has been an adjustment to get used to the way case workers talk in long cases. Often the direction of things changes multiple times in a short amount of time. I let myself dream when I probably shouldn't have. We didn't become foster parents to adopt again (though my foster mom friends like to tell me that if you stay in this long enough someone is going to stay). Somewhere around the 12-15 month mark I lost my foster mom hat. Recently I have found it again. That doesn't mean I won't grieve. It will be similar to a death for us. Our family will change forever again. But, I believe that God created my family for this life. I believe that when this little one moves on from us He will place someone else here because it will be their time of need. He holds our future just as He always has.
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