Call

I've been writing this post in my head for several weeks. I want to write down how in the world we ended up as a foster family before the details fade. I have a feeling this story will become part of our family's testimony of God's faithfulness to us.

When we adopted our son, I prayed that our family would feel complete. I prayed for freedom from the desire to have more children. I knew we could not haves more biological children and the adoption process had been very difficult so I really wanted to be done building our family. The more I prayed about our family, the more I felt like at least one someone was still missing. In 2010 we started the process to try to adopt through private domestic adoption. We were open to a lot of circumstances, and hoped we would be chosen by a birth mother. From time to time, we would look at birth mother profiles that were a little more complicated to determine if we wanted to be in the group of families she would view as potential adoptive families. Lots of these situations involved abuse, drugs, abandonment, and crisis. After about a year into our attempt to adopt, God started really drawing us toward foster care.

It started with our daughter who was in first grade at the time. She had begged to ride the bus as a first grader, and we were willing to give it a try. It helped me out because her brother could finish his nap without having to go through car line everyday. One day, she came bouncing off the bus with a question. She had made some new neighborhood friends who were part of a foster family. She made friends with the biological son, and met one of his foster siblings on the bus. She wanted to know what exactly a foster family was, the first child I ever explained foster care to was my own daughter. God supplies our needs, even needs we don't know we have yet. After we talked about it, my girl blurts out, "we should be a foster family!". What!?!? I sent her daddy a text that our funny girl thinks we should be a foster family. He sent back something along the lines of, " great, I hope she's not prophetic".

Several months passed, we viewed more birthmother profiles, we were never chosen, and sweet girl brought up foster care several times. I was becoming discouraged with our adoption attempt. The feelings of failure that I dealt with years before during our struggle with infertility crept back in. I couldn't understand why we had such a desire to be parents again, but this just wasn't working out. I thought foster care was crazy.

One birthmom profile that we viewed was for a baby already born. He was born with drugs in his system, and his mom wanted to look at possible adoptive families. We prayed about being shown in this situation, and decided that we were willing to be shown. When we called the social worker back to tell her we would like to be in the pile, she let us know that mom had changed her mind about adoption and wanted to parent. However, because the baby was born with drugs in his system DHR would be called. Most likely he would go to a foster home, and mom would have to work in order to regain custody.

As I struggled to understand why the adoption wasn't working out, I started to consider foster care. I struggled with why was I willing to open my home to the baby for adoption, but not when he needed a safe nurturing environment as a foster situation. I knew God was softening my heart through the birthmom profiles I had read. In several of the situations we had been a part of the mother decided to parent. Our social worker had expressed to us that she was concerned about several of those situations being able to successfully parent. I began to hurt for the moms who wanted to parent, but didn't have the support or skills required.

Early in 2011, I was home one evening after the kids went to bed. I do not remember where my husband was that evening, but he was not at home. I was searching the Internet, and the tv was on in the background. The still small voice wasn't so quiet that evening. I started to pray about our family again, and very clearly I felt God open my heart to foster care. We had the space, I had recently changed my job situation to allow for more flexibility, and we wanted to continue parenting. He was showing me that He had been preparing us for this for a while, I was just resistant. What about MY kids? The answer, "they're mine love, not yours, and I love them vastly more than you ever could. I have a plan for them and it is not to hurt them".

When my husband came home, I could hardly say the words. I knew once I said it out loud he would confirm that he thought we should pursue getting trained as foster parents. I knew if I said it out loud, it was over, my resistance would be gone. Finally, through tears, I got it out, I think we should be foster parents. And yes he confirmed it just as I suspected.

My last attempt at resistance was to tell my mother. Surely she would think this was a bad idea. So a few days later while driving to pick our son up from preschool, I called mom. She thought it was a great idea for our family. She confirmed that even a year earlier she would have been concerned about our adopted son, but he had made so much progress that she wasn't worried about him anymore.

So I gave it to God. If you want us to do this you are going to have to open all the doors, wide. Within a week or so my husband called me at work. One of the local agencies had just started the training class. It was meeting across the street from our church on a night we were available. If we wanted to start we had to start by the next class, in three days. My answer: if I can get child care for our kids, let's go for it. By that evening I had child are for our kids for the next nine Thursday evenings. The door was wide open, time to walk through in obedience.

As I sat in class each week, I knew this was right where God wanted us. This was his plan all along. As I have watched my children as foster siblings, I know they were made for this. God knows them much better than I do because he created them.