Becoming Foster Parents

This coming week marks a new experience for our family. Chris and I will begin our Foster Home licensing classes and what promises to be a long process of paperwork. We are excited that our family will be able to grow this way, and ultimately hope to give a forever home to at least one of our foster kids. At the same time, this is a completely different way to become parents than how we have done it in the past, and I'm nervous not only about the experience, but also about how people will react to our situation. The friends and family we've talked with have so far been very encouraging and supportive, and for that I am so grateful. I am also so glad to have a new friend who has gone through the foster and adoption process with our local Children Services, to use as a resource and possibly a cheerleader when things get tough.

I'll be learning about how the system works and what to expect over the next four weekends, but what lies behind me is a long path of inspiration and experiences that have gotten us here. I recently tried to think back on all the ways that foster care has popped up in my life, and why I have been called to do it. One strong memory was reading "White Oleander" by Janet Finch. I think I picked it up because it made Oprah's book club, but it was a beautifully-written account of the ugliness of human nature, with a young woman in foster care at the story's center. When I finished the book, I remember thinking that there has to be someone good to be a foster parent, not someone who will sleep with a teenage girl, or lock up her cupboards and starve the children in her home, and I wanted to be that person. Another experience was getting to know a little boy named Joshua, who was in foster care when I met him, and was later adopted by the family he lived with. My mom signed up to take Joshua out and give his family a free afternoon on the weekends, and he soon became a regular fixture at our church and in our home. I was a teenager and loved spending time with this precocious and affectionate kid. Certainly, Joshua had issues associated with being in foster care, being neglected by his birth parents, and generally at-risk in a society that preys on children without an advocate. Again, I wanted to be able to protect him and care for him in a way that would help him reach his full potential. Over and over, foster care seems to pop up in my life, as though someone has used an orange highlighter to bring it to my attention. And every time, I want to be a part of it.

The next piece of the story involves my family; certainly I want to do many things, but I need my family to willingly participate with me. So how to get my husband on board with my plan? I started with prayer, which you can scoff at if you want, but it has been hard at work in my life, and made a difference. So I prayed that my husband would be open to fostering children with me, if that was what I was supposed to do. In the meantime, we started a family of our own: two blond-haired, blue-eyed boys with amazing smiles and independence to spare. I became a stay-at-home mom to save money and keep them close to me while they are still willing to sit on my lap and cuddle with me on a cold day. Finally, this past September, our church offered an opportunity to spend a weekend at a nearby Children's home and volunteer at a carnival to raise money, then visit with the children who live there. A little persistence got my husband to agree to go, and our kids stayed with the grandparents while we were gone overnight. The trip was life-changing. Chris and I spent the first morning helping set up the carnival, then ran a few game booths and had a chance to socialize with all the different people who came to the event, including the staff at the Children's Home. That night, we went to the "houses" on the property and played board games and colored with some of the children who live there. The ages we met were early elementary school, and so likeable and excited to spend time with us. We left the next day and spent our car ride home talking about what we had seen and done. That was when Chris shared that the time he spent with a kid named Michael had filled his heart with the desire to give a home to a kid that needed it. We finished the morning at church, where the sermon focused on following through when you are called to do something good that seems scary or uncertain. And that was when we requested paperwork to begin the licensing process.

So sometime in the next 6-18 months, we'll be placed with a child who needs a temporary family. And maybe that will turn into an opportunity to adopt, or maybe we'll be able to send that child back to his or her birth family and open our home again. I can't wait!