Nine Months & Nine Kids

When we began our journey as license foster parents at the beginning of the year I definitely didn't expect that we would be where we are now. In these short nine months we have had the opportunity to welcome eight children into our home. Even though I have spent my career working in and around foster care I came into this with skewed expectations.

Those of you who know us know our desire goes beyond the opportunity to provide housing for children. We desire and pray for the reunification and healing for all of these families. That being said we couldn't help ourselves from imaging our lives with our first foster care placement longer term than he was able to be with us.

Impending feelings of worthlessness and desires to give up have filled my mind far more times than I'd care to admit. I continually have to remind myself that being called into foster care in no way means that I would be the hero in any of these stories. My prideful self, in my mental narrative jumps to the hero in the narrative, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. When I catch myself in these thoughts I feel jolted by how easily I fall into selfish thoughts and forget that Jesus is not only my Savior, he is the Savior and Redeemer for every child and person that will ever walk through the doors of my home.

When our first long term placement left our home, I felt like I failed. I felt like another person who did wrong by the sweet boy that we came to love deeply so quickly. It was even more challenging that the same week he left our home, we found our we were pregnant. This lead to many discussions on what continuing on even looked like. When we went through the licensing process we thought we would definitely continue once we had children, since then our eyes really became even more open to the foundational years of parenting and the importance of development in the first five years.

Nine months and nine children (including the little one growing and on it's way), and we are more in awe of who God is and how he cares for us and his children. We are more passionate about the continued care for individuals and families and hope to make mental health resources more available for our local Church community. We are more tired and aware of our endless inability to do anything on our own.

As of today, we are respite foster parents, which means we take care of children when their foster parents take a break or need time away. We pray often as to what our role in caring for families looks like and often dream big on all the ways we can serve in the future. For now we are doing what we've have strived to do, loving to the best of our ability every person that walks through the doors of our home, or even into our lives. By no means are we perfect but his grace is sufficient and his power is known through our endless weaknesses and downfalls.