The "Why" Behind Why We Chose to Foster

Recently, I was asked the question of what led my husband and I to fostering. Although we made this decision a few years ago, I didn't have to pause too long to remember what led us to the decision to become foster parents. While there were a few reasons we felt like we were being pushed in this direction, there is one that stands out far above the rest. Simply put, we felt like this was something that God asked us to do. Therefore, we made our decision to become foster parents out of obedience to him.

We have been extremely blessed to be a part of the local Church at Grace Church. On that note, two of the core values for our church includes being Culturally Engaged and Biblically Oriented. The first core value of being Culturally Engaged means that we believe we are to engage our neighbors both locally and globally in order to share the gospel and care for those in need. Through the core value of being Biblically Oriented, we believe Scripture should be the foundation for our lives as believers. As my husband and I considered both of these core values, it wasn’t too hard to see that, for us,  this meant opening our home to foster children. 

For the past few years, the leadership at our church has brought before us the need for foster parents in our community. At one point, they shared that there are 1,227 children in foster care in Upstate South Carolina, but only 682 foster homes and a few shelters. This shed light on a huge need in our community for us and began to pull on our hearts. We were also reading in Scripture where the Bible is very clear about our responsibility to care for the orphaned and vulnerable in our society. In James 1:27, God tells us that pure and genuine religion means caring for orphans and widows in their distress. 

After leaving church on a few occasions, we both felt a sense of God nudging us in the direction of fostering. With the present need for foster parents and the scriptures being pretty clear to us, we prayed about what we could do to help. We felt like we had been blessed with some extra margin of time and resources, so we believed God might be asking us to engage and care for children in our local community through fostering.  Therefore, we began to pursue it by attending an informational meeting at church where they were going to be sharing more about how to become involved. At that meeting, it became very clear to us to move in this area of getting our license.

It was extremely important that my husband and I felt confident that this was something God was asking of us because the next 12 months or so were frustrating at times and required a lot of patience as we moved through the process of being licensed by the state. If both of us weren’t confident, it would have been easy to give up and walk away from the process. We encountered things like not having the correct size windows according to code all the way to me not having finger prints that were identifiable (that is another story for another day!). Also, we started the process with one agency (the agency that was at the first informational meeting we attended) and then stopped pursuing it for a few months while we moved to a new home. So, when we started the process over, a friend at church recommended Miracle Hill Foster Care to us. We began talking with Miracle Hill about helping us get licensed. 

My husband and I both agree that this is probably one of the most beneficial parts of the entire fostering experience for us. It was a surprise blessing that we stopped and restarted the process because it meant that we were able to get licensed with the help of Miracle Hill Foster Care. Throughout the licensing process and the child placement process, we know that it has been a much easier experience with Miracle Hill at our side. First of all, having a licensing worker who is knowledgeable about the system and how it works is a huge support. Next, having someone who we know genuinely knows and cares for us throughout the whole time is invaluable. Our Miracle Hill licensing worker shows up at all the court trials, Foster Care Review Board meetings, and comes to visit us in our home. We consider ourselves to be blessed by having someone like this in our life. We have talked with other foster parents who don't have this same support.  We don't know how we would have survived without our licensing worker, Becki Clouse. She has been such a benefit to us on so many occasions over the past couple of years. 

If you are someone who is considering fostering, I would encourage you to move and take a step in that direction. I would be more than happy to talk with you in more detail about our experience as this is an area that God has grown my love and passion for so I love talking with others about it. I would encourage you to find a place where there is more information being shared and just go and listen. We believe whether you eventually think this is what God is asking you to do or if you just learn more about fostering, you will be blessed. We have certainly been blessed in more ways than we could have ever imagined. One of the biggest ways we have been blessed is having the scripture from Matthew 10:39 come alive to us. The promise that Jesus gives us in this scripture of finding more life when you give your life away has become a tangible truth for us through fostering. We have found that we are filled with more purpose and life that only Jesus can give as a result of fostering. God has given us more joy than I could have ever asked for through this experience.

Reflections on Ice Skating and 2016

Our New Year's Eve family outing this year involved going ice skating. For the first hour, I put on ice skates and tried to keep up with my husband and the boys, who let's just say are much better at this activity than me. After awhile I decided to take off my ice skates and just sit and watch the three of them skate for another hour or so. As I watched, I couldn't help but do some reflecting on our year. It didn't take me long to begin to see some similarities between the past year and this ice skating experience. As most people who have ever put on a pair of ice skates know, ice skating is hard, sometimes scary, often discouraging, and can be straight up painful...and yet somehow, in the midst of all of that,  it can also be fun and wonderful.

Many who have walked through this last year with us know that there have been days that could be described using some of these same words as well. We have experienced some sadness, discouragement, unfulfilled longings, and some days have just been downright painful. 

As I watched the boys, who by the way this was their first time ice skating, they kept falling and getting wet, cold, and beat up from hitting the ice so many times. I kept thinking they should just give up and take their skates off. But they didn't. They kept getting up every time and trying again. They even kept telling me that they were having fun and showing it by the smiles I saw flash across their face every few minutes. It kinda surprised me how persistent and committed they were. There was something beautiful about it to me. That's when my mind began to make some connections between ice skating and our past year. One thing that quickly allowed me to make this connection was how I saw my husband continue to come along beside and encourage them. He would hold their hands and help them regain their balance. He helped them by picking them up off the ice over and over again. I think these things were helping them to keep going. More than once, I saw him give them a gentle whisper in their ear saying how proud he was of them for trying something new. I think this is what gave them strength to keep going and helped them to not give up. 
It was at this point, I remembered some scripture that we had read together as a family just a couple of days earlier. Romans 8: 15-17 says...
“So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering."
It was almost overwhelming as I felt this truth wash over me.  God was reminding me of something that was crucial for me to be reminded of at the close of this year. His promise in His Word here tells me that He doesn't want me to respond with fear when I encounter suffering. He doesn't want me to give up and quit, and stay in a place of discouragement when things in my life aren't going the way I hoped or planned. He wants me to come to Him, my father. He wants to whisper to me that He loves me and He is working in and through me for His Glory. He wants me to know that He is with me and helping me. He is the one who is giving me the strength I need to get through the hard places. He has a plan for me that although it has painful parts, it also has him as the author. He is ultimately sovereign and will make it all turn out for his good, which also means it will turn out for my good. 

Later on in that same chapter, Romans 8, verse 26, God tells us that " the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness." I have felt weak at points this past year. I have also experienced moments that I know it was God helping me in my weak moments, just like I saw my husband helping our boys when they were ice skating. 

Therefore, as I enter into 2017, I am going to try to live more into my heritage as the daughter of a King. I know that sharing in His glory has and will continue to involve sharing in His suffering. He longs to give me daily affirmation that He is with me in it all. I want to walk close enough to Him this year so that I can hear his voice whispering to me, telling me that I am His and He loves me and that His plans for me are still good, very good. Especially in the hard parts, I want to know and trust that it is his truths and strength that I need depend on each day.  I am beginning 2017 by choosing to trust that God is telling a beautiful story...a story that although it has some messy, sad and hard parts now, but in the end, it will all lead to one Glorious Story.
As I write this blog post, I can't help but think it is almost like our boys knew that the hurt and discomfort from ice skating paled in comparison to the joy the experience brought them. They kept their eyes on the joyous parts and chose to listen to my husband's voice of encouragement. My prayer is that I too will fix my eyes on my Father in heaven and listen to His voice and allow it to be louder than my fears. I want to focus on the beautiful parts of our story...our story that will be perfect in the end because it is His story.