There have been several surprises along the way as my husband and I have become foster parents. One surprise, that has been both pleasant and painful at different times along the way, is how being involved in foster care has impacted my soul and increased my faith in Jesus. If you would have told me this three years ago when we began our journey into the foster care world, I would have wondered what exactly this would look like for me.
Foster care has helped me to know my Father's heart better and see His hand at work in this world more clearly than ever.
In the beginning, my husband and I knew that foster care was going to be a ministry for us. We knew that we would be serving children and their families. We felt called to this and wanted to be a part of it. Therefore, as with pretty much all serving and ministering to people goes, we also had some idea that this work would be hard as we were going to get "up close" with broken families and hearts that were hurting.
What I wasn't fully prepared for was the empathy and love that I would not only feel for our foster children, but for their birth family as well.
When we left the courthouse just a few short days ago, the rain was pouring down from the sky. As we drove away, it felt to me as if the rain hitting our windshield were heavy tears falling from a grieving God. The inside of my heart felt the sadness of what the weather was expressing outside at that moment. A few moments earlier, we had heard our foster boy's birth mom speak the words that she knew she couldn't take care of her boys in the way they needed her to. After that, she wept uncontrollably. Just one day prior, their father had made a similar confession. As I watched their birth mom cry, I could feel a deep pain well up inside of me that I think was only a fraction of the deeper pain inside of her. Everyone present felt the sadness. Whether everyone there that day could put words to what they were feeling, everyone knew this wasn't the way it was supposed to be. It wasn't how God had planned for families to work. He never wanted a mom or dad to not be able to care for their children. However, here we all were. And it has happened.
Not only has it happened here. It happens everyday. It is part of the fallen world we live in. A few years earlier, my husband and I thought we would come alongside a family and care for their children while they got their lives back together. When we began, we thought the end would look different than it has turned out to be. For many months, we hoped and prayed for reconciliation for the family. We thought God would allow us to partner with Him to restore something that was in need of some extra help and love. As it turned out, He was inviting us to partner with him. It simply looked different than we had thought it would in the beginning. The longer I walk with Jesus, the more I learn that is often the way He works. If He told us how everything would turn out in the end, He knew we wouldn't depend on him every day in between...and oh, how I have needed Him every hour of this journey.
As I have been reflecting on these events for the past few days, it has shown me how deeply it hurts God to see our sin and brokenness in a way I have never seen before. I can't think of many other times in my life that I felt the pain all the way down to my core that results from living in a fallen world. Thankfully, our foster children, their families, and our own stories don't end here. As I was feeling this hurt, I also felt him gently remind me of His great love for me and His people. It's in His nature to come running for us, right in the middle of our sin and pain, to tell us He still loves us in spite of our fallen nature. It is why He tells us in His Word that while we were still sinners, He died for us. He loves us so much that He doesn't leave us in our place of desperate need. He is a redeeming God and He doesn't leave us in our brokenness. He stopped at nothing to bring us back to himself.
There is a bigger story being told in our foster care system. One that tells a story of redemption. One that we don't get to see the end from where we sit. However, God does see the end. He is asking us to trust him and be faithful to what he has called us to this day. And for us, for today, that looks like my husband and I creating space in our home and hearts for these two boys for FOREVER on this side of heaven. We are currently pursuing adoption of our foster boys, which we are beyond happy about by the way! There are some things that words can't quite capture, and the GREAT JOY that we feel knowing that God has chosen us to adopt these boys is one of them. We also believe (although we aren't quite sure what it looks like) that God has asked us to continue to pray for and love our boy's birth family.
We are more certain than ever that God is using foster care as part of his redemptive story. Whether He's restoring birth families or creating adoptive families, it's all part of His perfect plan. And while we know that only some folks are called to be foster parents, we do believe that He calls others to minister to foster parents. We have experienced this first hand. God has used our friends, our families, and He has also placed a group of folks from our church (our community group and our foster care wrap around community group) who have been with us every step of the way. There is no doubt in my mind that through their prayers, support, and service to us, they too have witnessed God's hand in every detail of this process. I believe God has increased their faith, allowed them see His heart for all people, and experience His redemptive work in a way that they might not have apart from their ministry to us.
As I have been reflecting on these events for the past few days, it has shown me how deeply it hurts God to see our sin and brokenness in a way I have never seen before. I can't think of many other times in my life that I felt the pain all the way down to my core that results from living in a fallen world. Thankfully, our foster children, their families, and our own stories don't end here. As I was feeling this hurt, I also felt him gently remind me of His great love for me and His people. It's in His nature to come running for us, right in the middle of our sin and pain, to tell us He still loves us in spite of our fallen nature. It is why He tells us in His Word that while we were still sinners, He died for us. He loves us so much that He doesn't leave us in our place of desperate need. He is a redeeming God and He doesn't leave us in our brokenness. He stopped at nothing to bring us back to himself.
There is a bigger story being told in our foster care system. One that tells a story of redemption. One that we don't get to see the end from where we sit. However, God does see the end. He is asking us to trust him and be faithful to what he has called us to this day. And for us, for today, that looks like my husband and I creating space in our home and hearts for these two boys for FOREVER on this side of heaven. We are currently pursuing adoption of our foster boys, which we are beyond happy about by the way! There are some things that words can't quite capture, and the GREAT JOY that we feel knowing that God has chosen us to adopt these boys is one of them. We also believe (although we aren't quite sure what it looks like) that God has asked us to continue to pray for and love our boy's birth family.
We are more certain than ever that God is using foster care as part of his redemptive story. Whether He's restoring birth families or creating adoptive families, it's all part of His perfect plan. And while we know that only some folks are called to be foster parents, we do believe that He calls others to minister to foster parents. We have experienced this first hand. God has used our friends, our families, and He has also placed a group of folks from our church (our community group and our foster care wrap around community group) who have been with us every step of the way. There is no doubt in my mind that through their prayers, support, and service to us, they too have witnessed God's hand in every detail of this process. I believe God has increased their faith, allowed them see His heart for all people, and experience His redemptive work in a way that they might not have apart from their ministry to us.
