foster parenting
On a Sunday in January 2013, our pastor interviewed a woman at our church who kept children in foster care. She spoke about our state’s broken foster care system, the many children in foster care, some of whom DCS had lost track of or had actually died while in custody. She told about the children that she had had in her home and I felt the Lord begin to nudge my heart. The final blow came when she said (and I will never forget this), “If the church had been doing what we were supposed to do, our system would not be in this mess.” My husband and I both heard the Lord calling that day and we decided to bring foster children into our home. We finished classes and home-studies and were approved to be foster parents. During the mass of paperwork you do in training, you can decide what kind of children you are willing to foster. We were fairly open, our children were grown and out of the home, we had plenty of room and two friendly dogs to help ease the transition to a new home.
The one thing we specifically asked was that we not have teenage girls. My husband was a teacher at the time and he would be home alone with the foster child (or children) many days in the summer. I worked outside the home, and we had heard scary stories about accusations made against men, so thought for our safety that it was best to not have teenage girls. In March 2013, we got our first call…for a teenage girl! Did they not even READ these profiles??
Today I have the privilege of sharing over at Michaela Evanow's blog a post I wrote for her series, this is motherhood too about raising an adopted child. Over the past few years I've been more than blessed by Michaela's blog, her honesty and her open heart. I hope you find her as much as an inspiration as I have.
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| Courtesy of Michaela Evanow |
“Mommy is this right?”
My daughter shows me the note she’s writing. There are pictures of herself and her siblings taped haphazardly alongside her printed words.
“It’s close!” I reply.
“Well, what would make it perfect? I want it to be perfect!”
I glance over the note, stopping at the words mom and I love you. But this note isn’t for me, it’s for her other mother. Her birth mom.
Jasmine came to us at three month old. She was a beautiful baby girl. I still remember that first day—what it felt like to hold her as she cooed at us, giving her a bath in our kitchen sink, laying her in the crib we’d borrowed from a family member, turning off the light to her freshly painted room.
I remember months in limbo. As foster parents, we cared for kids, but never knew for how long or when they’d get placed somewhere else.
Jasmine was different. I loved her from day one, secretly wanting to keep her for always.
Miraculously, seven years later, here I am with my daughter by my side.
You can read the rest of my post here.
Today we're also linking up with Jennifer Dukes Lee and Holley Gerth.
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