We are coming up on a decade of foster care and hosting children. I couldn’t have foreseen the blessings of fostering children with older forever children (as opposed to having all young ones).
This is my daughter doing Baby J’s feed this morning while I stumbled around trying to wake up. She is such an amazing helper to me and loves this baby so well.
I started thinking about the significant help all five of our forever children are right now, plus all of the other reasons we are committed to fostering in this season–for their sakes! My husband helped me brainstorm the blessings . . . so here we go.
#1: Our five really are an enormous help! I don’t think we could have handled medical-needs infant placements last year without their constant finding things for me and grabbing diapers and holding baby during feedings and chopping potatoes for dinner and keeping me company on the couch when I’m with the baby. Plus their greater independence sure makes things easier!
#2: Foster care is a “simple” way for us to serve Jesus together as a family. Can’t get much closer to home than bringing ministry right into the home! As followers of Jesus, we have a part to play in the Kingdom by entering into hard spaces, being the gospel in action. Serving Jesus requires sacrifice and love for the sake of others; we get to practice these (and more!) together as a family. Foster care really is discipleship in action.
#3: We appreciate the learning and the conversations that foster care brings up. We regularly discuss real-life examples of families who don’t have a place to live or who are struggling to find food or who don’t have a car or who find it difficult to care for their children. Our children are learning firsthand that really hard situations exist all around us.
#4: Foster care provides a natural avenue for learning about loss and grief. We have lots of discussions about our little J baby going home hopefully someday soon, trying to prepare their hearts as best we can. And when it comes time for him to leave, we will cry and pray and talk and process together.
#5: Another blessing is how foster care turns our entire family to prayer. We pray for the children we miss; we pray for the child with us now; we pray for birth parents; we pray for case workers; we pray for the medical providers; we pray for the judge. Just yesterday our baby’s visit supervisor had a personal family emergency and the kids and I paused our schoolwork to pray for the situation.
All of these reasons and more are why we do foster care. It is hard, yes, but we cannot forget to acknowledge the blessings too.
