Why are we Fostering?

“Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There was never an audible voice from the sky that came to us and said, “Now you will be foster parents.” (Ha-I wish it was that easy.) As I look back at what lead us to make the decision to become foster parents, it was a long series of education through experiences and the Holy Spirit urging us to put our faith into practice. We kept running into the question, “What are you going to do about it?”

Let me back up.

2004: The Lord provides an opportunity for me to spend 5 weeks in Uganda at an orphanage. There I’m confronted with the orphan reality. The first victims of war, poverty and disease are always children. They are not culpable for the atrocities that surround them, yet they are the ones who suffer the most. I came back to the U.S. burdened and hearing a voice say, “What are you going to do about it?”

2005: My then boyfriend (now husband) gives me an offer I can’t refuse. Join his family on a trip to Thailand, then get jobs in Bangkok ,and live with family friends for free for the next 5 months. While living in Thailand, Nick and I volunteered in a government run orphanage. At this campus there were over 500 children ages 5 and under. We volunteered in the HIV ward. God gave us an uncomfortably close view of the scale, disease, and hopelessness of the orphan crisis. Again, the nagging question in both of our minds, “What are you going to do about it?”

2005: I come back to the US and take a job at a residential treatment facility serving kids 4-12 years old. For 6 long, exhausting months I worked with some of the most severely abused and neglected children. It is a job that haunts me to this day. I felt overwhelmed and out numbered. I witnessed how Satan destroys by killing the spirit of a child. I left that position thinking I could never again work with severely abused and neglected kids. It was too hard, too painful, too stressful...

God was laying a foundation in us. In me.

2006-2010: I move. We get married; we meet other believers who are concerned about the orphan crisis & they spur us on. We learn unsettling stats like 163 million orphans worldwide, 18.3 million double orphans, 500,000 children waiting in the U.S. foster care system. God blesses us with a 3 bedroom condo. We read books like this one and this one. They explain that God’s answer to the marginalized and broken has always been the Church. We learn more stats like in this:

• In 2009, 2,041 children were in the foster care system in our county. 
• However, in 2009, only 179 foster, foster/adopt homes existed in our county.

There is a huge need right in our backyard.

And here’s where God called us on the carpet.When we read the Bible, it says things like -
“God sets the lonely in families.” (Psalm 68:6) 
^“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1:27)
"Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me." (Matthew 18:5)

Again, what are you going to do about it?

*Gulp*

On one of our romantic dates at the local Souper Salad we had the “Should we become foster parents?” discussion. I had a heart dropping, heavy feeling in my gut. I knew the Holy Spirit was calling us, but I didn't want to respond.
Adoption? Yes – I can get behind that.
Fostering? No – that’s not fun and glamorous. No thank you. Fostering does not sound like a delightful idea to me. Pour your heart into a hurting child. Nurture, love and care for them as your own, then have them taken away from you and you may never get to see them again. Remember the 6 months at the residential treatment facility in 2005? I know what this looks like. It’s messy and painful.

As my eyes welled up with tears there in the restaurant I told Nick, “Fostering is going to forever change us. For good and bad, it will leave its thumbprint on us.”

So here we are beginning our fostering journey. I feel like Isaiah.

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." (Isaiah 6:5)

Obviously, the Lord has revealed Himself to us. He has personally shown us the great need and what He expects of His followers. We can’t play dumb and move forward with our lives as if we didn’t know the verses and the obscenely high numbers.

We are ruined, gloriously ruined. How thankful I am that the Sovereign Lord of the universe invites us to participate in loving His children.God is working in my heart and the fear, selfishness, and reservation are giving way to excitement. To quote Richard Stearns from The Hole in Our Gospel,
“We were confronted with a choice, which required us to reorder our priorities and our lives to become completely available to God, without conditions.”

Yes, it will cost us. It will alter our plans, our timeline, and challenge us in ways I can’t imagine. Praise God! Our plans were probably lame anyway. Of this I am certain, we will gain so much out of obeying and clinging to Jesus on this wild fostering parenting ride.