For those of you who have been following our family, you know that we initially submitted our application to be foster parents back in October. We have completed months of classes, our home study, home inspections, and all. the. paperwork! We are still waiting for the state to push the 'approve' button to be officially opened, but I'm expecting that to happen very soon.
I thought it might be helpful to address some of the common questions/concerns about foster care that I have heard as we have been working towards becoming a foster home. I love to dialogue about foster care, so if there are questions that I have not addressed, please feel free to ask me!
# 1 - Why would you do this? Isn't life hard enough?
I think maybe the biggest misconception about foster parents is that they are either super-human or they are in it for the wrong reasons. Yes, you do get a monthly reimbursement from the state for being a foster home. While the amount varies based on the type of child and the state, my personal feeling is that the money is very unlikely to cover all of the expenses involved in caring for the child and so I have to believe that most people who are choosing foster care, are doing it to provide a safe and loving home to a child who needs one. Regarding being super-humans - Nope. You don't have to be around my family long to determine that we are pretty ordinary. We try to be intentional about the ways we discipline and care for our children and our marriage, but we are just two parents who work full-time jobs, love our roles as mom and dad, and can't ignore the fact that there are hundreds of children in our city who need safe homes. We have room in our hearts and room in our home, and while I know it will be hard, I also believe it is going to be really wonderful for all of us.
#2 - I could never do that. I would get too attached.
I totally understand where this is coming from - I may have even uttered these words myself when I first began thinking about foster care. The underlying implication here though is that foster parents must in turn be robots who do not experience attachment and love, but are really just mechanical care-givers. I will get attached to our foster children. I will love them the way I love my own children. I will care for them, nurture them, advocate for them, and believe a bright future for them of healing and restoration for their families. Many of these kids have not yet experienced healthy attachments, so it is absolutely vital that they experience a trusting, loving, attachment to a care-giver. As someone who has known and experienced deep grief, I know that it will hurt terribly when these children leave our home, but I also know by experience the incredible well of grace that is deeper than the deepest hurt. I am the adult. I can love deeply and hurt deeply so that these children get to experience a healing, loving home.
# 3 - What about your kids? Aren't you worried about how this is going to impact them?
Yes, yep, for sure, absolutely. I think about my sweet children and worry about them ALL.THE.TIME. We are not just going to be foster parents, we are going to be a foster family, that means all of us are invested in being a healthy, thriving home for a hurting child. Foster care is a place of trauma, it is inviting brokenness into your home and saying - "you can stay here, it is safe." We have had months of conversations about foster care with our children and honestly, there have been tears (from both of us) and it still feels fragile as we don't yet know what it will feel like to do this everyday. But, I have SO much faith for my family with foster care. I believe that they are going to see first hand what it looks like to serve, to think beyond yourself, to give even when it hurts, and to love without guarantees. I believe that my kids can handle the trauma of foster care because they come from a place of safety and security, they know that we can do hard things. We will always be looking out for our children, re-evaluating the health of our home, and trusting Jesus to take the next steps.
# 4 - Why don't you just adopt?
We thought about adoption and prayed a lot about that route. Honestly, the price tag was the biggest deterrent, but as we begin to learn more about foster care, the more I felt drawn to this particular pathway. I would love to have more forever children in my home, but I see foster care as this precious space to stand in on behalf of children and families who are broken. I'm not doing this so I can adopt all of these children, I don't even expect to be able to adopt right now. I don't want these mama's who are hurting and broken to feel like I am trying to take their kids. I want to be for families - I believe that whenever possible, families should stay together. I want to love these birth parents, advocate for their family, and care for these kids for as long as that is the plan. I've seen a lot of children in my line of work who were in foster care for a period of time and went back home. For some of them it was a solid reunification, and for others it led to lots of bouncing around. The goal of foster care is ALWAYS reunification, until it is not. My heart is to love these kids, give them the care they will need to build skills when they are at home and help them develop positive attachments. None of that is wasted, even if the placement does not end in adoption, none of that time loving a child is wasted.
#5 - So does this mean you are saying 'yes' to anything?
Nope. We have given our agency certain parameters to work with when it comes to placement. For us, we want a baby, so ages 0-2. We don't care about gender or race, but that is something that you could give specifications for. We also asked for a 'basic' child, that means no obvious medical problems or special needs. Also, our plan right now is just to take 1 child. We are being licensed to have 6 children in our home (that means 4 potential foster kids), but we really feel like we need to ease into this one 'yes' at a time. An important part of helping Jeff shake off some of his reservations regarding foster care was setting parameters and agreeing that this is not an open ended 'yes' to all things. It is just the next yes. There will be more phone calls, more kids who need homes, and when the time comes, we will say yes together, or the answer is no.
I think those are the biggest questions that I've gotten so far about foster care. Thank you all for your prayers and support for us as we have started this journey. Foster care takes a village... like an actual village of people, so I'm so grateful to have friends and family who are willing to be certified as respite providers, take CPR classes and keep our own children so that we can do the things we need to do in order to be ready. I'm so excited and eager for this journey to start. Please pray with us for our first placement and stay tuned!
Showing posts with label journey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journey. Show all posts
Sunday, July 1, 2018
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Unanswerable Questions
As the shock dissipates and the reality comes rolling in like a giant wave of destruction that one could never outrun - I am overcome. By pain, by disappointment, by a cacophony of questions that seem to pour out of my heart and are received only as an echo in the darkness. There is no answer that comes, no response, just their echo that seems to go on forever.
The spiritual struggle that is at war within me right now is more intense than any struggle I have faced with the Lord before. I think in the past it felt like I was a disappointed child. I wanted something and my Father said 'no' and I wailed and wrestled against him and it was a real struggle. But ultimately, I trusted my Father, I trusted His care for me, the goodness of His heart and I submitted. I finally relaxed into him and quit fighting and I felt better, I was able to accept whatever it was that He would give me, even if it wasn't what I wanted. Now, this place is deeper and darker. It feels like the distrust and betrayal of a child who has had her Father promise he will come and then he continues to not show up when he said he would. The sadness, rejection, betrayl and hurt are real barriers to being able to trust that father again. I don't mean to imply that this is a crisis of faith for me in the sense that I may choose distrust and walk away from my Father because I did not get what I wanted. I just mean that this crisis of struggling with, who is the Good Father when things unfold in a way that does not feel like it could possibly be the most good, the most kind or the most loving - it is real. I will not pretend like I understand this or like the answers don't matter. I believe that walking through this valley with honesty and earnestness is part of the spiritual journey.
The truth is that in the depths of my despair, I am not experiencing this supernatural protection or comfort from Jesus that makes it feel better. In some ways, God feels far off and I don't think that is an accident. When I look at the scriptures, it seems that there are definite times when God hangs back and does not rush in with the answers to make everything better right away. "Truly you are a God who hides himself." Isaiah 45:15, "As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. " Ecclesiastes 11:5. The Psalms are full of David crying out to the Lord asking "How long will you forget me?" And "Will you reject me forever?" Even Jesus uttered similar words as he hung on the cross. I think the place I am in is not unique - I think it is exactly the place where God builds faith - the place where it looks like a wasteland and hope is nowhere to be seen, not even on the horizon.
I am learning that it is not the suffering, the loss or the pain that threatens to destroy my heart. People have a remarkable capacity to endure hardship and suffering when it makes sense. Men and women choose to die for the sake of their country, to protect their children, to be martyred for their faith. It is the confusion, the circumstances that cannot be explained that threaten to crush the spirit most acutely. I can understand suffering as a result of my own sin or even the sin of someone else that impacts me... But when you did nothing and you had nothing to do with or no control over what happened; those are the situations that shake our foundations so deeply we cannot simply get back up and move on. As I have been reading the book of Job, I have been struck by what appears to be the source of Job's most intense frustration. It is not the suffering that God has allowed to be inflicted upon him, it is his inability to find God in the midst of it. Job says, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come to His seat! I would present my case before Him and fill my mouth with arguments... When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him; He turns on the right, I cannot see Him. But He knows the way I take; when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold." Job 23:3-4, 9-10. Over and over Job laments that God feels far off and talks of how he longs to be able to communicate with God about this disaster. I feel this way right now. I want God to rush in and make this better, help me understand what He is doing, affirm that He sees and cares. It isn't that I don't believe the things that I know to be true about God. It is this seemingly incompatible place of my knowledge and beliefs about him and my actual reality. I have to believe that it is in this place of incompatibility, this place of impossible questions that real, enduring faith is born. As Dr. Dobson puts it in his book, When God Doesn't Make Sense, "What is faith? It is 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen' (Hebrews 11:1). This determination to believe when the proof is not provided and when the questions are not answered is central to our relationship with the Lord."
I know my questions are mostly unanswerable, but that doesn't stop them from pouring out of my broken heart. And that's okay - it is okay to struggle and not be able to accept a simple - God is good all the time. It doesn't mean it isn't true, but my heart needs to get there and for me that takes time and learning what it means to trust God when your dreams fall apart. I would rather have that kind of faith - the kind that can withstand unanswered questions and dead children- than the kind that says the right words but doesn't believe them.
The spiritual struggle that is at war within me right now is more intense than any struggle I have faced with the Lord before. I think in the past it felt like I was a disappointed child. I wanted something and my Father said 'no' and I wailed and wrestled against him and it was a real struggle. But ultimately, I trusted my Father, I trusted His care for me, the goodness of His heart and I submitted. I finally relaxed into him and quit fighting and I felt better, I was able to accept whatever it was that He would give me, even if it wasn't what I wanted. Now, this place is deeper and darker. It feels like the distrust and betrayal of a child who has had her Father promise he will come and then he continues to not show up when he said he would. The sadness, rejection, betrayl and hurt are real barriers to being able to trust that father again. I don't mean to imply that this is a crisis of faith for me in the sense that I may choose distrust and walk away from my Father because I did not get what I wanted. I just mean that this crisis of struggling with, who is the Good Father when things unfold in a way that does not feel like it could possibly be the most good, the most kind or the most loving - it is real. I will not pretend like I understand this or like the answers don't matter. I believe that walking through this valley with honesty and earnestness is part of the spiritual journey.
The truth is that in the depths of my despair, I am not experiencing this supernatural protection or comfort from Jesus that makes it feel better. In some ways, God feels far off and I don't think that is an accident. When I look at the scriptures, it seems that there are definite times when God hangs back and does not rush in with the answers to make everything better right away. "Truly you are a God who hides himself." Isaiah 45:15, "As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. " Ecclesiastes 11:5. The Psalms are full of David crying out to the Lord asking "How long will you forget me?" And "Will you reject me forever?" Even Jesus uttered similar words as he hung on the cross. I think the place I am in is not unique - I think it is exactly the place where God builds faith - the place where it looks like a wasteland and hope is nowhere to be seen, not even on the horizon.
I am learning that it is not the suffering, the loss or the pain that threatens to destroy my heart. People have a remarkable capacity to endure hardship and suffering when it makes sense. Men and women choose to die for the sake of their country, to protect their children, to be martyred for their faith. It is the confusion, the circumstances that cannot be explained that threaten to crush the spirit most acutely. I can understand suffering as a result of my own sin or even the sin of someone else that impacts me... But when you did nothing and you had nothing to do with or no control over what happened; those are the situations that shake our foundations so deeply we cannot simply get back up and move on. As I have been reading the book of Job, I have been struck by what appears to be the source of Job's most intense frustration. It is not the suffering that God has allowed to be inflicted upon him, it is his inability to find God in the midst of it. Job says, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come to His seat! I would present my case before Him and fill my mouth with arguments... When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him; He turns on the right, I cannot see Him. But He knows the way I take; when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold." Job 23:3-4, 9-10. Over and over Job laments that God feels far off and talks of how he longs to be able to communicate with God about this disaster. I feel this way right now. I want God to rush in and make this better, help me understand what He is doing, affirm that He sees and cares. It isn't that I don't believe the things that I know to be true about God. It is this seemingly incompatible place of my knowledge and beliefs about him and my actual reality. I have to believe that it is in this place of incompatibility, this place of impossible questions that real, enduring faith is born. As Dr. Dobson puts it in his book, When God Doesn't Make Sense, "What is faith? It is 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen' (Hebrews 11:1). This determination to believe when the proof is not provided and when the questions are not answered is central to our relationship with the Lord."
I know my questions are mostly unanswerable, but that doesn't stop them from pouring out of my broken heart. And that's okay - it is okay to struggle and not be able to accept a simple - God is good all the time. It doesn't mean it isn't true, but my heart needs to get there and for me that takes time and learning what it means to trust God when your dreams fall apart. I would rather have that kind of faith - the kind that can withstand unanswered questions and dead children- than the kind that says the right words but doesn't believe them.
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