Fostering Friday

Fostering Friday's is all about my journey as a foster mom, how I feel about it, the highs and lows, and how it affects my family. And of course, hoping to increase awareness and prayer for this challenging and very rewarding ministry.

Today I'm going to tell you about how Russ and I decided to become foster parents. It's a need that we both felt a desire to fill from young ages. When Russ and I met and fell in love in high school we realized we both had an interest in becoming foster parents in the future. Russ had foster brothers as a child and my older sister is adopted. The idea of including and welcoming children from other families into your own was not  a foreign concept to us. It felt natural. In the case of my sister, I forget she's even adopted a lot of the times, even despite the fact she's Korean. She has always been in my life, before I was born, she is my sister. Her favorite joke when we would meet new people was to tell them that I was the one who was adopted. Love that girl. Anyway, we both had hearts that were already soft and prepped for the journey God had for us. We didn't know when, or how this would look, but we had a general agreeance that at some point in our lives we would like to become foster parents.

Fast forward a few years and we got married and nine months later had our first baby! That was a wonderful twist in our life plan and got us started on our own family at the very young age of 20 and 21.  We decided to have another baby a year and a half later that and after our daughter was born we were never in agreeance about having any more children. We still have the option to have more kids. But our daughter turned seven and entered first grade this year, we felt very ready to begin our journey of fostering. We took the foster care classes last spring and became certified in the summer. We had a little girl come to us for five days and then our little man we have now came late in the summer and has been here since.

Some families have foster children intermingled with their own. I think that is wonderful. But I knew that I wanted to raise my babies and have them be old enough to contribute to the care and ministry of our foster kids. Other families take children that are the same age as their own kids or older. I also think that is amazing, we decided that while our own kids were young, we would have infants in our home until our kids grow into the teen years and then we may reevaluate the age range of kids we take. There is such a need for good, consistent foster care for teenagers and we are feeling that maybe someday down the road we could do that, or take sibling groups. Only God knows where he'll lead us and we are trusting Him for His guidance.

Taking infants is a no brainier for us. My kids absolutely adore babies and are so helpful and interested. A good friend of mine observed that her children were rather indifferent to babies, whereas mine responded so differently to them. She said they come by that love of babies naturally. Both Russ and I LOOOVE babies. Although not unheard of, it isn't every man who likes holding and caring for babies, even in the wee hours of the morning! Russ is one of those guys. We were able to tag team the really tough months of getting up with the baby and doing nighttime feeds so neither of us was totally exhausted. That helped so much! Our whole family benefited from his willingness to share that burden. The baby just fits in and we do life as we always do with a baby in tow. We love it. And that tells me we are where we need to be. For now loving and sacrificing for these sweet babies is what we are compelled to do.