Foster care is such unique and crazy journey. We are still relatively new to the whole process. We have only had our license for 9 months and a child for all but 2 weeks of those 9 months. I know my experience is limited and narrow compared to so many other families that have gone before us.
When we entered in to foster care, like so many others I have talked to, we were incredibly naive and idealistic. We were going into to "help" a child that needed a loving family to care, nurture and love him like he had never been loved before. And although I think those ideals are noble on their own and definitely ones you need to keep you going, they are also fleeting if there is not a higher calling behind them.
We would like to have believed that foster care was about "the children" and their needs but what we really have realize is that fostering is about obedience to God first and foremost. And that without His sustaining love and heart, you will never get through all of the emotion. The heartbreak over the child's situation, the anger for the parents or family members that have abused or neglected them, the sleepless nights, the medication logs, the endless appointments with ECI, CASA, CPS, Buckner, courts, family visits, the responsibility and the lack of control are all too much too handle on just an idealistic notion. There has to be a more divine momentum or your resolve will crumble.
This has been one of the hardest things we have ever done. We have been asked to take in this little boy that for the first 11 months of his life was either abused or neglected and sometimes both at the same time. We have been asked to nurse him back to health mentally and physcially. We have been asked to do an unreasonable amount of paperwork everyday or run the risk of having our liscence taken away. We have been asked to care for him like our own but not "love" him too much in case he goes back to his abusers or some obscure family member. We have been asked to do this with him and have been called to do it with more kids at the same time too. Now we have chosen to not take anymore foster children right now because of our current foster sons recurring medical issues but our heart is there for more.
Why? I can honestly tell you that I DON"T KNOW!! It's crazy if you think too hard on it for sure. All I can say is that our journey of fostering so far as been so worth every minute! To see our little boy come so far physically and mentally is a joy everyday for us. To know that for the time he is with us , either for a year or a lifetime, that he has changed us forever is amazing. We would never do it any differently.
A great verse to cling to:
Isaiah 40:28-31
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
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