It's Official

On October 14th, I blogged about our struggle with conceiving a child and how that had led us to consider adoption and foster care in the future if God continues to close my womb. Well, we have officially made the decision to become licensed foster parents! God has taken us on this journey over the past couple of months and our desire to be foster parents has continued to grow.

The journey started when our friends Jeremy and Melissa visited us from Illinois. They are foster parents to 3 kids (one of whom is in the process of becoming theirs officially through adoption) and have 2 biological children. They talked to us about what foster care entails and what a blessing it has been to them. It was like a light bulb went off in our heads that day because we had never really considered foster care before. We found out from our friends that foster care can be a really great experience and it also can be a great way to adopt a child if you can't afford to adopt through an adoption agency.

After Jeremy and Melissa went back home, Shaun continued to bring up the possibility of doing foster care. That was a huge sign to me that God just might be leading us in that direction because Shaun had NEVER shown much passion or interest about regular adoption. Then, a couple of days later I was listening to the radio and heard a story about a woman who had been diagnosed as infertile by her doctors and now was going the route of foster care to hopefully welcome a forever child into their home whenever God brought the right one.

Our hearts were being moved! Shaun asked me if I'd be willing to do some research about foster care, so I did. I also spoke with a friend who has worked in the foster care system before. I found a Christian foster care agency online that immediately struck me as the agency we should use. I showed some video clips to Shaun about families who had been blessed by foster care. We both agreed that it seemed like a great agency that seems to truly care about everyone involved. We also kept thinking about how God has called us to care for orphans. James 1:27 kept ringing through my mind as a call to all Christians:

James 1:27, “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of God and Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

We continued to pray because it seemed like a big step to become foster parents. We wanted a clear answer from the Lord that this was what He wanted for our family. One Sunday, we were sitting in our Sunday school class and a scripture verse popped up on the screen:

Galatians 4:4-7, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a women, born under the Law, so that he might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘ABBA, Father!’ Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.”

When we got back in the car that day after church, we both commented about how that scripture verse spoke to our hearts individually. We both knew that Galatians 4 was an answer to prayer, so the next day we called the foster care agency to set up an appointment.

We are excited to see what God does in our lives as a result of foster care. We hope that we will have the privilege of adopting a child eventually but also realize that many of the children we will have in our home will only stay for a short time before returning to their biological parents. It will be difficult for me to bond with these kids and then lose them, but we know this is what God is calling us to and we look forward to showing these little ones the love of Christ.

It is about a 3-4 month process to become licensed and we begin our first classes on Dec. 7th. After that it will be 2 months of classes, a home study, and background checks before we can receive a child into our home. Stay posted for more updates.