A Personal Plea

This is a blog that I have prayerfully considered doing for weeks.  I don’t even know what I am going to type.  So many thoughts going through my head.  This blog will be on adoption/fostering.  This blog will make some people angry, some people cry, some people laugh, but my greatest hope is that is makes you think. 

          For a long time growing up I thought that adoption(when I reference this I also include fostering) was a calling and that some people have it and some people do not.  People say it all the time, so it must be true.  As I started dating Dustin and two brown baby girls took over our lives and hearts, we knew that ‘calling’ was on our lives.  We started here at the CH and that ‘callng’ was confirmed.  But then I started REALLY diving into the scriptures.  Everywhere I turned God’s Word didn’t say ‘send some money to a cause but never feel for the orphan.’  It did not say, ‘never get close to a child who is so desperately hurting.” It does not say, ‘if this is your gift, care for an orphan.’  But The Book says many times how we are to care for the orphaned and fatherless.  My very most favorite verse of the subject is James 1:27 says that “Pure and undefiled religion is to take care of orphans and widows in their distress.”  That is the only time I could find where God declares a ‘religion’ pure before Him. 

I am still struggling with these facts.  I know that they go outside of what a lot of Christians believe.  So I am not even really going to fight the point.  My plea to you is to really PRAYERFULLY consider if adoption is for your family.  Many people just jump and say “oh that isn’t for us” but they haven’t once asked God about it.  Or maybe they have asked God but they weren’t really waiting on His response.  They threw a quick prayer up about it and moved on and never really looked at what God wanted for their lives.  I have learned over the past few months that God’s plan for our lives looks WWWAAAYYYY different than our own.  If God has never really knocked you off of the plan for your life…please check and make sure you are on His plan and not your own.  I have done both and His plan is so much more satisfying. 

With the help of my mentor in this crazy adoption world (Amy G.-p.s.-if you have not checked out her blog about adoption from this week, please go read it!)I have compiled a list of reasons people tell us all the time of why they cannot do what we do.  I am not judging people.  It is so easy to be overwhelmed and think that you cannot handle adoption.  The truth is, you can’t.  But if the Holy Spirit is alive and active in you, The Spirit can do it and it will take you right along with it. 

Reason 1:  I do not have enough money.  Foster classes are free.  I recommend them to anyone so that they can get a better idea of what foster/adoption REALLY is.  Adoption outside of the US is expensive.  Some insurances help with the costs, some do not.  Adoption through DHR costs some money but often you will be reimbursed by the state for that money. Yes, taking on another child costs more money.  You will receive certain compensation monthly for a foster child.  It isn’t much.  I once heard a lady say that you afford as many as you have.  I believe that to be true.  God is faithful and if you are in His will, He won’t fail you.

Reason 2:  It would break my heart when the foster child leaves. Yes, it might.  I will not lie to you.  Yes, you might cry several days over a child who you have grown attached to.  Your children might too.  Who cares?  All these children want is love.  I happen to have plenty of that.  Your children will get to learn that sometimes what God asks of us is not easy or comfortable but we are still supposed to do it.  SO for the sake of having to nurse a broken heart I will love with all I have while they are here.  God heals broken hearts.  I believe the love I have given some children has helped mend their own broken hearts.  They have learned that someone would deeply care for them, even if they were not related.  What a huge lesson to get to be a part of. 

Reason 3:  It is too dangerous to have my own children around children from ‘that’ environment.  I laugh out loud at this one.  DO you realize that your children go to school with a large number of foster kids every day?  But I know the rebuttal to that is that being at school with them is different than them in your own home.  Yes, it is.  Yes some of these kids have come from horrible backgrounds.  I always try to look at this one from the perspective that my family can be a positive influence on them.  Also, the kids who come through my home have, for the most part, been incredible children.  There have been a number that I would have no problem with them being with my biological children.  Actually, when I do have my biological children, there is a list of babysitters I am already formulating in my head on campus.  Most foster kids have a lot of siblings and they know how to look after younger ones, help them, play with them, etc.  One of my greatest joys at this job is going outside and seeing all the kids from all of the houses playing different stuff together.  SO MUCH FUN!  Most people do not realize this, but when you become a foster parent, you do not have to take any kid that they call you with.  First of all, you tell them what kind of child you are looking for(age, gender,etc) and they will call you and give you a little background if they think they have a child you might want and you can say yes or no. 

Reason 4:  It would not be fair to my biological kids/when they get older.  Yes, it really isn’t fair to teach your children about how we are God’s adopted children through loving a child that is not your own…..umm, no.  Most biological kids are all for more children.  Especially if they have been around foster/adoption through friends and family.  Kids are resilient and they learn how to share.  There will be bumps in the road but most of them come to deeply love these kids and enjoy having them.  There really is no reason to wait until they are older.  You can raise them right along with your own.

Reason 5:  I cannot deal with all of the abuse baggage.  This is a hard one.  It is hard.  Really hard.  You will be given some skills to handle some of it.  Most of them will have counselors that work with you.  The greatest healer I have seen for abuse though, is this…LOVE.  Genuine love from someone who doesn’t even have to love them but chooses to.  A great teaching point on Jesus’ love as well.  God binds up wounds and He can and will with kids.

Reason 6:  I would if I was a stay at home mom.  DHR actually helps cover daycare costs.  There is no need to be a stay at home mom to have a foster child.  Handle them just like your bio children.

**I also want to plea with those of you who love teenagers, or maybe even those that don’t.  Older children are the hardest to place, but in my opinion, the best to have.  They are helpful, respectful, and so very funny.  I have heard time and time again as a teenager has walked through my door, “I am just ready for something stable.”  A lot of them have just been passed around so long that they just want a safe place to land and be loved. 

I hope I educated you some.  I hope I stepped on your toes just enough to make you really start to think.  Whether it is a calling or a command, please go before the Throne of The Most High and really spend some time talking with Him about this.  Understand that there are plenty of ways in this community to care for the orphaned.  FACES is a great organization.  There are many more.  Do some research.  If you have a specific question I would love to answer it for you.  Some books that are good on adoption are Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis and  Choosing to See by Mary Beth Chapman. 

The last thing I am going to leave you with is a passage I read last night many times from the book Kisses From Katie by Katie Davis.(Incredible read!!!) 

“As Sumini joined our family, I knew that one of God’s purposes in placing me here was to grow in me, through my children, this heart for adoption.  In an effort to be real, I will tell you:  It was hard.  Being a mother of six at age nineteen was just plain exhausting sometimes.  But God continued to show me that adoption is His heart, and it was becoming mine.  Adoption is wonderful and beautiful and the greatest blessing I have ever experienced.  Adoption is also difficult and painful.  Adoption is a beautiful picture of redemption.   It is the Gospel in my living room.  And sometimes, it’s just hard. …Adoption is a redemptive response to tragedy that happens in this broken world.  And every single day, it is worth it, because adoption is God’s heart.  His Word says, “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will”(Ephesians 1:5)  He sets the lonely in families(see Psalm 68:6).  The first word that appears when I look up adoption in the dictionary is “acceptance.”  God accepts me, adores me even, just as I am.  And He wants me to accept those without families into my own.  Adoption is the reason I can come before God’s throne and beg Him for mercy, because He predestined me to be adopted as His child through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-to the praise of His glorious grace.  My family, adopting these children, it is not optional.  It is not my good deed for the day; it is not what I am doing to ‘help out these poor kids.’  I adopt because God commands me to care for the orphans and widows in their distress.  I adopt because Jesus says that to whom much has been given, much will be demanded(see Luke 12:48) and because whoever finds his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for HIS sake will find it(see Matthew 10:39).”