Foster Care

Our lives are about to get a lot busier. When I write that, my first thought is... "How is that possible?" As our children get older, we are pulled in so many different directions. We already have almost no nights where all six of us are home at the same time. And yet, God has placed children in Foster Care on our family's heart. Almost 2 months ago, we started attending the classes required to become foster parents. We are excited and nervous all at once.

The kids are all very excited and can't wait to have another little person to love on. Cory and I are also excited for this opportunity but we are also very aware of the heartache that we are inviting into our lives. We know the goal of foster care is reunification and that means that we will fall in love with child after child and then they will leave. We also know that no matter how well prepared we think we are, the heartbreak will still be something we are not ready for.  But, I also know that is how most things in life are.

If we had any idea how difficult marriage and child rearing was, I don't know if we would have signed up so easily and readily. If I really understood the pain of child birth, would I have chosen to have my baby somewhere that pain meds were not an option?  But, the cool thing to me about all these hard choices that I might not have made if I knew better is that each of them have also been WAY more rewarding than I ever could have imagined.

I never knew how much I would depend on another human being and how much teamwork it would take to get through the life I have. I never knew how much my husband would teach me about who I am and who God is. I never knew that children would stretch me to the end of myself and bring me to a new level of love I didn't understand before. I never knew how empowering and beautiful child birth could be.

And so I expect it will be with this new journey we are entering. I expect it will be so much more difficult than we can imagine now. I also expect it will bring more joy to our lives than we knew was possible. I expect we will be stretched farther than ever before. I expect that we will learn to love to a new level we've never experienced. I expect we will learn more about who we are and who God is. I expect our lives will never be the same and I expect that there will be moments we wonder why we ever made this decision. But, I also expect there will be moments where we will know without a doubt that God has called us to something so unbelievably incredible that we will feel honored to be a part of it.