If not us, then who?

The only institution large enough 

to address foster care in this country is the church.

~ Dennis Rainey

I hope and pray that this past month has stirred something in you, given you ideas for practical next steps and opened your eyes to American orphans.

Orphans are the most vulnerable people group in the United States. You may not be called to foster care but you are commanded to care for them in some way.

Will you commit to praying about your response?

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

Dear Glory,

Today we are celebrating your LIFE! You are one year old baby girl!

When we first saw your chubby cheeks and gummy smile you were only six months old. You have grown so much and we are so thankful God is sustaining you and caring for you while we are so far away!

We are all so excited to meet you and to hold you and to squeeze you and to kiss you. My heart nearly explodes when I think of the day we will get to do all of those things.

We want you to know that you are LOVED. You are loved by your family and by our friends and even by people we have never met but who heard of the amazing work God is doing to bring you to our family!

MOST IMPORTANTLY, you are loved by God. He is the one who made you and has kept you safe these last twelve months. He is supernaturally giving your little body the nutrition it needs and He is the one writing your story.

I know there will be times that are hard and your little heart will break trying to understand the pain and suffering you have endured. I promise to cry with you and hold you and love you but I know that will not be enough. I know the hole in your heart cannot be filled by me or Papa or our family. But we know the One who can fill it and we want to always point you to Him.

There are pieces of your story we don't know. You will have questions Papa and I cannot answer but we are praying EVEN NOW that you will be able to lay down those unknown pieces of your story and trust that God has brought you here in His all-knowing goodness.

This is hard baby girl. It is so, so hard. It will only make sense with Jesus.

We LOVE you and cannot wait to meet you!

Praying we always point you to Him,

Mommy + Papa

I. WAS. WRONG. {Repost in honor of National Foster Care Month}

This post was originally published on November 16, 2012.

It is BY FAR the most popular post and the most prayed over post I have ever written.

Coincidence?

I think not.

Our foster care social worker makes a visit to our house once a month to see how we are doing as a foster home. She is assigned to look after us; the boys and their mother have another worker assigned to look after them and work towards the goal of reunification.

Our worker, we’ll call her “Susan”, was here last week and we were talking about how understaffed the department is. SO understaffed, she almost called us about a baby. A baby with a “concurrent” goal. (For those of you not in the foster care world, the term “concurrent” means they are working towards adoption for this baby.) Did I mention we're talking about a BABY?

Susan knows we are not in the place to adopt a baby. Susan knows we have our "hands full". Susan knows we have a little boy in the Congo coming home soon-ish. But she had no one else to call. “All of our homes are full.” she told me. “We don’t have enough homes – even for babies.”

Do those words stop you in your tracks? Not enough homes? For babies? In Kentucky?

Say What!?!

William and I never intended to become foster parents. We never even considered adopting domestically. The thought literally never crossed our minds.

Do you ever speak words that come back to haunt you? I did once. Ok, a few times, but at least once on this very topic.

The day before "T" and "M" came to live with us I attended Created for Care, a retreat/conference for adoptive moms. I was speaking with a woman whose family had been praying about starting the journey of adopting from Ethiopia. She asked me a question I could tell had been on her mind for some time. She asked me how I answer people who want to know why we are adopting from Africa and not “here”. Here being in the US.

I gave my wise Christian answer (insert sarcasm here) - we prayed about it and feel like God has our children in Africa... and then I told her the need is greater there. Kids in the US have roofs over their heads, clothes on their backs and food in their tummies. Their parents are not dying of AIDS at alarming rates and they are not dying themselves of dirty water. Simple. The need is greater. I. Spoke. Those. Words.

Friends, I was wrong. Hear me. I. WAS. WRONG.

While yes, children in Africa (or Russia or India or Haiti) are more likely to be on the streets in the only shirt they own begging for food and living in a cardboard box because their parents are dead or sick, the effect parentlessness has on them is NO GREATER than the effect of parentlessness on vulnerable children right “here”.

Dr. Purvis says “their brains are different”. Kids from "hard places" - their brains are different. The reason their brains are different is because of the lack of nurturing they received prenatally and during the first few years of their lives.

Their brains are different because no one nurtured them.

No one met their needs.

No one loved them.

There are six risk factors that put a child into this category: difficult pregnancy, difficult birth, early hospitalization, abuse, neglect and trauma. (Certainly malnutrition plays a critical role and can have dramatic affects on development but a child who was hungry and nurtured will be better off than a child who had a full belly but no nurture.)

When T and M came to live with us I was SHOCKED to see the exact same behaviors we had read about and come to expect from our little one coming to us from an orphanage in a third world country. In my naive mind they would be "normal". They had a roof, clothes and food. (most of the time) They even had a parent. I thought they would be a little shaken up but fair pretty well.

I was wrong.

Their brains are different BUT their needs are the same. The same as children in Africa. Children in Russia, India and Haiti. The need for lovers of Jesus to fight for them is the same.

When we went through foster care training over the summer our instructor shared statistics that were startling to me at the time. I just didn't know:

246 kids in foster care ages 0 - 5

118 kids in care ages 6 - 11

344 kids in care ages 12 - 18

50 kids in care ages 19 - 21 (this number may be the saddest as these kids are holding out to the very last minute for a family to call their own)

Nearly 800 kids are in foster homes in Jefferson County. 800 kids. Ironically, in the state of Kentucky there are 800 KIDS READY TO BE ADOPTED. Did you know that? Six months ago, I did not.

There are a lot of myths regarding foster care and adopting from the foster system. Unfortunately, the only stories that receive media attention are ones where a birth parent shows up years later and demands their kid back. Or stories of kids who linger in the states care for years and years. While these things do happen, they are not the norm in Kentucky. More importantly, the system may be broken, but God is sovereign.

No one reading these words is immune from receiving a phone call today that will change their life. Your life. My life. We are not in control. Of anything. Biological kids, internationally adopted kids, foster kids.They all belong to Him.

Did you know...

Did you know adopting from foster care is essentially free? FREE.

Did you know biological parents have no way of gaining back custody of their children once parental rights are terminated? NO. WAY.

Did you know children enter foster care through no fault of their own? They are victims of the adults who were supposed to take care of them.

Did you know in the state of Kentucky the Safe Families for Children Act prevents kids from lingering in the system?

Did you know you are provided a per diem to care for the foster kids in your home? Did you know this per diem continues for most children even after they have been adopted? Did you know kids from foster care can go to any state college for free?

Did you know you can take your foster kids across state lines, enroll them in daycare and have babysitters?

Did you know you will get attached?

And it will be hard?

It will.

In the paraphrased words of Amy Monroe "You can handle getting attached and getting hurt. You're an adult. You can handle it. They are kids."

These kids you are afraid of loving too much - they are dying for someone to love them like that. While they are not dying from poverty, disease or hunger, their needs are the same.

If you'd like to learn more about adopting from foster care in KY visit the KY Department for Family Services. If you are interested in foster care or adoption in another state visit Focus on the Family.

My prayer is that this post would shine a light on the needs of children right "here". Please contact me if you have questions about our experience or if I can help you prayerfully begin the journey of foster care. lindsy.wallace AT gmail DOT com

 

Weekend Reading: National Foster Care Month Style

It's the last Saturday of the month and I finally got around to posting some of my favorite links from the month. There were some amazing foster care posts - these are just a few I remembered to bookmark;-)

From Tiffany at Stuff and Things - Foster Care for Every Commitment Level

This is a long list of foster care blogs - a whole new world!

From The Forgotten Blog - An honest look at being the other woman - the foster mom.

A nice list of do's and don'ts entitled What Foster Parents Wish Other People Knew.

Catie from This High Calling was killin' it this month! SO many great posts from her and her guest posters! A few of my favorites:
Conviction
I. Could. Never.
I Think I'm Expecting too Much From a Hallmark Holiday

Happy Weekend!

thoughts from a foster care worker {National Foster Care Month Guest Post}

Today's post comes from Natalie at little things + big stuff.

I love Natalie's blog because of #1. it's beautifully refreshing design and

#2. she writes wondferully honest posts about her experience as a foster care worker.

Please enjoy her words below!

I never wanted to work in the foster care system. It seemed scary and bureaucratic, and I was homed in on international adoption work. But now, after a couple years in the world of foster care, it seems to be a part of my life that I don’t ever want to go away. It’s brought me joy.

I've spent time in foster care case management, and more recently and more extensively — foster care adoptions. It's been the perfect mix of experiences. I've gotten to come in at the end of a child's time in foster care. It's usually a cause for celebration, though not without loss, of course. But then there are the ones whose happy endings are yet to come. I've worked to gather reports, focus on strengths, and schedule photo shoots to list "hard-to-place" kids on adoption recruitment sites like Adopt US Kids.

I've doubted my ability to tout the strengths of a child while still being honest about his or her challenges. When I look at a child's profile, I focus on their uniqueness and abilities.

Micah has huge dimples, eats hot wings all the time, races his bike down the sidewalk, and prefers to be called "Spiderman." But Micah has also experienced too many moves among foster homes and too many trips to the psychologist as his foster parent and case worker attempted to sort out his mental health diagnoses. What do families see when they see his profile? I hope they see how they can be a family who meets Micah’s needs while celebrating his strengths.

Through my work, I’ve also been able to witness situations and adoptions worthy of the utmost celebration. Some scoff at the preference relatives are given in fostering and adopting kids to whom they’re related, and let’s be honest — I did early on, too. One relative lived in a neighborhood where kids seemed to spill out of the front doors of homes. When I came to her house, her blinds were drawn, and she yelled out to ask who I was before disabling the alarm system. I sensed she was scared to live in her own neighborhood. But her house was spotless. And the two little relatives she was to adopt were always clean and happy.

My home study for her was harder to write than some. Jennifer committed a violent crime against another person about 10 years ago (though she reports it was done in self defense). She’s unemployed, she has only a GED, she has some health issues, and she receives a lot of public assistance. But she is absolutely fit to adopt and parent these children. She stepped up when other family members didn’t. The kids respect and obey her better than most I’ve seen. She made plans to move to a safer neighborhood. She went back to college soon after to expand her employment opportunities. This adoption is worth celebrating.

And that’s what I’ve found to be true of them all. Each situation is worth celebrating. Though Micah’s happy ending hasn’t come yet, he has a foster parent who absolutely loves him and is committed to keeping him in her home until we find the right family for his needs. Then, there’s the teenage girl who has been adopted previously and finds the perfect family in a single woman who chose to not be afraid of her past behaviors. Or the sibling group of five who were each allowed to each choose their own new name upon adoption.

Yes, there’s a lot of yuckyness in foster care, but I’m celebrating still.