Ryan and I have been a licensed foster home for nearly two years, and since July ‘21 we have had the privilege of having 8 additional children in our home for varying lengths of time. Our first placement was a set of brothers, and in September ‘22, we had our most recent call from our agency. “Hey, we have two babies! That’s literally all I know… do you want to take them in?” We said yes, and within a few hours we had a 17-month-old girl and her 3-month-old little brother in our home. Let me tell you… those dark eyed, curly headed babies are just the cutest! They’re still with us now, 6 months later.
But why do I tell you this? Ryan and I were talking the other night and he mentioned that he felt like we were living a flat-line foster care life. Before we became licensed, and even still when people hear about what we do, we would hear over and over again about all of the hardships that foster care would bring into our home. How it wouldn’t be fair to our biological kids. How our hearts would break over and over again as we said goodbye. We were told that the kids would surely have “behaviors” to deal with, and anything else that could be attributed as a hardship would befall us. These are the “lows” we were looking for in our journey. On the flip side, we would hear from some about how God would surely bless us and we would see the abundance of His grace on our lives as we care for these “orphans” that need us. Some people put us up on a pedestal with a phrase like “well, I could never do that. My heart would just break too much!”
But the thing about being a foster family is that it’s just… normal life to us. It’s relatively flat-line, with a few lows and highs here and there, but nothing that’s so different from anyone else’s life. Sure, we have friends in the system who have had dramatic court hearings, fights over the kids, or mom and dad running off-grid and then showing up at grandma’s house to try and see their babies in secret. I’m not trying to say that those things don’t happen, but in our experience, it isn’t a guarantee that foster care will lead you down this crazy path. Humans are humans. We all have faults. We all mess up now and again. Some “worse” than others, yes, but we’re all in need of a Savior to rescue us and lead us down the path to redemption. With each new placement we’ve had to readjust and learn how to move forward with new members in our family. We’ve gone through a transition stage… but don’t you do that with any new baby? Each time we’ve found our groove and continued life more or less like we were before the addition. And yes, when a child leaves it is heartbreaking. We’ve been blessed to have the confidence that our babies are going to safe, loving homes, but that isn’t true for every case. It hurts. It’s hard. We cry a lot. But how great is it that we can care for these babies while we have them, and surround them with our family and church community to lay a foundation of love?
I recently read a post on social media by a foster account that I follow, Foster the Family Blog. She said this so eloquently, and I come back to it time and again:
“In a very real sense, all of the children in my home are mine. In another, maybe even more real, sense none of the children in my home are mine. They were created by God, they were given to me by God, and they belong to God. I’ve simply been entrusted with their care - some of them for a short time, some of them for a lifetime. Their lives are safer in His hands than they could ever be in mine, and I willingly relinquish them all to Him. And that is how I’m able to hand over control of these beloved children. I don’t relinquish control to a broken system or to a flawed decision-maker. I relinquish control to God. I know whom I have believed and am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him” (2 Tim 1:12).
I love this so much. My children, bio or foster, are never mine to begin with. And that’s how we can flat-line foster.
Please don’t ever say “I could never do that.” If you have a loving home and a desire to help kids and their families, then you can foster. Maybe for a short season, maybe a long one. Foster care doesn’t have to be an emotional and psychological rollercoaster, going up and down and making crazy twists and turns. It can be regular-old-normal-(maybe boring at times)-life with the addition of an extra human or two for a couple days, or a couple of years, or maybe even a lifetime. So many foster kids are just regular kids with a need to be loved and cared for. So many parents are people just like me who have chosen to selfishly meet their own desires over the needs of their kids. That doesn’t make them bad people. That makes them people who need a loving Savior to help fix what’s broken, and maybe they need a little extra help along the way.
Don’t hear me saying that you’re a bad human if you aren’t called to foster care. That’s not it at all, because God has given everyone different callings. But if you feel the tug on your heart, please don’t say, “it’s too hard”, or, “that’s great for her, but I could never do that.” I’m here to tell you…you can. If God is calling you to open your heart and your home, then lean into His promise to see you through it. It might be hard, but hard doesn’t mean bad. It means relying on God for His strength to see you through each day, each tear, each angry outburst, each “mommy” that runs into your arms with a smile. You, my friend, can flat-line foster, too.
Author Note: Ryan and Mariah live in the piney woods of East Texas on their beautiful “quarter acre farm” with their two bio kids, and current foster babies. They serve with Christian Homes and Family Services, and love being surrounded by family and their church. Ryan serves clients in real estate, and Mariah has the privilege of working at a nearby church daycare part time, while also staying at home with their kiddos.
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