November is National Adoption Month. Over the years in our home, this month has brought excitement, anticipation, prayer, concern, worry, despair, and empty arms. I have yet to be an adoptive mama. And my husband has yet to be an adoptive papa. But this month isn’t about us! Six months ago was National Foster Care Month. Both focus on bringing awareness to children who deserve to be in a loving family but aren’t yet. It’s honoring each child who is an orphan, who is in the foster care system, and/or who is awaiting adoption. It’s celebrating each vulnerable child. For Christ followers, we testify and celebrate the fact that we are adopted children by our Heavenly Father (Galatians 4:5 & Ephesians 1:5). We are SO loved. And we are to SO love.
Back in May when it was National Foster Care Month, I asked two foster mamas (who are also adoptive mamas) if they’d like to share about fostering in our blogpost. However, that month our hope to adopt our foster daughter died, and I just couldn’t write a motivating blogpost in the midst of my grief. Six months later, these mamas’ words hold true, and their voices need to be shared….
A dear friend Aimee in Pennsylvania reflects…
“Fostering is complex.
It’s heavy to carry and it’s not a good fit for everyone. It comes with beautiful waves of love and growing pains and grief and loss over and over again. The emotional tides ebb and flow daily and seasonally, for the whole family- not only the children.
Fostering is advocating, loudly and against many voices sometimes, on behalf of the children in your care.
Fostering is being as soft and gentle and humble and curious as possible - while facing violent and destructive trauma that you did not cause and you cannot figure out because it is senseless.
I do not know how anyone anywhere on earth can foster well without the Lord. He has to be the center because without Him, there’s no steadiness, no way to tell up from down.”
A dear friend Jory in Oregon writes…
“The Body of Christ needs to be greatly involved with foster care. Not all are called to foster but all of us are called to pray, open wide our church doors, and wrap around kids in foster care, DHS workers, foster families and birth families (when possible). Kids from hard places bring a lot of brokenness into homes. Foster families need practical care, prayer, and community around them.
We need to have wide open arms to children and parents that chose life for their babies but cannot care for them safely. My husband wears a shirt with an incredible reminder for us as we pour out on these children from very hard places who have been deeply impacted by trauma:
‘The hardest ones to love are the ones that need it the most.’
This is a reminder to us on so many levels but most of all it reminds us that the love we have for the children we care for cannot come from us alone. It has to be rooted in Christ and His perfect abundant love for us. We do not have the strength on our own to be a loving and safe presence for the kids in our home. He is our strength. It’s these little ones that have taught us so much about relying on Jesus, not on our own inadequate wells that run dry so quickly and easily."
Throughout time, our heavenly Father desires - actually requires - we care for the vulnerable child: a foster child living in limbo in custody of the state staying in a relative or stranger’s home with no idea if their biological parents will be a safe place or the child struggling with identity who may or may not mirror their adoptive parents’ skin and facial features. Every human is a gift of God. So in the remainder of this month -or anytime of year- when you meet a foster child or adopted child, look them in the eye whether they are an infant you are holding, a preschooler you are kneeling before or a teenager you are standing in front of, look them in the eye and assure them that they are made in the image of God, their life is for a purpose, and that you see a specific character trait of God in them whether it is kindness, goodness, compassion, joy, justice or mercy. And if you have an opportunity to be a steadfast, loving, safe, non-judgmental, adult in their life…take the time. Show, teach and be the love of Jesus Christ. Show up to play, mentor, support, listen, teach board games, go for a hike, sing songs, sit in silence…
Immanuel…what a comforting word. What a comforting reality. What a gift. Immanuel, God with us. And we are called to do likewise…share the hope of God, be a comfort, offer our presence, and be a gift.
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