Our Journey of Foster Care

I've wanted to be a foster mom for as long as I can remember. Pretty much by the time that I knew what foster care was, I wanted to take part in it.

You can imagine how excited I was when Joel told me in college how he would love to adopt children someday. Not every college sophomore guy exactly has the dream of loving children that aren't their own.

As excited as we were to be foster parents, we waited until we had been married a year before we pursued the licensing process in the state of IL. Because of our crazy work and school schedule at the time, we asked they only call us us when they needed temporary help on the weekends, but because we also told them we'd "love to adopt a foster child someday"...they'd occasionally call us with pre-adoptive cases.

Those were the hardest phone calls. Usually, I'd be driving to work and hear my cell phone ring about a young baby girl who needed a home with foster parents who would consider adopting her. Unfortunately, foster care doesn't give you the usual 9 months to prepare, they needed an answer within a few hours. I hated calling back and saying now is not the right season for us, but I had to do it, every time. Usually, those days ended with a cry session to Joel saying "i just want this season of our life to be over so we can say yes".

We couldn't wait to fill our home with child's laughter. We couldn't wait to grow our family. We couldn't wait until we'd be a family of different ethnicities. We couldn't wait to get a taste of what God felt when He adopted us by adopting others. BUT, we knew Joel still had grad school to finish. And, i needed to work. And waiting was our only option at the time.

As Joel's season of grad school finished up & he found a full time job, we anxiously started preparing for our next step in the foster care process. We found an apartment with an extra bedroom for a foster baby. We purchased a crib and a baby dresser. A couple of weeks ago, we anxiously attended our foster care orientation class to begin the licensing process in PA. Honestly, I was hoping we'd receive a phone call by Christmas asking us to take a foster baby.

But then, it hit us hard again during orientation night. We were told that very few babies come through the foster care system in PA. I wanted to think, this can't be. The move to Pittsburgh has been challenging enough for me, please don't tell me you can't give me a foster baby to love. We took a few days to think and pray about our next steps.

Honestly, we do not know what our next steps will be. We have chosen to take the class and become certified and hope a baby will come through the system for us, but until then we may continue doing short term emergency care and respite care with older children. Maybe, we'll fall in love with one of them and be 25 year old parents with a ten year old foster child and absolute love it. We really don't know. This journey may end up looking completely different then we had planned, but we want to be faithful along the way and are really excited to see how God plans to use this passion He has given us.