To all those foster parents that are daily learning to navigate everything they need to do and everything they have to be for the sake of these kids…here’s three things you don’t have to be for them today, or tomorrow, or ever: 1} Perfect. You don't have to be perfect parents to be perfect foster parents. Kids in foster care don’t need you to be perfect; they need you to be present. They don’t need pretty and polished foster parents; they need growing and repenting ones. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give children from hard places is the hope that broken things don’t always have to be final things.
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Foster Care and Adoption
Suppose you asked me to help you lose 15 pounds. The problem is, however, you have a disease. That disease is called "Chick-Fil-A"! You're addicted to the #1 value meal which includes a sandwich, fries and a drink. You're eating it almost daily for lunch. As part of my motivation I inform you the meal deal you always order is a total of 1,020 calories. Sounds like a lot of calories, right? Yes, because it is, but probably not enough to cause you to think twice about ordering that meal again. It tastes too good not to. As a matter of fact, this one value meal constitutes a vast % of annual revenue for Chick-Fil-A.
In a counterintuitive way, the goal of your church is not to make foster care and adoption special; it’s to make it normal. It’s relatively easy to make caring for orphans or kids in foster care a “special” thing because in many ways it is special. It’s a uniquely difficult yet rewarding place to engage a broken world with the heart of God. Yet for as special as it is, we don't want it to be a peripheral side-show in our church - we want it to be a normal, regular, consistent thing our church does – any time and all the time. That's a bit more challenging and requires a more thoughtful, strategic approach.
Christmas is the story of a good Father going to extravagant lengths in order to adopt those who have been separated from Him. It is the celebration of God seeing the plight of His people and responding with the greatest gift of love this world has ever known - Himself. Not merely for us or near us in theory, God now put on flesh and became one of us in humanity - entering the darkness and brokenness of our story to bring us a brighter and better one in Him. In what we now know as the Christmas story, scripture consistently speaks of the incarnation, the act of God wrapping Himself in the flesh of an infant child, in beautifully vivid and forever-altering terms.
Imagine three friends come upon a raging river. They see children in the water rushing down the rapids towards a waterfall. One friend immediately jumps into the river and begins pulling as many children out as he can. Knowing there’s a waterfall downstream, the second friend runs down river and tries to catch as many children as he can before they fall to their deaths. The third friend, however, wonders why these children are in the river in the first place. He runs upstream to find out how these kids are getting thrown in and to stop whoever is doing it. All three friends are running in three different directions, but all of them are right and necessary places...
The goal of your church is not simply to start a peripheral orphan care ministry a few are involved in; it’s to establish a foundation culture of orphan care everyone has a role to play in. An environment where it's understood that while we're not all called to do the same thing, we're all certainly capable of doing something. That's the goal. Everyone. Doing. Something. If we're not careful, we may unintentionally define "orphan care" too narrowly - to simply mean foster care, adoption or some other form of bringing a child into your home long term. While these are of course crucial and essential places for the Church to engage...
It was trial day for the baby girl we had been fostering for nearly a year up to that point – the day the court would rule on who would retain parental rights over her forever. But it was more than just a legal proceeding; it was a spiritual one. What was taking place in the courtroom that day, just like in many other courtrooms everyday all around the country, was more unseen than the negligent actions of birth parents, the hustle of lawyers and case workers and the proceedings of an overrun and under resourced legal system. It was by nature unseen – an attempt of the Enemy to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10) this innocent child’s life, and to perpetuate the systemic brokenness of past generations into hers.
My brother-in-law and I live in the same town. Attend the same church. Eat at the same restaurants. Play on the same softball team and hang out at the same family functions. But aside from those things, we couldn't be more different. My career has mostly involved standing on stages speaking to audiences or sitting behind computer screens writing at coffee shops. His, on the other hand, has in large part been spent in helicopters, flying top-secret missions into parts of the world most of us have never heard of to train or protect us from dangers most of us were never even aware of.
To all those foster and adoptive parents that find themselves in a difficult season right now, or to those who will at some point but just don't know it yet...this is for you. Jesus’ struggle on our behalf was not the result of His weakness, but the outcome of His faithfulness. It was Him willingly choosing the cost of our joy over the price of His pain. His suffering brings meaning to ours. His struggle brings purpose to ours. They remind us that the gospel is nothing if not the ability of Jesus to bring great beauty out of broken things.
The weight of foster care has the potential to either break your marriage or bond you like never before. You are not just bringing children from hard places into your home, you also bringing them into your marriage. The goal, of course, is for you to be closer, more connected and experiencing greater depths of intimacy because of it – but these things do not just happen, they must be intentionally cultivated and fought for. One of the most difficult seasons of our marriage was the early days of beginning our foster care journey.
You don't have to be perfect parents to be perfect foster parents. Inherent in the role is the pressure to be amazing because you are doing something amazing - an expectation no human can live up to, nor should ever have to. Foster parents are not saints or heroes or spiritual rock stars. We are humans. Real moms and dads that struggle, stumble and mess up. We get annoyed, frustrated and exhausted. We don't have all the answers and don't even know the right questions to ask most of the time.
When it comes to writing, some people say "stay in your lane" - specialize on a few topics; do a few things well. Others say diversify - write a lot on a variety of topics; keep things fresh and different. With over 90% of my blog posts in 2014 being foster care, adoption and orphan care related, I've chosen to stay in my lane this year. I am by no means an expert on these topics and am in no way "specialized". I have found, however, there are conversations to be had regarding how the Gospel informs our care of the marginalized, neglected and orphaned and how we, the Church, can most effectively steward the mandate of God to intercede on their behalf.
I'll never forget the day it all changed for me. My greatest fear, like so many others who are considering venturing down the beautiful yet tumultuous path of foster care, was not whether or not I could love a child that was not my own but whether or not I could handle letting a child go that I have grown to love as my own. I couldn't get beyond this concern, and couldn't move forward because of it. I shared my fear with a friend who was a foster dad at the time, and his response both challenged and settled me. It revealed to me that my concerns were backwards, centered on me and how I might feel rather than on the child and how they do feel.
We are in the middle of building a home right now. The process has been fun, especially since our girls are for the most part old enough to enjoy it with us. They get excited about their new rooms, their new neighborhood and their new friends next door and down the street. It's also brought up several interesting conversations with them - most notably ones about how many more sisters they want in our family and where their rooms are going to be in the new house. On some level they understand something just as much as my wife and I do - this house is not just for us.
We settled into our seats in the food court at the mall when out of the corner of my eye I noticed it happening again. Her eyes bounced back and forth from my 2 year old daughter to me then back to my daughter then back to me, each time causing her brow to wrinkle in greater curiosity and her mind to visibly race with more questions. I'd seen it happen a hundred times and knew exactly what was thinking - Is that her dad? Is she his daughter? He's white. She's, well, not really. He's very bald. Her afro is cute and crazy out of control.
Foster care is a Church problem, not a state child welfare problem. It is a Gospel issue first, not a government issue. The Church has both the duty and privilege to speak on behalf of and stand for the sake of those who cannot speak and stand for themselves because that isexactly what God has done for us through Jesus. That's the Gospel. Kids in foster care are not the government's kids, they are God's kids and therefore the Church's responsibility. In response, many families choose to submit to the laborious and often painstaking process of becoming licensed foster homes...
Foster care can be cold and sterile. Like courtrooms. Medicaid office. Hospital waiting rooms. This is not to say foster care is boring and monotonous - it's anything but that. It is to say, however, that the places foster care takes you and the demands it requires of you can sometimes feel more legal than relational and more painstaking than life changing. The humanity of foster care is often lost in the beuaracrcy of foster care. In the midst of training hours, paperwork, court hearings and medicare appointments the fact that we are dealing with...
There is an unprecedented amount of talk about orphan care going in the Church right now - and I love it. Perhaps in generations to come, ours will be looked back upon with great affection and admiration for how we, the Church of today, rose up to care for kids and families in historic and eternal ways. Yet, while I celebrate and actively participate in many of the discussions taking place regarding God's heart for the orphan and our mandate to care for them...
It was never God's intent for children to be without a family. It was also never His intent for the government to be the solution to a problem that only the Church could solve. In large part, the responsibility to care for vulnerable kids and struggling families has been inappropriately placed on the backs of politicians and government employees with the expectation that they do something they were never really intended to do in the first place.
I'll never forget the first time we found our girls playing "orphanage". It was our oldest's idea, eight years old at the time, and her two younger sisters followed suit. They had gathered every doll, blanket, book and toy paraphernalia they could find including bottles, bibs, high chairs and food. They spent their time feeding, rocking, reading books to and even singing lullabies for these "babies".