Why care about foster care?

Since May is Foster Care Awareness Month, the blog for the

next 4 weeks will be devoted to Foster Care and helping believers

understand how and why they should get involved in this ministry

(Written by Emily Craig)

I’m not sure what comes to mind when you hear, “foster care” - maybe it's an awful story you heard on the news. Maybe you automatically think that foster care is someone else’s calling but not yours. Maybe you think you are past the point in life to foster children. Or maybe you just don't care. You don't understand the need for it and why the church should be involved. There are many things that probably run through your mind when you hear the words “foster care” but our goal is to share a little of our family’s experience in foster care  in hopes that God might use it to stir something in you! 

Growing up in relatively large families, Mike and I both knew we wanted kids when we got married. We assumed that this would mean biological kids, but adoption was also something we had a heart for. When we faced obstacles growing our family biologically we felt the Lord might be directing us to start the adoption process. We pursued this option through several avenues - but we kept running into the same internal obstacle. There were waiting lists to adopt newborn babies. There were literally hundreds of couples waiting to adopt babies in America. And this isn’t a bad thing - it’s great! These babies need families too! But as we prayed about this avenue we just came to the same question over and over again, “Is this about meeting OUR need, or are there babies or children who need a home now?”

Shortly after the Lord began to turn our hearts away from infant adoption, a friend (Donna Dejeu) introduced me to foster care. She had been fostering for years already. As she explained the way it worked, I kept saying, “Yeah, I just don’t think I could do that.” And she kept saying, “Sure you can! If I can, you can!” As time went on and we continued to learn more and more about foster care, we decided to begin the process of being licensed by the state as foster parents to just “see” if this is something we could do. 

It was through that process that God began to open our eyes and burden our hearts for kids in foster care. We heard story after story of kids that were taken from parents for various types of abuse, neglect, or drug addiction. These kids needed homes and they were right in Horry County! They desperately needed safe homes and parents who would stand in the gap for them as long as they needed. We heard stories from men and women who were much older and much less healthy who were still in the trenches of caring for displaced kids because the need is so great. At the time, there were significantly more kids in foster care than there were homes to take them in! Once we became aware of this reality, we couldn’t simply look away and ignore the need right here in our own back yard!

At this point, we have been Foster Parents for 8 years and are currently on our 13th placement. I’m not going to lie and say it’s been easy or that we’ve always handled it perfectly. When these kids come into your life they disrupt everything. They arrive with only a few hours notice, and you often don’t know when they are going to leave. They often come with almost nothing but a few clothes that reek of smoke and a sad story of how they ended up in your home. It would be nice to say that they really appreciate the home you’re providing and all you’re doing to help them but, at least initially, they take it and you for granted and do what they can to test the limits in your home. 

This gets to one of the greatest challenges of foster care - the uncertainty. Kids come and kids go - and you have no control.  You must release the false sense of control and learn to trust their unknown future to a sovereign, trustworthy God. This has stretched and grown our faith like nothing else has! We provide a safe place for these children to land for a time, in a longer journey of their lives that will leave us far behind. Is this hard? YES!  I think this is hard for us because we want to know what we do has meaning. We want to see the finished product. We like to tie things up in a bow with a happy ending. We want to fix their broken stories. But we were never meant to be their Savior. And we aren't the fixers of their broken stories. We don’t always know what happens after they leave. So we pray for these kids who we've grown to love and we learn to trust the Lord in a much deeper way. We give them the truth of the Gospel while we can and pray that it bears fruit in their lives even if it’s long after they leave our home behind. We open our home and our hearts as long as there is a need for them to be here. And we trust that the Lord has a good and perfect plan even if we don't see it at the moment. 

This is  HARD and unseen work - and there is still such great need. The last statistics posted by the state showed a 100 home deficit in Horry County which had 162 children in the Foster System age 0-17. There are currently far more churches in Horry County than there are kids in Foster Care - which means if just one family from each church chose to foster, every kid in Horry County (and some from surrounding counties) could land in a Christian home. 

In a future blog, we’ll discuss ways you can get engaged in helping displaced kids. And it's not just becoming a foster parent! There are so many ways to support this ministry.  but right now we’d ask you to begin praying with us that God would stir the hearts of more Christians to become Foster Parents. And maybe begin praying if he’s calling you! If you are interested at all, please reach out to me (Emily) - and I’d love to tell you more!