We have opened back up for taking in a foster child via emergency placement. This decision always comes with much apprehension on my end as stability, the calm and predictable things go out the window. It's as though we are inviting chaos into our home and as much as I don't want that, I hear the Lord saying to me, "This is your calling. This is you being my hands and feet and loving the least of these."
Last year was our first time opening up for emergency foster placement and we were placed with a 7 year old boy for 5 weeks. I have shared that story in a previous blog post, but suffice it to say that that experience was traumatic for us. All the stories you hear about foster care that makes people want to NOT do foster care is what we experienced, yet God got us through it and now, a year later, I see how he grew us. I see that we have become a bit more resilient. I see now that I learned to rely on God more through the ups and downs. There are things that Jonas learned through our first foster experience that were life changing for him, some good and some bad. Some of those things we had been trying to teach Jonas for years and he did not seem to understand until another boy joined our family. For those aha moments, I am thankful. Those are the blessings that God gifts us with when we are obedient to His calling.
So, when our first foster boy went to live with a relative, we took a big break. We needed time to grieve, time to sit with the hard, time to process through the hard. We knew that God still wanted us to continue doing foster care, but didn't know when. Right around May, 2021, I felt the spirit prompting me see if we could accept a sibling group instead of just one. I called our agency to ask about that and they said they we did not qualify to take in two as our house is too small. That felt like a door closing, but we knew God would make it clear to us how many we needed to take in. I pushed that thought out of my mind, and a few weeks later my mom called to tell me that the spirit had put on her heart that we will be accepting 2 children into our care, whenever that happens. I told her that that was not possible, but she said she would keep praying for that as the spirit prompted her, because anything is possible with God.
August rolls around and we gear up to open back up for receiving a placement only to realize that we need more time with our kids. We needed more time to parent our kiddos, specifically Jonas, so we backed off. September rolls around and I have the spirit prompting me again about taking in a sibling group of 2. I email our caseworker about it and she told us that it was still a NO.
Wilson, in his wisdom, decides that with two different people receiving promptings from the spirit about us taking in a sibling group, that we need to step out on faith. If God really is calling us to take in a sibling group, we need to through faith actively live out our life as though he will make it happen. So, we knew that if we were meant to take in 2 extra kiddos in an already small house, God would pave the way for extra space or better housing. So, I started chatting with our affordable housing director about possibly allowing us to add on to our house. She informed me that the affordable housing committee was going to meet at the end of February to discuss this very topic and that we should call back then to see what our options are.
October rolls around and we were going to open up for foster placement, but Wilson is slammed with work. At this point, he is traveling for business every other week for at least 2 days. We knew we could not take in children in this way, so we held off.
November rolls around and Wilson is still super busy at work, so we push off again.
In December, I start working on renewing trainings and certifications for foster placement. In January, Wilson starts working on getting his trainings and certifications squared away. My mom calls me again, to tell me that the spirit prompted her again that we will be taking in a sibling group, yet our agency was still giving us a hard no.
February we felt the Satan was attacking us- all sorts of things in the house broke down and needed replacing. So, that kept pushing back when we could open up for foster care. We also decided to visit friends/family and pushed back the date of when we could open up. We were at peace about it.
March rolls around and we finally opened up for emergency foster placement. This means we are "on-call" 24/7, meaning we could receive a placement at any time of day. We opened up for 1 child. 2 days into us being open for placement, I get an unexpected call from our caseworker, Stephanie, saying that she chatted with our director and that we have received permission to take in 2 children, if they write up a variance. This basically means that our agency would complete a bunch of paperwork to excuse the lack of space to allow 2 children to be placed with us. My jaw dropped. I was not expecting this call at all. It came out of left field. So, they said they would take the next few days to complete the necessary paperwork to request the variance and if and when it came through, we would then be receiving placement calls for 1 or 2. It took a week for the variance to go through. As soon as the variance was complete, we started receiving placement calls for 2. We received two placement calls in one day for a sibling group of a 10 year old girl with her 3 year old brother and a 10 year old boy with a 2 year old brother. Both placement calls were out of our preferred age range as we want to keep the birth order in tact. So, we declined both placement calls. About a week later, we received a placement call for 2 boys (white) from Waco, which means we would have had to drive the boys to Waco and back once a week for visitations. We knew that was too much driving for us, so we declined.
At the beginning of April, we received a placement call for 2 boys (ages 5 and 6) who had a younger 1 year old brother, who would have to be placed elsewhere. We said yes only to find out hours later that they had found a relative who could take all 3 children, which was the best for that sibling group. We were exhausted emotionally from the back and forth, but felt at peace about where the boys were going to go.
April 8th, we received a placement call at 1:17am but missed it. It was for twin boys age 6 from Temple, Texas. We called our agency hours later to get the scoop, but did not know if CPS had already found a home for them. We waited for hours, but never heard back, which meant that they. had been placed elsewhere. Wilson had always wanted twin boys, so we experienced a range of emotions from guilt of having missed the call to regret, disappointment and sadness. Why did we miss this call? It has now been days later and both of us have had time to process through it all and our conclusion is that if God really wanted us to have those twins, he would have made it happen. Maybe God spared us from heartache in the future. We may never know, but we are continuing to trust that God knows best.
As you can see, this journey of doing foster care is hard, gut-wrenching, never predictable and keeping us on our toes. But I have to remind myself that God calls all of us to pay the price for the sake of Christ. May God use us to show love and compassion to the innocent and may God use us to teach them about his great love and purpose. Keep the prayers coming! We will always welcome them!
