Foster Parent Training 101 - "The only constant in foster care is change"

I was once asked to speak to a training room full of soon to be foster parents, give them a little insight to what it would be like to get licensed and ready for their first placement. I think I over-shared as usual but I have since shared it with more people who asked what it was like and they seem to appreciate the truth. So here I am copying and pasting it into one of my 'once in a blue moon' blog posts because like I just told my friend I don't typically have time to wipe my old mascara from sunday's church service off until Tuesday mornings I certainly don't have time to consistently blog about my life but I do like to tell the truth and help others. Hopefully this finds it's way to those who want to learn some more about the process. 

(This presentation was given last year, a few months after our first placement)

To paint our picture, I feel like I need to first give you a little bit of context on who I am and what my family’s journey to this point has been. My husband and I will be married 12 years this summer, we have an 8 year old bio son, a 6 year old bio daughter and a 3 month old foster daughter. That lingo is something you’ll learn right away, never in my life had I called them bio son and bio daughter until a few months ago and yet now they practically call themselves that!

After my daughter was born we pretty much knew we were done having biological children, although we weren’t quite sure we were entirely done. I had worked with Dependency case families professionally and seeing what those children go through, I always had the desire to foster to adopt. My husband was always good about considering it but also had the logical sane arguments against it too, so we knew it was a possibility in the future but a slim one at best.

As the years passed, I would bring it up from time to time and my husband would again make a completely logical case against it, I would try to let it go, but it remained on my heart, so I’d bring it up again, he would restate his case, (it’s important to note here before he sounds like a bad guy that I don’t always make wise decisions, I have been accused of thinking with my heart and not my head - would basically run a small orphanage/humane society out of a cardboard box on the side of the road if God hadn’t otherwise paired me with this logical man) anyways this cycle continued for a long time until one day several years back we said “we can’t do this anymore it isn’t fair to either of us, we are in a lose-lose battle here, so let’s just drop it and we will just pray that one of us has a heart change and we will be on the same page some day, we’ll just let God decide.” We agreed and went on, all the while I am pretty sure both of us just prayed the other would just concede.

Over time I did come to some partial peace about it, in fact I had almost forgotten about it entirely until one day about a year ago.  Aaron was doing a devotional and told me he had a very clear thought, “we should absolutely foster! It’s right here,” he said. “I’ve read this verse a thousand times, but this time I felt it.” I was in absolute shock and to be perfectly honest in that moment rather than acknowledging the answered prayer it was, the laundry list of reasons he’d previously stated NOT to do it flashed in my head instead! In hindsight I always laugh and just say it’s because it was his idea this time and I can truly be THAT stubborn but the truth is it just took me a minute to see that God had changed both of our hearts. I was suddenly completely open to the idea of just fostering when at one time the thought of not adopting a child from foster care killed me and then here we were my husband had thrown all his logical arguments against fostering out the window and embraced the calling! It was pretty miraculous and a lot to absorb at first.

I say all of this to say, that at that point we were still very unsure of how this was all going to work out, we still felt unsteady about the whole thing even when we were sitting in these very same classes. The only difference this time was that we stopped trying to control it all long enough to let the desire God had placed on both of our hearts to control us! We finally had enough faith that we knew as long as we were obedient and showed up, He’d equip us! And boy did He ever! All starry eyed and full of dreams we walked into foster parent training and got A LOT of very overwhelming equipping.  So if that’s where you are right now, unsteady and unsure, but full of hope just looking for a little direction, don’t feel bad, I think it’s normal and you are in the right place. That desire and obedience is all you need. The details will work themselves out.  

Speaking of details, the most detailed thing I have ever been through is the licensing process! I get kind of fired up just thinking about the paperwork and the ridiculousness of it all. I can almost not even give good advice on how to get through it because advice implies something sensical and so much of the process will just seem senseless to you at times. My only real tip on this process is to consider this the first of many tests of your will and an opportunity to train yourself to look for the good in the mess. Then remind yourself that your sweet licensing specialist did not in fact create the rules and don’t take it out on them. Even during the tedious licensing process God showed up for us in ways I cannot fully explain, one time after the next; even while they were measuring the temperature of food in my fridge and standing there with a checklist making me flush my toilets to prove our sufficient plumbing, and I was rolling my eyes, He has proven to me we should in fact be doing this.

Here’s a fun example of just that I like to share: we live in a small home, that some days feels barely big enough for the 4 of us and we plan to move soon. Sane people might have waited to foster until they moved to a bigger place but we decided that if we felt like God was telling us to do it now who were we to try and be logical when God was telling us to trust Him.

So we decided to move our laundry to the garage and convert the old laundry room to a nursery. Doing laundry in the garage seemed like a simple enough sacrifice to help a child, right? But the truth was it wasn’t just inconvenient, it was an expensive undertaking. On the day of construction when we were questioning our sanity and the costs we just told ourselves “God will provide.” Well then the men doing the work show up and throughout the day it is revealed that one of them was a foster parent who ended up adopting 6 children. I thought, “See it’s a sign!” I love when God sends me those signs! But as if that wasn’t enough, at the end of the job at the exact moment I was writing the check to them my husband got a call and was offered a promotion! I swear to you that this IS true! You simply can’t make that stuff up, life will throw you hurdles and you will doubt but stay intent on your goal and He will provide!

Things like this happen every single time I step out on faith and fostering has been no exception but I can also attest to the fact the enemy is out there and you will be tested, you will doubt!

My biggest test came after we were licensed. This dream of mine a decade in the making was finally recognized, we were eager to get our first placement to say the very least and you are always told how great the need is and that you should get a placement almost immediately. Well in the month that followed our licensing, before we would receive our current placement, we had four calls for other placements that we agreed to and then prepared for physically and emotionally, all of which ended up falling through. Each time we were so disheartened. I began questioning if our family could handle the ups and down of foster care if we could hardly handle the ups and downs of placement. I tried telling myself it was God preparing my heart and our family for the rollercoaster that even if I felt discouraged and full of doubt this was all part of His plan.  But truly I was ready to give up before we even began. Yet now in hindsight it makes perfect sense.

You see, months ago early on in the licensing process I had a repetitive dream and consequent daydreams that our first placement would be a girl and her name would start with the letter L. I kept hearing and seeing L in that dream and when I prayed so I figured that had to be it. Then we had the four placements all fall through and I told myself, well none of their names started with an L so it’s ok. I thought maybe they just weren't meant for us, but that it could still come true. Then placement called about a 13 day old baby girl who fit our profile, she wouldn’t be going home for about a week but had specific enough needs that they asked the future caregivers to come in and learn her care before discharge.

For 9 days we went back and forth to the hospital, learning all about her care, attaching to her more and more each day and yet the fact that she wasn’t really placed with us yet and may be our 5^th failed placement loomed over me like a dark cloud. I kept thinking, her name starts with an E this can't be her either, it's going to fall through and I am already falling in love with her! I can’t believe I’ve set us up like this again.

Then I was visiting her by myself and as I stood in the peaceful room and tried to quiet her fussing I heard myself say aloud the nickname I hadn't even realized I was calling her and I started to cry. Her name is Ella but I call her El! In that moment I knew God had sent her to us! In the grand scheme of things I don't know what God has planned for this sweet little girl but I know He called me to love her now while she's with me and made sure we were available when it was time. It was suddenly clear that those other placements had to fall through for God’s plan for us to take shape and rather than trust in Him and His promises I was trying to control the situation. I read into it, and I doubted because of it. His promise to you may not be audible in a dream or as clear but please learn from my mistake and try to be faithful from the beginning of this process and not just stubbornly in hindsight. You will save yourself a lot of useless stress! God has already determined when and who will be in your home, rest in that, know that your worry is pointless, that your doubt is useless.

My hope in sharing these stories with you is that you can be more prepared for the emotional ups and downs and less fearful of it all as it’s happening. Yet at the same time I know that you just can’t be prepared for this and every time you think you are something will change. The truest statement ever said about foster care is this: “The only thing constant in foster care is change.’

Just do yourself a favor now and get that tattooed on your forehead as the answer to every strange remark you will get as a foster parent, every heart breaking question you will ask yourself, every rabbit hole your mind will try to take go down.

“THE ONLY THING CONSTANT IN FOSTER CARE IS CHANGE.”

Comforting isn’t it?

No, not at all. But it is true.

Does that mean you should render all the foster blogs you’ve obsessively poured over, the training you’ve been required to attend, and your family and friends well meaning know it all opinions, all useless?

No of course not, but when tasked with trying to be a source of stability in a child’s otherwise erratic & traumatic world those things will not be enough on their own.

I think the first step in being successful is acknowledging that neither you nor I are sufficient enough alone for this enormous task we’ve agreed to.

We MUST lean into Jesus more than we’ve ever done before and only then will we find the PEACE needed to power us through.

There is no such thing as an easy fostering experience, but that PEACE that God has offered to us, as those willing to be His hands and feet in this process, is almost indescribable.

That PEACE is sufficient!

Life as you know it is about to walk the finest line between easy and complicated that ever existed. The system is complicated but the love is easy! The system is flawed but the love is easy!

And not just easy, it’s peace in the chaos!  

The PEACE that comes from God’s love for us, for others and our ability to pass that love on to everyone because of Him is awe-inspiring.

The PEACE in knowing that He has called us to it and so He will equip us is abundant.

The PEACE in knowing we do not have to solve all of their problems for them to survive this but that we just have to show them God’s love is comforting.

The PEACE in knowing that these children are not the bio parents, not ours, not the courts, they are His, is the whole point!

I am fully aware that I speak from my little experience, but I speak from my heart when I say that through fostering there is a renewed spirit in our home. The spirit of undeserving grace surrounds us daily!

While I can’t promise you much about the ever changing world you are about to enter, I CAN promise you that the presence of God in your every day life will never be more evident! At the very same time your faith in humanity will be tested your faith in Him will never be clearer!

There is so much good to be found in this process!

God’s gifts to us are abundant and beautiful in the mess!

It’s intense, the whole thing, good, bad, ugly and everything in between.

I am not trying to sugar coat that and I clearly acknowledge the challenges that you will face.

All I am saying is that every single moment of it, the struggles, the sacrifice, the heartache and the pain, it is worth it! The kids are worth it!

* Names have been changed to protect the innocent and keep me out of trouble with licensing.*