This post is sponsored by Catholic Community Services. Call Catholic Community Services at 253-999-9144 and start your road to discovering where you fit into the foster care story.
I have been aware of foster care since I was young. My parents were foster parents and my husband’s father was a social worker. My four younger siblings are all adopted, so we understood and were not afraid to begin our foster care journey.
We wanted to bless and love our city, and went into foster care with eyes and hearts wide open. We have a family value of being all-in together and helping our community so foster care was an easy decision.
Making the Sacrifice
When your life revolves around other people and keeping them safe, there is sacrifice. It is worth it! While we may not get all the vacations we want, doing foster care has a deeper and longer lasting meaning than those fleeting things.
I won’t say it hasn’t impacted our lives or our children’s lives. There have been times it has been hard for our biological children. We cared for two preschool brothers for almost two years. They went to a pre-adoptive home and my children still miss them.
Providing a Safe Home
We talk a lot with our children about how this is what our family does. We tell our kids that children need safe families and we can be that safe family. As they’ve gotten older they’ve realized not every family is a foster family. Learning to share is hard, and they don’t necessarily like that, but children need to learn that they are part of the bigger community and sharing is part of what makes our community healthy. As parents, we make sure they are safe and build intentional time with each of them. I’ve been asked why we didn’t wait until our children were older but there are children without homes right now. They don’t need a perfect home, just a safe home. A safe home with loving people inside of it.
The Lifelong Impact
Each child has impacted us differently. Personally I had a lot of pride going into foster care, and felt I was such a good person and so patient. Our second placement was a two year old who stayed with us until he was four and he was pretty challenging. He helped show me what I still need to work on myself. There is a term, sanctification, which means the act of becoming holy. Most of our placements have helped us work on our personal sanctification and shown how we need grace and growth just as much as they do.
Supporting the Birth Family
Working with the child’s family is important too. I’ve been humbled as I learn about the parents of the kids we have opened our home to and now understand that I’ve been blessed to have support that many parents have never experienced. I grew up with siblings who were adopted by my family and I have seen firsthand that kids need to hear and see their birth family respected. A child’s birth family is so interwoven with who they are and when their family is respected it builds their own feelings of worth and value. We always strive to be respectful to birth family and reunification is our goal. We want the parents to feel supported and not feel as if we are trying to steal their children. Every small effort helps. Even if they just feel welcome to call at any time it could mean the difference between them being successful or not.
You Can Become a Foster Parent
If you want your life to have meaning and not just live for yourself then open your eyes to the world around you. You will see the world isn’t that great, and there are people suffering in our communities. It can open our eyes and show that in the end we are no better. We can’t blindly walk through life and we can’t shut our minds off to the needs around us. Even the hardest children are precious and valuable, and we will keep making every effort to show every child we can that they are loved and wanted.
We are all given a chance to step into their darkness and be a light.
Do you feel called to Foster Care? Call Catholic Community Services today at 253-999-9144 or visit us online.
