At The Heart of a Family

Have you ever pondered how you got to a certain point in your life, how you came upon the path you are walking?  In looking back I see how God has been paving my path with gold since I was a young child.  I remember at the age of 3 believing with all of my heart that I would one day own an orphanage and I would love all the kids no one else wanted to.  It was a goal of mine, one that I never fully let go of.  Little did I realize that God was planting a seed in that 3 year old mind of mine.  A seed that has blossomed into the most beautiful flower, in full bloom; a flower I call my family. 

                Years passed and my heart never seized loving the unlovable.  The older I got, the more and more I felt called to adoption and foster care.  I used to feel guilty because my desire wasn’t to adopt from third world countries or overseas like so many others.  Nope, God called me to love those in our own backyard.  The vulnerable children here in our country, the orphans we call foster children.  You see most people don’t think of them as orphans because they have “families” they live with.  But many of these kids age out of the system or are legally free without ever having a forever family, a family they know will be at their graduation, their wedding, or the birth of their children. They don’t know whose home they will spend Christmas morning or Thanksgiving dinner at.  It is these children that God has called me to love, to adopt, to commit my life to.   

                It took several years of prayer before my husband found the path I was on and agreed to walk it with me.  He too felt that God was calling us in this direction.  Of course making the decision was only one of the obstacles we faced.  After making this decision I could really feel people trying to persuade Thad and I that foster care was too “risky”, not the right choice, that these kids had too much baggage, that saying good-bye would hurt us too much.  It was shocking to hear the arguments people had against caring for these orphans, but also encouraging the faith others had in us as we ventured on this journey. 

                In beginning the journey of foster care we had made the decision that we were looking to both adopt from the foster care system and to also take kids that were not on the adoption track.  Our first foster son was this beautiful, biracial 18 month old little boy.  We only had “Little E” in our home for 5 days but we loved him immediately.  It was heart breaking to say good-bye but we knew God had a purpose for him in our lives, even for those 5 short days.  Little E was our “ideal” foster child if we had to pick one out.  He was the age we preferred, gender, etc.  Little did we know that God had even bigger and better plans for our family. 

                Within a week of Little E leaving our home we got the call about a newborn baby boy.  We welcomed this 7lb bundle of chocolate joy into our home and never thought twice that he wouldn’t one day be ours forever. But getting to the forever part seemed to take eternity!  In the two years we have had him, we have faced many agonizing and stressful moments.  Moments where we had to fight to pray for his birth mother, yet fear the visits he would have with her.  It was very difficult trying to balance our hope of a future with him and knowing in our hearts that his birth mother needed to be healed, saved, and free of the struggles in her life.  Every trial and hearing brought with it the anxiety of ‘potential’ outcomes.  Verdicts appealed, trial dates post-poned, termination trial dates changed…. It all felt so never ending. When were we finally going to be able to breathe, knowing we would never have to say good-bye to this little man we called our son?  Well it has been two long years and in this process we have also welcomed two other toddler boys into our lives. Little men we still love, pray for, and will hold in our hearts forever.  We have said good-bye to three foster sons over the past two years and God made our baby boy our forever son officially on September 30,2011!  We are over joyed to call him Teagan Jude and eagerly await the finalizing the adoption of our newest forever family member, Brandon.

                We are blessed, more than we deserve.  God has provided for our every need and beyond.  It only seemed right that we be good stewards of these blessing and give to the “least of these”.  After all “faith without works is dead” (James 2:17) and we made a choice to live out our faith.    In doing foster care people ask us how we can take a child in with so much baggage, our answer is “how can we deny a child who has had no choice in their life, whose circumstances are unjust, unprovoked, and out of their control?”  We are asked how we can love a child that is not biologically ours?  Our response is, “how can we make the choice to not love these children when God has chosen to love us, ‘for the greatest of these is love…love one another as you love yourself.”  We are also asked how we are able to endure the pain of saying goodbye.  It is then we explain that the pain we feel is nothing compared to the pain that these children have experienced in order to have been placed in our home in the first place.  Our pain is nothing compared to theirs and the joy we get to experience when a birth family has overcome trials, struggles and addiction in order to gain their child back is indescribable.  Not only do we get to share in changing the life of a child but we also get to be a witness for their birth families. 

                The golden path God has lead us on has been a path that is the heart of our family.  What path is He taking you down and are you willingly walking down it?