What Is Your Why?

Happy babies, bounced on hips. Smiling children running into outstretched arms. Teenagers smiling, confessing they’ve never before felt so seen and loved. These are the mental images I constructed of what foster care was sure to be.

Admittedly, they are images I’ve posted myself for others to construct their own overly idealized misconceptions of foster care. Because bright pictures of happy faces make for better poster people than some of the dimly lit images that have illustrated our foster care journey: Workers banging on doors with accusations and investigations. A judge refusing to look up from his court papers and into the eyes of the child the papers represent. Your husband choking down grief filled sobs you’ve never heard his body make in 25 shared years as he says goodbye to his beloved daughter.

We need a why that is rooted in something other than what we see—something that trumps & transcends every good & happy & sweet AND every devastating & sorrowful & broken.

What is your why for foster care? What catches you when you are sure to fall—into discouragement, despondency, fear? When you are shaken to your core, what is the unshakable rock it’s all built upon?

Mine: Anything & everything done in love for Him & others is inherently valuable & eternal, no matter the outcomes I am able to see or understand. Living for Jesus and those He loves is always worth it.