But my hope as a foster parent isn’t that I will be missed & yearned for & remembered. My hope is that my impact will remain, but the memory of me will fade. That the love of a mother through her earliest years will be forever imprinted on her brain & body & heart, but that the loss of me as that mother won’t be felt.

I could resent that my simple picture of what family "should" be has been wrecked. But I choose to see that the blurry edges create a more beautiful picture. That the open ends and the added faces only add to the unique design. Our experience of the fullness of family has expanded right along with the definition of it.

You are called to foster care. Yeah, you. Maybe not foster parenting, but foster care.

Mostly, that all that we have is from Him, any love we show comes through Him, the best we can do is lead to Him, and it’s all really for Him.

I can teach, get to their heart, give (hopefully natural) consequences, offer redos, encourage them to ask forgiveness and repair, pray, share Scripture.

To the One who walks with me through the shadows, the One who is Light and drives away every shadow. To the One who has been faithful and proven His trustworthiness, the One whose character is all perfection and never changing, the One whose promises are glorious and always kept.

It may look to the rest of the world like the child in your arms replaced that child in your heart, that one you hold now fills the gap of the one you held before.

When we understand the pervasive effects of trauma on the brain, we’re also let it on the inverse—the equally pervasive effects of nurturing relationship & therapeutic intervention & restorative love.

And all of the mess leads me to the same conclusion as the perfect picture: I am in awe of the blessing of this life of mine.

I’m learning to embrace rather than bristle and see that He has gifts for me in weakness that are available only there. The recipe is simple: acknowledge it, glory in it, then wait for the strength that He will provide because of it.

With each cuddle and whisper, clean diaper and full belly, a parent speaks to the body and brain and soul of a child: you are safe, you can trust, you are precious.

Weak is a precious place to be, friend. Delight in it, because here is what is true: When you are weak, then you are strong.

Walk with your child through it all. Talking and sharing, listening and questioning. Join them on the journey of understanding their story, learning their history, processing through the thoughts & emotions of it all. You can’t isolate your kids from the pain & confusion, but you can enter it with them.

But just because we chose it doesn’t mean we have to carry it on our own. In fact, it’s the we-chose-it-ness of it all that should pull our people into it right along with us.

I want to protect them from going through life thinking the world is about them. From the lie that following Jesus is always easy or that God is some magic genie who exists to serve our wishes. From the illusion that everyone lives the same charmed lives that they do. I want to protect them from a selfish, wasted life.

We get to speak to their little hearts, “You are loved, you are precious, your needs will be met.”

Until I was rescued out of my arrogance & ignorance. I came to understand that I can’t be for vulnerable children, while turning my back on their vulnerable parents. That I can’t celebrate the gift of my family, and hope that another’s be torn apart. That I can’t claim to love a child yet hold onto hate for their parents. That I can’t be vaguely pro-reunification but personally anti-parent. That I can’t forget that “but for the grace of God...”

That is why we created the Foster the Family Book Club Guide—to give you a tool around which you can gather with one friend or five or twenty, to come together in the name of friendship and fellowship and foster care.

The trying has become the teaching. Worry makes way for worship. And I know and love Him better for all of it.

I need to say something to you, in case no one ever has. If you’ve said goodbye to a beloved foster child, I want to affirm what you already know and live: Your loss is real and your pain is deep and your grief is true.