The longer I’m at this parenting thing, the more deeply I understand that the tools & strategies are limited. Mostly because I am limited. I am limited in my energy & strength, in my goodness & love, in my ability to perfectly implement imperfect methods.
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?
Let’s approach our kids’ parents with compassion, humility, & respect. Let’s put ourselves in their shoes, fight to understand their feelings, be sure to honor their role.
Let’s do it for their benefit and let’s do it for the benefit of our kids.
It is to our children’s benefit that—in our homes—their parents are honored, their stories are held, and their feelings are given space. 🤍
I celebrate the grace of God in bringing him into our home for this time. And I'll shout from the rooftops how lucky we are to get to be his family, to get to love him. But you'll never hear me call him lucky.
My big hack for “doing all the things” is to release the illusion and idol of control and perfection and get very comfortable with your own weakness and shortcomings. The key to spinning a lot of plates is being ok with dropping one every once in a while, asking for help or forgiveness as you pick up the pieces, & keeping on with the spinning, identity in tact.
Yes, giving them up is impossible.
But giving up control is even harder.
There is a way to talk to our kids about their parents and their stories that is both honest and covered in compassion. We interpret their parents’ struggles through a lens of trauma and share it with our kids with the belief that their parents are doing their best.
It's an impossible tension on its own, until I remember whose you truly are. I can both love you as "mine" and release you as "not mine,” because you are His, and I surrender you to Him.
My kids have received many good things because of foster care and they’ve endured many hard things because of foster care. But with a good God ordaining their days, I trust that He’s using it all to make them who He has them to be.
When trauma triggers, it trumps all else. Every plan and priority put aside.
People enjoy platitudes like "babies are resilient" and "they can't remember anything anyway.” Don't tell me for a second that he won't experience the loss of me. And don't tell me for a second that he hasn't experienced the loss of his biological mother.
I’ve found that facing my fear is far less frightening than feeling the fear.
Foster care will affect your kids. Some of the effects will be immediately, obviously good. And some you will see for the good that they are only once you see them through eyes of faith—looking forward to the character & hope & good they will bring along with them
My mama’s heart for my kids becomes idolatrous when I forget the God above it all. When I try to rip them from His hands, into my own. When I doubt and decide He doesn’t actually plan good. When I believe that I could be a better God than He.
So super excited to share that I’ve signed a contract to publish THREE more books for foster parents (and families!) with Baker Books!
Our children's parents are not beyond hope. God can save them. God can change them. He loves them deeply—not for who they could be, but as they are, right now in their lostness. He created them and adores them, despite themselves. Just like He does you and me.
I don’t know how long this little one will be with me, and I don’t know if he’ll have memories of me. But I know that his brain and body will remember my nurturing care, and it will change his life forever.
I prayed “break my heart for the things that break yours,” but I pretty much had my mind made up about what those things were: kids.
Triggers aren’t meant to be avoided (forever). They reveal places that are broken, so that healing can take place. When our kids are ready, triggers can be opportunities—to process, to grow, to heal.
