Ben and I are currently talking classes to become adoptive and/or foster parents. That "and/or" in the last sentence is perhaps one of the hardest decisions we will ever make.
Adoption, which has been on both of our hearts for at least 8 years, gives us the opportunity to give children an identity and a forever family. Fostering allows us to share our family, our faith and our love to many children... and it there are so many children in need.
We are setting that decision at the throne of God for now, so I will move onto so many other thoughts I have about this process we have entered. This past Saturday, December 28th, we drove from my parents home in Mt. Vernon and traveled about an hour and a half to our class in Waverly. Honestly I felt as though I was suffering from Christmas hangover. I was exhausted from many consecutive late nights. And since I spent many of those nights over eating sugary yumminess I decided to skip breakfast (which is not out of the ordinary for me). But, that morning I had also taken some prescription medication and apparently if it has a label that says, "take with food" that's advice you should follow.
In short I was tired, grumpy, and sick to my stomach, fearing that I would vomit at any moment. Couple that with the thought of sitting through a 3 hour state run class I was not exactly excited about what my Saturday morning held for me. On several occasions during the drive I thought, "I don't even want to do this anymore, I just want to go back to bed."
This is the very struggle that rages inside of me. We have five amazing children. They are relatively healthy, happy and well behaved. They all sleep through the night, feed themselves and are potty trained. They pick up after themselves (about 39% of the time) and all of them help with putting dishes away, folding laundry and doing other chores. And really did I mention that we already have FIVE children?
My wise husband stopped at a gas station along the way and bought me a bagel so that my stomach might calm down a bit and so that I also might get some energy to make it through the class. It worked. And it's amazing how your attitude changes when you don't feel like you're going to vomit at any second!
It doesn't take much to understand that the foster care system is in America is flawed. But, it has occurred to me that for whatever the reason whenever the adoption of children lands in the hands of any government there is always corruption. It is this corruption or "hoop jumping" that keeps many potential parents from entertaining the idea of adopting out of the foster care system. It's this hoop jumping that sometimes makes me want to bail all together.
I don't want to play their games. I don't want any government agency to have their hands in my life. I don't want them telling me how to run my home or raise my children. You know what I'm talking about. Even though I have nothing to hide, I value my family's privacy and freedom.
Here's what it comes down to for me:
My God tells me, as a disciple of Christ, to take care of the fatherless. Sometimes I think I can do things my way. Ah-hem, not eating and taking prescription medication, comes to mind. And it doesn't end well for me. My unwillingness to help the fatherless is actually an act of disobedience. If I know that God commands the disciple of Christ to do something and they justify a way out of it they are in sin. Christian brothers and sisters, do you have any idea how many orphans need a family?
Furthermore, there are approximately 400,000 children in the foster care system. According to the Success Beyond 18 campaign 26,000 youth (a year, I believe) are aging out of the foster care system. That's 26,000 teenagers who have not been adopted and no longer have a place to call home. They have no roots. They have no support from parents. It's likely that their siblings have been adopted into other families or will eventually age out of the system as well. These children may have been in the state run system for many years and the state has offered them no hope and no future. Without the support of a family many end up dropping out of school and will rely on public assistance and/or be incarcerated.
And it is in this reality that I believe the American church has failed its youth. While we rally as pro-lifers we leave orphans in foster care with no hope of family. We complain that each generation becomes more dependent on entitlements and have no work ethic, but we have left orphans in the hands of the state instead of bringing them into our homes and training them in the way that should go. There are so many lives that need to hear the truth of the gospel and there are so few of us willing to pluck these children out of Satan's hand.
It really should break our hearts. It really should cause us to examine our hearts. There are far too many children in dangerous situations with little hope of finding a loving family willing to offer them hope. May we, as a church, fail no more. Our children need us.
Adoption, which has been on both of our hearts for at least 8 years, gives us the opportunity to give children an identity and a forever family. Fostering allows us to share our family, our faith and our love to many children... and it there are so many children in need.
We are setting that decision at the throne of God for now, so I will move onto so many other thoughts I have about this process we have entered. This past Saturday, December 28th, we drove from my parents home in Mt. Vernon and traveled about an hour and a half to our class in Waverly. Honestly I felt as though I was suffering from Christmas hangover. I was exhausted from many consecutive late nights. And since I spent many of those nights over eating sugary yumminess I decided to skip breakfast (which is not out of the ordinary for me). But, that morning I had also taken some prescription medication and apparently if it has a label that says, "take with food" that's advice you should follow.
In short I was tired, grumpy, and sick to my stomach, fearing that I would vomit at any moment. Couple that with the thought of sitting through a 3 hour state run class I was not exactly excited about what my Saturday morning held for me. On several occasions during the drive I thought, "I don't even want to do this anymore, I just want to go back to bed."
This is the very struggle that rages inside of me. We have five amazing children. They are relatively healthy, happy and well behaved. They all sleep through the night, feed themselves and are potty trained. They pick up after themselves (about 39% of the time) and all of them help with putting dishes away, folding laundry and doing other chores. And really did I mention that we already have FIVE children?
My wise husband stopped at a gas station along the way and bought me a bagel so that my stomach might calm down a bit and so that I also might get some energy to make it through the class. It worked. And it's amazing how your attitude changes when you don't feel like you're going to vomit at any second!
It doesn't take much to understand that the foster care system is in America is flawed. But, it has occurred to me that for whatever the reason whenever the adoption of children lands in the hands of any government there is always corruption. It is this corruption or "hoop jumping" that keeps many potential parents from entertaining the idea of adopting out of the foster care system. It's this hoop jumping that sometimes makes me want to bail all together.
I don't want to play their games. I don't want any government agency to have their hands in my life. I don't want them telling me how to run my home or raise my children. You know what I'm talking about. Even though I have nothing to hide, I value my family's privacy and freedom.
Here's what it comes down to for me:
My God tells me, as a disciple of Christ, to take care of the fatherless. Sometimes I think I can do things my way. Ah-hem, not eating and taking prescription medication, comes to mind. And it doesn't end well for me. My unwillingness to help the fatherless is actually an act of disobedience. If I know that God commands the disciple of Christ to do something and they justify a way out of it they are in sin. Christian brothers and sisters, do you have any idea how many orphans need a family?
Furthermore, there are approximately 400,000 children in the foster care system. According to the Success Beyond 18 campaign 26,000 youth (a year, I believe) are aging out of the foster care system. That's 26,000 teenagers who have not been adopted and no longer have a place to call home. They have no roots. They have no support from parents. It's likely that their siblings have been adopted into other families or will eventually age out of the system as well. These children may have been in the state run system for many years and the state has offered them no hope and no future. Without the support of a family many end up dropping out of school and will rely on public assistance and/or be incarcerated.
And it is in this reality that I believe the American church has failed its youth. While we rally as pro-lifers we leave orphans in foster care with no hope of family. We complain that each generation becomes more dependent on entitlements and have no work ethic, but we have left orphans in the hands of the state instead of bringing them into our homes and training them in the way that should go. There are so many lives that need to hear the truth of the gospel and there are so few of us willing to pluck these children out of Satan's hand.
It really should break our hearts. It really should cause us to examine our hearts. There are far too many children in dangerous situations with little hope of finding a loving family willing to offer them hope. May we, as a church, fail no more. Our children need us.
