A Letter to You: Foster Mama & Papa

Dear Foster Mama & Papa,

Don’t give up but Rise up! I know firsthand how chaotic, exhausted, emotionally, mentally, and physically drained you are but don’t give up, rise up, and keep pushing through the obstacles and challenges of being a Foster Mama and Foster Papa because that child needs you, their parents and family need you. You may not even think that you are making a difference in their lives but you are. You are important. You are a part of their story. You are the stepping stone in modeling a healthy family lifestyle that can bring restoration and joy to their hearts. They may not say Thank You or Please or come to you with heart warm appreciation of all you have done in their lives but know that one day they will remember the love, kindness, and consistency you provided in not giving up.

We were called to be a Foster Family. That role doesn’t come lightly. In fact, it feels lonely and isolated from the world.

But if you have been called to be a Foster Family and you are feeling discouraged, exhausted, and feeling like the outsider of it all, remember that God called You and me for a special calling to serve his children in need. The bad moments in our journey will all be moments of God restoring and creating new and great things to come in all of our lives. God is growing within us in this season, lean on him, ask for help, ask for prayer, and connect with other Foster Families, even if it seems scary and out of the norm.

Our family experienced loss and pain as we started the process of Fostering a year ago. A bit of our story is God called us to be a Foster Family years before my husband and I were even married and or had children but guess what, life happened we were not in the place or season to provide a loving and stable home for another child. God impressed in our hearts a year ago to start the process for Foster to adopt. Of course, we have all learned during this process that there is no such thing but always a possibility to do so.

As we had started the journey, prayed on it, and spent time with God guiding our steps and ways through the process. Our niece reached out from California asking for help with her 3-year-old son. We immediately and without hesitation or prayer said YES of course. We had the conversation to adopt him as he was in the DCFS system and was involved in her case and even had him for a few months. We were thrilled and Thanked God every step of the way. Wow, Lord, we stepped into Faith and obeyed you, and this opportunity to grow our family presented itself, so fast.

Rewinding back a year ago, we sat down with our three children to discuss what God had been putting in our hearts to do and we asked them in fairness how they would feel. The room filled in our kitchen with love, tears and joy, and shock. But all three of our children were open, excited, and proud. The oldest Xavier responded, yes that is great news but I would like to be the oldest of the kids”, that was pretty reasonable to accept. I teared up in the process as our middle son Aidan, got up from his chair and hugged his Dad and looked at him with such love, and said “I am so proud of you guys”, and our youngest daughter Genevieve responded “I want a sister, when will she be here”, the memory of this will be engraved in my heart forever and just gives me the joy to have experienced such wonders with our children in their own excitement.

Moving forward to the process, we started all of our paperwork, had our licensing worker, and had a moment of standstill where nothing was happening because we were at the same time trying to bring our niece’s son to Arizona. You already know how that works, (ICPC) well in time that was not approved but it was still approved that he could come on a “vacation basis” until his case closed, I don’t know how but as we all have experienced our system is just weird and complicated at times. We chatted with our little guy on facetime often since January 2022, we went out to see him in person in March, and instantaneously our family fell in love with this cute little curly-haired boy in an instant. Finally, we had court, and the judge approved him to come to Arizona “on a vacation basis” with relatives but all were aware that our plan and Mom’s plan was to adopt him. We finally drove out excitedly to pick him up at the beginning of April to bring him home during that time with him, it was a blessing and a curse at the same time. The blessing was that we were able to provide him with the foundation of love, and consistency, and to know who God is. But in the end the curse for our family that was created during turmoil, hesitation, chaos, people pleasing, and no direction from our niece’s experiences that she kept going back and forth with her decision.

As parents, we understood that giving up your child is no easy walk in the park and things are just not simple but we also had the thoughts of well, you reached out to us directly, you asked for help and we are willing to provide him with what you feel you cannot give right now due to trauma. There was a point that our hearts dropped, we had no control, no way to do things differently or change her mind, we had to say goodbye. It was just a couple of days before Mother’s Day that we had to go drive to the airport and say goodbye to our baby boy. He didn’t want to leave but we knew that he would still be okay because we taught him to pray and praise Jesus with his little voice of enthusiastically saying AMEN! We were all broken, angry, frustrated, and confused. To this day we still all feel broken, sad at times, missing him at moments, and angry about unanswered questions from God Why?! Why would you allow us to get attached to him? Why would you make us fall in love with him? Why did you take him away? During that time, I was depressed, slept all day, and barely made it through my workday without tears and puffiness in my eyes. My children saw my brokenness but I never saw there’s. My husband was holding it all together for us all and his grieving never came out until I started feeling like myself again and could get myself out of bed to pray and get my God time. If I didn’t have the prayer warriors on my side from my Mom, Aunt, cousin, and Grandmother, I don’t think that I would be in the place that I am today with being a Foster Mama.

As I started to surrender this piece in our lives that had to leave, change started occurring in our family. Suddenly, our paperwork started to get things moving in a positive direction toward completion to be a Foster Family. We had moments of doubt and hesitation on whether to even pursue our God given calling of stepping into obedience once again even with the brokenness but I knew and my husband knew that we had to push through the sadness. Our licensing paperwork was submitted on September 2, 2022, to obtain approval to be a Foster Family. That Saturday and Sunday morning when I prayed before anyone was up, God told me it is going to happen soon, I will have a child in my home soon. I didn’t really tell anyone, I just kept it to myself and enjoyed the Holiday weekend with our family of 5. Monday, September 5th, 2022 on Labor day, we were eating dinner and I saw a call from the state. My stomach dropped, my eyes were wide-eyed looking at my husband and children and all I can say was “they are calling us to bring a child into our home”. Everyone was silent, nervously smiling with anticipation, and continued to eat while I took the call. And yes, I was right, God sent us a precious and smart little girl to receive in our home. We got the details as much as they had, we took time to pray and talk to the kids about it, called them back, and said Yes within 15-20 minutes as this was a family decision because we started it all together. Mind you, we were not licensed at all yet but they said “don’t worry, today is a holiday so first thing tomorrow, things will get pushed pretty quickly and you will get a call for a pick-up time”. Emails were sent out to all the people that needed to know that we said YES! And within hours the next day in the morning, we were officially licensed to Foster. It is also our official Foster Family date of September 6, 2022, that we became a family of 6.

All I can do now is just be in awe of all that God has done over the last 6 months of our storm and how he created the bad into something beautiful to experience and to give. The journey is not over, and our love for her may be also a time that we have to say goodbye but I know that in our hearts we gave her what she needed the most to feel loved and a part of a family. I am thankful that God still kept me going despite my doubts and moments of giving it all up due to our first experience. I am so glad that the Lord comforted me during these times and I can embrace and continue to learn how to love her even more so when times are challenging.

I will not lose hope that one day we will adopt. Our family is still grieving our first loss but we are finding moments of joy and peace with where we are now and how God has blessed our family to be called out and directed to be a Foster Family.

Prayer

My prayer for you today is although you may feel lonely, grieving, exhausted, and pulled in a million different directions, don’t lose hope, faith, and love. God has a perfect plan for your family no matter whether it is on a temporary basis or permanent basis, God knows what we need. Lean on him for guidance, protection, and comfort in times of the unknown, which in Foster-hood, it is all the time.

Thank you, Lord, for giving me this opportunity to heal in my own brokenness and to share with others our experience and our hope for the future. Thank you, Lord, for giving us the peace, guidance, and comfort we need when we are lonely and exhausted. Lord, I pray for all Foster Families feeling lost, tired, anxious, and worried so that they may immerse themselves in your presence and know that they are on the right path and not give up, keep going, keep rising for your Glory, and for your children. We pray this in the precious name of Jesus Christ. Amen-Amen.