I haven't wanted to make a big deal out of this, and still don't want to, but as some of you may see us out and about I thought I'd put the word out that we are now officially licensed as a foster family. I've often thought of fostering, but with two little girls at home and then with adopting M we were busy enough. However, now that M has settled in so well into our family (it's been 2.5 years already) we thought we'd explore the idea of fostering.
Thanks to family and friends who watched our girls (you know who you are - thank you!) we were able to attend 24 hours of fostering training in the fall. Since then we've been tackling the other items - home inspections, meetings with social workers, getting medicals, providing various documentation, and baby-proofing our home for the first time. This house has never been so secure - we have latches and things in place that we never did for our own children...but it is a requirement to be a licensed foster home, and I understand that.
Before you go thinking that we're amazing people...please know that we're not. We aren't even signing up for full time fostering...we are starting small and just offering respite care. Respite care is temporary care of foster children - usually to help out foster families when they need a break or need to travel. I'm not sure exactly how often we will get children in our home or if we will do this a lot...right now we are a bit apprehensive about it and aren't making any plans other than to say that we will try it out.
Why are we doing respite (short term fostering)? Well...there are a number of reasons. We are incredibly blessed to be able to live off of Arvid's salary. Although I am never at a shortage of things to do, we know that we have been blessed with a great home, great kids, and as a stay at home mom I am able to devote some extra time and love to these kids. Although neither of us would consider ourselves huge kid people (somewhat ironic, I know), we realize the impact we can have on kids who aren't exposed to things like a healthy, two parent family, with positive role models like our girls or a healthy marriage. The whole idea of bringing new kids into our home is a bit stressful and out there for us, which is why we are starting small and just offering short term fostering.
Ultimately, we are not only financially blessed, but blessed spiritually (God is our rock!), emotionally (great friends and family), physically (we are all healthy and "young"), and want to extend some of those blessings to others. The foster children in the system have not chosen that life, and if their parents had the same blessings that we did, they likely wouldn't be making the choices they had which caused their children to be entered into the system in the first place! My family fostered a number of children when I was small, and although I remember some to be quite difficult and I couldn't wait for them to leave, I also remember some of them very fondly. We aren't sure how this will look for our family, but are stepping out in faith and giving it a try and would appreciate any prayers on our behalf.
Obviously I won't be able to post any details (nor pictures) of these kids, but if you see us out and about with another child, you'll know we haven't adopted again but are just opening our home on a short term basis. Thanks for reading - and if you have any questions about fostering or respite, I would love to talk to you. I'm really hoping that more people (especially at our church!!!) will open their homes to some of these kids in our city who need a healthy home to live in.
