Say Yes To The Call
May is National Foster Care Awareness Month, and if you didn’t know, Tyler and I have been foster parents for five years, welcoming a dozen kids into our home and adopting one beautiful little boy along the way.
It’s been a hard and rewarding journey — one filled with plenty of ups and downs, lots of tears and heartache, but also much joy and fulfillment living a life with a servant’s heart engaged in a mission that we can do together as a family.
One of the most common questions that Tyler and I receive about foster care and adoption is, “Why and how did you get started?”
When we first jumped into this world, I’m sure our family and friends were scratching their heads wondering if we had lost our minds. It was so left field for us, and honestly, I’m not even sure we knew what we were doing other than we were following a calling God had placed on our hearts.
So to answer that frequently asked question, I always start by sharing that everything was set into motion with a movie called, “Instant Family.”
Let’s rewind to nearly a decade ago. Before I became a mom, I struggled with infertility for many years. I begged God to bless me with children, and wondered if maybe becoming a parent wasn’t in His plans for me. I had accepted that everything was in God’s will, but I figured that maybe we could grow our family through adoption. We started researching infant adoptions and foster care, and we even attended a meeting to get the ball rolling in the process.
But God had a different plan for us. A week after that initial meeting, I found out I was pregnant. Then in God’s comedic timing, we were blessed with three kids in four years with birthdays almost perfectly synchronized — June 3, June 4, and May 22.
With three busy little ones underfoot, foster care was the farthest thing from my mind. In my view, that ship had sailed; we were simply too busy and stretched too thin for that silly idea of foster care to come to fruition.
Then one random day in 2019, Tyler came out of his office and completely shocked me when he said, “We still need to do foster care.”
It totally threw me for a loop, and I reacted with a firm, “NO!” I was busy packing for a speaking engagement, and needed to get organized for my early morning flight the next day. I was stressed to the max and was certain that there’s no way we could foster in this season of life we were in. I shrugged it off immediately.
Well, God works in mysterious ways, and He quickly changed the trajectory of my thinking. The next morning, I got on the plane, and “Instant Family,” was playing on the flight. The movie stars Mark Wahlberg and is about a couple who gets licensed to foster and takes in a sibling group of three.
God might as well have hit me over the head with a 2X4! Instead of laughing off the idea of foster care, now I was crying right there on the flight. The other passengers probably thought I had gone mad. Message received, God! I hear you! Loud and clear!
As soon as I got off the plane, I called Tyler and said, “I’m in. Let’s do it!” I spent the rest of the trip reading about the kids waiting for their forever homes who were listed on sites like AdoptUSKids, America’s Kids Belong, and South Dakota Kids Belong.
The day after I arrived home from my trip, we called the state office about getting licensed. Turns out the licensing agency they work with had just started training classes in our hometown the week before, and they welcomed us to jump on in and get started ASAP!
Well, ready or not, here we go, we thought!
That was March 2019, and by August that same year, we had completed our home study, received our license, and welcomed our first kids the very same day we were officially licensed!
A dozen kids later, with plenty of hellos and goodbyes, and one very special forever, I’m so grateful for the gentle nudge and then the mighty shove from God to pursue foster care. I’m thankful to be on this journey with a wonderful, loving father and husband. I’m so proud of our kids for being willing to share their parents, their home, and their toys with new kids. And most of all, I’m so lucky to get to be a Forever Mom to our little man, Alexander!
Adoption and foster care has forever changed our family, and we are so glad we took that first step and said YES to God’s plan for our lives. I firmly believe there is room for one more at the dining room table, and I’ve found there’s much healing and hope that can be found in an agricultural setting.
So if foster care has been on year heart and mind, here’s your nudge that you can do hard things. There is a child waiting for you to be bold and brave and say “yes” to the call.