Our Why
**I have gone back and forth and procrastinated writing this post. This is a subject close to my heart so I hope I can write it all out the right way. I just want to share our reasons and the process we went through before deciding to go down the road of foster care.**
All my life I have had a heart for children, and I've always wanted to have a lot of kids. However I never really considered adoption or foster care. I just figured that that was what people did when they couldn't have their own kids. After we started our family, adoption did cross my mind a time or two, usually when hearing about the plight of orphans in foreign countries, but with the high costs associated with international and domestic adoption, I figured it would never be a possibilty for us and left it at that.
I liked the idea of adoption, but since we have no problem getting pregnant I didn't want to "take" a child from a couple who "needed them" more than we did. I was under the false assumption that adoption was a way for childless people to fill a void in their life and that orphans were a limited commodity, of which there wasn't enough to go around.
Shortly after Adele was born I started getting some inspiration indicating that there were more children waiting for us. I was kinda like "yeah ok, we are still planning on having more". Later I had the thought that maybe these weren't all biological children we were supposed to have. Foster care briefly crossed my mind but since we were in a tiny apartment at that time I just stored it away as something we could maybe do when all of our kids were much older. Really, since I had just had a baby my mind was pretty closed off to these types of revelations, but obviously the Lord was trying to tell me something.
Things changed when I was sitting listening to the Women's session of General Conference in April 2017. Foster care or orphans weren't even mentioned, the speaker was just briefly mentioning charity or something like that, and suddenly I felt so strongly that we were supposed to be foster parents and we were supposed to do it right now.
I couldn't even focus on the rest of the meeting, I was just thinking of this and what it would mean for our family and what we should do. I told Leland about it that night. He was a little skeptical, but after praying about it he tentatively agreed. At first I was so happy and excited, as we usually are when we feel the Spirit speaking to us. As time went on, I felt a lot less sure. I started googling and came across horror stories (seriously, don't google 🙈). I just felt our lives would be so much easier and simplier if we didn't do this. I tried to negotiate with God like "Please, I have a lot going on, I'll do this when my kids are older". Obviously He knows what we need and still the promptings came to do it now, with the promise that he would "prepare a way for me to accomplish it".
After more prayer and many nudges from the Spirit, we went through with it. We did our classes and all the paper work and the home study. The process was actually very smooth and not nearly as difficult as I thought it was going to be.
Throughout our process we haven't told a ton of people (including my 10 blog readers :)), but a few those we have told have kind of looked at us weird, like "why are these people with young kids doing this?" Even most of the people in our certification classes were older couples or couples without kids. Well, despite what some have assumed, we aren't actually in it for the money. There are actually much easier ways to make 70 cents an hour. 👍
So in short, the reason we are doing in this is because the Lord has told us this is what he wants us to be doing with our lives right now. And yes, we know it is going to be hard. And we know that we will fall in love and then have to say goodbye. I worry about the affect it will have on our children and how I'm going to handle 4 kids under 5.
I know it will be hard, but I can't forget the things Heavenly Father has told me. He loves these children and wants them to be in good homes. Repeatedly in the scriptures we are told of the Savior's love for children and our duty to care for the fatherless. We are so far from perfect, but these kids don't have time to wait for perfect people, they need parents now. We will probably have a more complicated life because of foster care, but it is nothing compared to what these kids have gone through. I also know this will make us better more patient parents. I hope it will at least partially have a good impact on our children. Of course I am scared and nervous and excited, but I just remind myself of these things all the time, have faith that we are doing what the Lord wants us to, and pray a lot.
As now we are finally licensed I have gone back to my first feelings. I have no idea what the future holds but I feel at peace.
All my life I have had a heart for children, and I've always wanted to have a lot of kids. However I never really considered adoption or foster care. I just figured that that was what people did when they couldn't have their own kids. After we started our family, adoption did cross my mind a time or two, usually when hearing about the plight of orphans in foreign countries, but with the high costs associated with international and domestic adoption, I figured it would never be a possibilty for us and left it at that.
I liked the idea of adoption, but since we have no problem getting pregnant I didn't want to "take" a child from a couple who "needed them" more than we did. I was under the false assumption that adoption was a way for childless people to fill a void in their life and that orphans were a limited commodity, of which there wasn't enough to go around.
Shortly after Adele was born I started getting some inspiration indicating that there were more children waiting for us. I was kinda like "yeah ok, we are still planning on having more". Later I had the thought that maybe these weren't all biological children we were supposed to have. Foster care briefly crossed my mind but since we were in a tiny apartment at that time I just stored it away as something we could maybe do when all of our kids were much older. Really, since I had just had a baby my mind was pretty closed off to these types of revelations, but obviously the Lord was trying to tell me something.
Things changed when I was sitting listening to the Women's session of General Conference in April 2017. Foster care or orphans weren't even mentioned, the speaker was just briefly mentioning charity or something like that, and suddenly I felt so strongly that we were supposed to be foster parents and we were supposed to do it right now.
I couldn't even focus on the rest of the meeting, I was just thinking of this and what it would mean for our family and what we should do. I told Leland about it that night. He was a little skeptical, but after praying about it he tentatively agreed. At first I was so happy and excited, as we usually are when we feel the Spirit speaking to us. As time went on, I felt a lot less sure. I started googling and came across horror stories (seriously, don't google 🙈). I just felt our lives would be so much easier and simplier if we didn't do this. I tried to negotiate with God like "Please, I have a lot going on, I'll do this when my kids are older". Obviously He knows what we need and still the promptings came to do it now, with the promise that he would "prepare a way for me to accomplish it".
After more prayer and many nudges from the Spirit, we went through with it. We did our classes and all the paper work and the home study. The process was actually very smooth and not nearly as difficult as I thought it was going to be.
Throughout our process we haven't told a ton of people (including my 10 blog readers :)), but a few those we have told have kind of looked at us weird, like "why are these people with young kids doing this?" Even most of the people in our certification classes were older couples or couples without kids. Well, despite what some have assumed, we aren't actually in it for the money. There are actually much easier ways to make 70 cents an hour. 👍
So in short, the reason we are doing in this is because the Lord has told us this is what he wants us to be doing with our lives right now. And yes, we know it is going to be hard. And we know that we will fall in love and then have to say goodbye. I worry about the affect it will have on our children and how I'm going to handle 4 kids under 5.
I know it will be hard, but I can't forget the things Heavenly Father has told me. He loves these children and wants them to be in good homes. Repeatedly in the scriptures we are told of the Savior's love for children and our duty to care for the fatherless. We are so far from perfect, but these kids don't have time to wait for perfect people, they need parents now. We will probably have a more complicated life because of foster care, but it is nothing compared to what these kids have gone through. I also know this will make us better more patient parents. I hope it will at least partially have a good impact on our children. Of course I am scared and nervous and excited, but I just remind myself of these things all the time, have faith that we are doing what the Lord wants us to, and pray a lot.
As now we are finally licensed I have gone back to my first feelings. I have no idea what the future holds but I feel at peace.
Thank you for sharing your testimony. Thank you for sharing how the Lord is working in your life. You are sharing an example of acting on faith. I love reading about your family.:)
ReplyDelete