Ten Things You Can Do to Help - Foster Parent edition

Has your heart has longed to minister to the hearts of hurting people? Mine has. I've particularly desired to be a mama to hurting, abused and neglected children. This passion is a little odd and contradictory personally as I also desire much quiet time and order in the home. 

Yeah, quiet, solitude and order. Caring for hurting children. This doesn't sync together too well. 

Allow me to expand a bit. I began my mothering journey at 19, single and alone. As a result, I've felt that I missed out on the adult single years and longed for them since this birth occurred 22 years ago.  Yet, as much as I had these desires, I also felt that God might lead our blended family to fostering or adopting some day.  If we did, I knew it would require a lot of work and it definitely wouldn't be orderly and quiet! So, I confronted my desire for comfort and faced that God may lead me to something much more challenging, which I also wanted.  I also wanted to love a hurting child, or two. Contradictory desires. My heart and mind wrestled internally and with God.

Ultimately, the desire to serve Christ no matter what and the passion to love others for the sake of the gospel led us to a life altering and life shaking move far beyond what I had imagined. Now my heart is forever changed.

Our journey as foster parents began and ended much differently than I anticipated. We moved our family to do so. That was huge. Then, it wasn't one or two children we would care for, but 13 foster children in a span of 15 months in addition to another teenage boy.  DEFINITELY, not quiet and orderly! Once we took the step, we thought we might stay in this role for several years. But, due to a number of circumstances we moved back and now have two children in the home. By now, I had already borne the greatest pain involved in the initial stages of caring for our hurt children. Now, I wanted to make these children a part of our home forever, but God had other plans for them and for us. Moving back and releasing the children was another God led, life altering move that required great trust.

 (Our 2012 family at Christmas minus a few)

I could look back at our season as a failure, or I could look to it as an amazing opportunity to learn to trust God at an immensely deeper level and as a stepping-stone to the next area of service. I tend to drift towards the former thoughts, but with my eyes lifted to Christ, I choose the latter.  

Now, after an intense season of busyness and an incredible number of trials and obstacles, we are in a much needed season of rest.  It will not be forever. Soon, God will bring us into a new season of serving and it will look much different than the last year and a half.   

As I reflect on our journey, I recall numerous ways that we received help that was such a blessing. I also think of ways that I wish others might have helped, but when people offered, we didn't know what we needed and we really didn't want to ask.

Perhaps you have a friend who is fostering and/or adopting? Perhaps you desire to do so yourself but aren't ready to commit just yet. If so, consider some of the following ways to help and bless others who have made the commitment.  You can still be a blessing in so many ways! Who knows what journey the Lord may have for you!

Ten Things You Can Do to Help - Foster Parent Edition:
(Maybe these are the Top Ten, maybe not. Maybe I'm missing some GREAT ideas that YOU have...if so...please share below in the comments section!)

Top 10 signs that it might be a Pirate kind of day -

10. Your daily books deals promote books about Pirates.

9. Your friends are dressed up in full Pirate garb and posting pictures on Facebook.

8. Your kids can't stay focused on schoolwork because they are trying to figure out how to look like a pirate. They would rather grab black construction paper and start cutting out multiple eye masks then do their math.

7. You forgo all afternoon plans to help said kiddos become pirates so they can collect sugar booty. Surely you are parent of the year...leading your children to the life of a pirate.

6. In order to do so, you must find out what YOU own that will help YOU become "parent of the year" pirate. Arggh!

5. You stop at a tiny island with cheap trinkets and treasures to complete said costume. Then you get to share your new cheap piratey things with someone else so they can collect sugar booty like you. (But that's not really very piratey like.)

4. Your accent becomes thick and raspy and scurvy like, and you say things like "Ahoy Matey" and "Arrgggh" (Then later you might be corrected by your Captain, "Isn't scurvy a disease?" Well, whatever. The disease affects the mouth so you really can sound scurvy -like, but that's kind of gross to think about.)

3. You might call up a friend talking like a pirate and never give any indication that you are anything BUT said pirate. Then you wonder if they understood anything you said anyway, in your scurvy piratey voice.

2. You wonder if you'll ever get to try some of your friends special homemade Piratey Rum. Hmmm.

1. On the way home from collecting your sugar booty, you listen to non-piratey music and your children sing along to the tunes, thereby changing their personalities out of pirate hood for a moment, until...the song says, "opened my eyes, let me see..." and your youngest matey says, "I ONLY have ONE eye!!"