Why Foster Care?

When I was younger and first felt the call to adopt I always assumed it would be international adoption only. I had a plan. We would have a kid first, then adopt a little boy from somewhere in Africa, and then adopt a little girl from China. That was how I pictured my family. (I'm not a control freak or anything...!)

Aubrey and I also discussed that we would like to be married about 5 years before we started a family. After our 3 year anniversary passed a class on adoption, If you were mine, was offered at Jacob's Well and I decided to take it. Aubrey couldn't make it to the class so I was in charge of bringing back all the information to him. If you were mine covers the basics of why to the details of how with adoption. Its a great class for anyone considering or about to start the process. As part of the class they explained the three ways you can adopt. 1. Domestic adoption - adopting infants from the US. 2. International adoption - adopting kids of all ages from different countries. 3. Adopting from Foster Care. - adopting kids of all ages from your State's/the US foster care system.

I knew about the first two. My cousins were adopted domestically and we were (according to my amazing plan...) going to adopt internationally. I didn't even know the third option existed. I was initially intrigued by it because compared to the cost of the other two options it honestly seemed appealing! There is no cost to adopt from the foster care system and in a lot of cases any costs you do incur will be reimbursed in the end. But, to explore an option just because its cheap did not seem like the way I wanted to go about starting our family, but God was already at work.

Over the next year God began laying foster care on my heart. I was honestly terrified at first. I never wanted to do foster care. I wasn't cut out for it, I argued. One Sunday during worship at Jacob's Well I just broke down. God had spoken and I had finally heard. Over the next few months a couple of things began to happen. God continued to work in my heart. The call that I originally heard as a call to one day do Foster Care began to come into focus as a call to adopt through Foster Care. It was different than what I had always pictured, but I accepted it relatively easily, even though I had no idea what that would look like.

One of the biggest ways that God worked in our hearts was through some friends of ours the Behnke's. We have been blessed to be witnesses to Paul and Nicki's adoption story as they adopted their 3 children through foster care. Paul and Nicki were actually in the If you were mine class and were the first people I heard express interest and plans to adopt from foster care. I felt not only certainty, but also excitement at the thought of adopting through foster care after seeing God's hand through their process. For their whole story check out their blog.

So, God had spoken to me, and I had heard, but he wasn't done yet. I still had my plan in my mind. To have a kid first, then adopt foster care, and then international adoption. The perfect family, or at least that was my opinion...