Foster Parent – Our Life Thus Far with Foster Care

My Life as a Foster Parent

Foster Parent – Our Life Thus Far with the Foster Care System

While I have blogged about many topics, for some reason, this one has been much too personal.  Training to be a foster parent and taking a child into our home has been something I have kept to myself in many ways.  I have shared with my friends and family that my husband and I were embarking on this journey.  I have even shared with friends about some of our joys and struggles with fostering, but really I’ve kept so much to myself.

I internalize much of my life while sharing windows in, but they are selective.  Today, I’m opening one more window a little wider.  My hope is that you will know a little more about fostering, a little more about how God is blessing our family, and a little more about how God is faithful even in the hard places.

Training to Receive

We began our training to become a foster parent in January of 2017.  As my husband was still unsure of the process and his feelings about being a foster parent, we were planning to do the training in order to find out if fostering was a fit for our family.  I was praying the whole time that God would stir my husband’s heart toward accepting a child into our home.  In honest, our infertility has left a place that I was willing to use to bless a child who needed a home.  I sincerely wanted my pain to become a blessing rather than a curse.

Packet Mayhem

During the training, we received a packet of forms.  This thick packet was to be filled […]

Holistically Love Jesus

Honestly, most Christians hear the word ‘holistic’ and they begin to run in the opposite direction.  We envision people doing yoga and Ohmmmmming and we quickly add on a mental image relating to a “new age” lifestyle.  I was one of those people.  Wow, I have come a long way from being so quick to jump into one idea (at least I hope I have).

Being holistic has nothing to do with yoga, ohmming, new age, or voodoo.  I assure you.  It has everything to do with realizing that God made you as a whole being.  Remember that verse about loving the Lord with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30)?  Everything that God has given us should work together interdependently to love Him.

Merriam-Webster defines holistic as “relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts.”  The example offered by the dictionary is “holistic medicine attempts to treat both the mind and the body.  When describing our walk with Christ, holistic means looking at our life and body as a complete system rather than pulling our life and body into parts.

Let me ask you a question.  Do you find that we as Christians tend to dissect ourselves when we seek to love God?

  • Have you ever spent tons of time using your mind to read the Scripture, then forgot to involve your soul and heart?
  • Have you ever used your strength to serve Christ, but forgot to pray to find out if your chosen service was God’s will?
  • Have you ever worshiped God with your heart and completely left out worshiping Him with your strength because you were too timid to move?
  • Have you ever given God […]