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Luke and I are entering this Foster Care thing with a lot of prayer and council from God. This wasn’t a flippant decision that we made overnight. It has been an evolving decision that we have made very slowly and with a lot of prayer, Bible reading and questions. Trust me, I’ve asked God so many times, “Are you sure, God? Do you really want us to do this?” Each time, God answers me with a resounding “YES!” I cannot tell you the number of times that God has confirmed for me (not counting Luke’s confirmations) that he wants us to give this a try. They are really random things looking in from the outside, but when I look at them, I can clearly see that it is God speaking to me.
The safety of our children is our #1 concern. I hope that you don’t think that we would ever place our kids in a situation that we thought was dangerous. I do not think that bringing in children ages birth-4yrs will be dangerous for them. The reason we have chosen to foster kids this young, is because we feel we can control the environment in our home with kids this age. We are purposefully NOT fostering older kids or teenagers because it might be dangerous for our kids. Also, Luke and I have said that if at any point we feel it is too much for our family, we will back out. We have complete control of the situation, and we get to choose which kids we will take and which ones we won’t. Social Services cannot force us to take any child. It’s all up to us when, who and what we allow into our home.
On the other hand, while I do not see it as dangerous, I do see it as risky. Let me explain how I see a difference. I perceive dangerous to mean life threatening, serious harm and exposure to things that will cause my children a great deal of pain. I don’t see how a child aged 0-4 could do this to us. If within the first day or so I see a child physically, mentally or emotionally harming one of our kids, I WILL call DSS and tell them to come remove the child from our home. However, with everything we’ve been trained on, this situation is unlikely.
Risk is something that Luke and I are willing to take. Recently I wrote on my blog (an online journal type thing) the following:
I believe that God calls us to take risks. These risks are things that push us outside our comfort zone. Will bringing kids into our home who have been neglected, abused or abandoned be risky? You bet! Can God use those situations to His advantage to teach Luke, Me and the kids how to love people who are hard to love? You bet!