Okay, so it seems about time to write a post about foster care/adoption, and what we're doing next. I have to be direct and say that for us, bringing a child into our family is essentially an act of faith, and my discussion of it here won't avoid that.
I read heaps of blogs, book after book, and endlessly seek to understand the issues, the trends, the needs, the whole picture when it comes to adoption and foster care. In the end, the choices we make are intensely personal, and rise from a place of faith.
All those years in Australia, we tried to make adoption happen. When we started fostering we were told some families end up adopting children they foster, even though the program isn't set up to facilitate that. Each time we felt the nudge (or the the push) from the Lord, we took a step. Our journey is filled with incredible God stories, and we are so thankful.
Coming to the US, we knew that bringing a permanent child into our family was a really big piece of this next season, but we had no clarity on when or how or from where. Years ago, newly comprehending the complexity and challenging power dynamics in domestic voluntary infant adoptions, I thought that adopting through foster care, or a child with special needs seemed to be two avenues I would feel ethically clear about.
In our search for a church home here in Houston, we spent several weeks going to nice places, but not feeling home. Then, one day we drove farther afield and found ourselves in a service that just felt so right. In that first service, in the worship time, I saw a visual picture in my mind, of a little girl. I received an impression of her age, her ethnicity, and that she would be found here in Houston, in the foster care system. This was the first specific indication I had of a way to get to our next child. I tucked it away in my mind for further thought later.
In the car on the way home, The Captain and I each asked each other, tentatively, "so, what did you think?" The whole family felt immediately at home, and we decided then and there, that this would be our new church. Beyond that, it turns out that during the service, The Captain had also received an impression from God that our next child would be coming through foster care.
While I feel weird talking about this so openly on the internet, it is what it is. This is how we hear things, and this is how we often make the transition from waiting for direction to taking a step forward.
We're neck deep in paperwork with a local child welfare agency that contracts with the state for foster care, foster to adopt, and adoptive placements. Their training regimen involves twelve classes that both of us have to attend, without children, nearly an hour away. We've looked at the schedule backward and frontward, but are having trouble seeing any quick or easy way to get through it.
As a foster parent with a current licence in Australia, and as an experienced adoptive parent, it is tempting to get annoyed with having to sacrifice this much time, energy, (and money for the babysitters), to go through trainings that we will most likely already be very familiar with, but I keep thinking, "on the other end of this I will be trusted with a life - my child - the classes are really no big deal to get to that."
At the same time, we don't have the time or the babysitters to make this training schedule happen, so once again it is one of those situations where we've taken a step forward, and now we do a bit of waiting to see what God does or says next. One thing I know for sure, is that the next step will be clear, because on this, to us, He always is. Timing has always been perfect (if not sensible to me), it has always been the right child at the right time, and the right resource has always been provided when needed. If this thing moves fast or moves slow, it will be right, because God will be working the details.
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