This second time around we aren’t nearly so excited.  We’ve had too much experience with the foster care system and the children’s lives decided by it. The roller coaster. The frustration.

Over ten years ago we started out down this path.  A young couple, with a young child, wanting to add more and change the world.  We planned on adopting from the start.  Actually before the start, agreed before marrying.

We had been married five years already before our first child was born.  In the typical fashion, created by us.  God’s idea; not ours. Once He had converted us from couple to family, we quickly climbed on the adoption wagon we had originally intended to ride to parenthood.  Cost and travel were a barrier to international adoption for us, and we recognized we didn’t really mean to wait in line for a baby but to provide for a child waiting for a family. So we turned to foster care.  The no cost, no wait choice with a desperate need for families.

It took about 6 months from the first call to sign up for training until receiving our license.  We worked on the mountain of paperwork, homework, and required items diligently and eagerly.  I read everything I could find on fostering and adopting.  We explained to our 3 year old that some children need a safe place to stay until they can go back home, or forever. And we were going to be a safe family they could stay with.

Our three year old prayed every night for her sister.  We prayed desperately every night for our next child. Knowing that whatever brought her into our home could mean trauma and danger. We waited what seemed like forever, jumping anxiously at every phone call – in the days before cell phones told you who was calling before you answered.

Finally, after what was really only a few months, God brought our second child home.  We picked her up from the hospital.  Fifteen months later we adopted her.  That year was our first time on the roller coaster.

We know now what we didn’t know then.

Never believe anything they tell you regarding time frames. 

Always expect things to change.  Information blows and shifts with the wind.

It’s rare to find a case worker with experience or even to keep the one you’ve got, who doesn’t have much experience yet, for very long. 

Parents have more knowledge about raising children and what’s best for them than case workers just out of college. 

Any child whose fate is left to “the state” to decide is truly an orphan no matter how many family members he has.   You are the child’s best advocate. 

No one knows how long a child will be in care or in your home – they just don’t. 

It’s not done until it’s done – with adoption papers signed. 

Birth parents love their kids, even if they can’t beat an addiction in order to care for them properly, even if they’ve neglected serious medical care.  It may not seem believable, but it’s true.  

We know now that fostering and adopting is not a smooth road but a bumpy, isolating trail.  It’s frustrating and hard to let go of control, of knowing what will happen, of things making sense.  You are the one with the most intimate knowledge of this little person living in your home yet the one with the least voice.

It’s been over four years since the shape of our family and home was last dependent on a case worker and a judge.  When all we wanted to do was step off the roller coaster and make our own decisions.  The first go round we came through with not one but two beautiful daughters divinely grafted into our family.  Isn’t that enough?  Why do we choose to walk that road again?

We know that God directs his people to care for orphans. That he places them in families.  That he prompts many families to do this, but only a few follow through.  We know that tonight in our city there are children sleeping in shelters because no family stepped up to provide a bedroom for them to find rest in.  Because experienced parents at the perfect place to do this, whose children are moving into middle and high school, are no longer thinking about adding to their families.  They’ve ignored the pull they felt earlier towards foster care or adoption so long that it seems they never will have space in their lives for it.  So many have chosen easy over hard, ignorance over awareness.

Now we have to start over in a new state, with different training and requirements, different people, a different system, and a new foster care license.  This second time around we don’t jump in eagerly with anticipation. Still, we resolutely press onward, having known and weighed the costs, because it’s the right thing to do.

Join us. Children are waiting for you.