Our Journey Into Foster Care

I've wanted to share this for a long time and so, now I am sharing. This was a testimony given to the ladies at my church last month. I hope you enjoy it.

As most of you know, our family is a fostering family, and although we have only been a foster family of eleven months, we’ve learned a lot.

I was asked to give my testimony about how this came to be and as I was praying and preparing I realized that I have a lot to say about it and hopefully all of it will glorify my Lord.

I heard a preacher give this example recently, he was referring to a worship leader but I think it applies to anybody that is standing before people wanting to give glory to the Lord. He said, “If you are in any large city where people are walking on the sidewalks and you stop and look up, very soon other people will stop and look up too just trying to see what you’re looking at.” As people who are testifying to God’s goodness in any form, that is our job, to look up and cause others to look up at the glorious Lord who saved us.

Erin and I have talked and prayed about fostering or adopting for years, over ten years. We never felt that the time was right and we never felt that we had been given a green light from the Lord. A few years ago I called the Winn parish office to see about taking some classes. She was going to get us signed up, but she couldn’t find us. We live in one parish but our mailing and physical address is out of another parish address so we were no where to be found in her “system”. We considered the door to be closed to us. However, not long after that, our neighbors began to foster-to-adopt their niece and nephews so I knew that if the state needed to, they could find us--but we waited.

Last year I saw an announcement on the bulletin board in the church corridor advertising a meeting the LBCH was doing. It was all about fostering and adopting and we wanted to go but couldn’t, so I called the Children’s Home and talked to Mrs. S. She was so excited that I had just called out of the blue because they were starting a new program and they hadn’t even advertised that yet. We both felt that the Lord was at work and as soon as I gave her the go ahead she got us scheduled to take the state required classes. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

There are some kids that attend our church that had been on our hearts. There is especially one child that we just want to help, but that desire to help him got us started thinking about all the other children in the state/nation/world that have nobody to love them. And then I read Amos and he really meddled in my business. (Of course, it was the Lord speaking to my heart through Amos, but we know that already.) Here’s what Amos said that knocked me out of my dreamy couch:
“Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David invent for themselves instruments of music, who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.” Amos 6:4-6

Because of a lack of time I want to paraphrase this for you, this paraphrase is my own personal lesson: Woe to you who lie around and waste your time on frivolous entertainment, eating and drinking and filling your own belly with the finest things and ornamenting your body with all the best “ornament” and yet are not grieved over the pain of others.

If we are true believers in Christ then we are called to a sacrificial obedience. God’s wrath rests upon all the children of disobedience and Christ came so that we might be freed from the penalty of our sin: God’s wrath. As you know, we don’t become saved because we choose to be saved, we are saved when a miracle takes place in our life and God performs a heart transplant. When that happens, WE are adopted children ourselves; children adopted into His family because of the blood of Jesus Christ. He loves us and chose us to be a part of that family. Once we are adopted, we are empowered by His Holy Spirit to obey His commands and love Him most and our neighbor as ourselves. Well, I want to do that, I yearn to do that, but I can’t do it, only through the Spirit can we make any headway. Scripture tells us repeatedly that there are three groups of people that the Lord wants us to care for: the widows, the poor and the fatherless. Through fostering and adoption we can reach one and sometimes two of these groups. As Christians, we owe a debt of love to the world because of what Christ has done for us.

So, we were scheduled to start MAPP training in June. The teachers try to get you to quit from day one. It’s not that they want you to quit, it’s that they don’t want to waste their time and yours for no reason. There were several people in our class that never turned their paperwork in. (I guess they didn’t have time to count their freckles?) Anyway, we had six weeks of classes on Tuesday nights from 6-9 in Monroe. Lots of nights Erin would drive from Shreveport and meet me in Ruston and we’d get home a little before 11. There was one scene I remember distinctly from the classes. They used lots of visuals and you act out skits, etc. but this was a music video they played. The video showed several families where the children were being abused and this little boy was standing there visibly “heart hurt” while his Daddy screamed ugly things at him, that was bad enough, but then his daddy turned the burner of the stove on and grabbed the little boy’s hand and started to drag him over there. It hurts me now to think about it, but this is the kind of thing that happens all over the world everyday. These are the reasons children are pulled out of their homes. The children are hurt, angry, confused, and wounded in many, many ways and foster parents have to try to put them back together as best they can for the brief time that they have them. Who better to do that than God’s people? Who else is equipped for the task but true believers in Christ? Other people can, if they will, teach the children to function but they can’t offer them any true and lasting hope.


We did spiritual battle the whole six weeks of class. I did battle with my flesh, dying to self. Erin went from a week on/week off job to 80-90 hours a week. My grandmother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, had surgery and started treatment. Erin’s grandmother died and I found out that I was to be a Grandmother myself. I do not mind being honest and telling you that I wanted to quit! I tried to quit. The Lord just would NOT let me.

“But Lord, so many people need me!” I reasoned. However, He knew there were two little girls who needed me more. They had no one else to take care of them. Mamaw had Moma, Catie had Nick and her gift from God of a mother-in-law (and still me), but these girls had not a soul.

We got done with training in July and I was able to take Mamaw to her first treatment while we waited for our home study to be finished. We are licensed by the state but certified to foster by the LBCH. (And let me just put in a little plug for those people. They work with the children that we don’t want to fool with, troubled kids, kids that nobody else can handle. They counsel, they have a mobile crisis pregnancy unit, they have a maternity home, they have two foster homes on campus where they take state kids but the state doesn’t support them, the Children’s Home does. They are good people and I love working with them. They need our support and if we can’t give monetarily, we can always pray for them. They are active and always finding new ways to minister. www.lbch.org )

So, our social worker called us one afternoon at the end of August and said, “Well, I have two little girls here who need a home for about a month or two. Can you do it?” We hopped in the kid wagon and took off to meet her in town.

When we picked them up they were dirty, wet, hungry and had three shoes between the two of them and none of them fit. S0, off we went to Walmart to buy some more clothes (they had brought some and the children’s home had given me some), diapers, hairbrushes, etc.. There we were with two dirty little brown girls the oldest calling Erin “Daddy” already. Here we are 11 months later with the same two little girls. The state has had to take the case and we do not know what the outcome will be, but we know this…we have been forever changed.

This “job” is the hardest thing I have ever had. There were times in those first few weeks that all I could think was, “I QUIT!!!!!” I clung to the words, “only a month or two” like a life preserver I’ll tell ya. I would fall into bed at night hoping for a few hours of rest before one or the other of the girls woke up with night terrors or a lost “pacie”. I would stagger back to bed like a drunk person hoping for some more rest before I had to get up again. I say this NOT so you think, “Oh, poor dear,” but for your consideration. I am actually asking you to consider doing this yourself, or offer support to someone who is doing it.

We think this way, “Well, Christ has called us to life abundant” and He has, but at the same time He has called us to die. We are dead in Christ and yet, we live. The life we live is in Christ and although Meredith wants to read, sew, even milk a goat on a crisp Autumn morning in a flyless barn, the new creature that I am has to be obedient to His call. He is my Master, my Lord, my Father, my King. I have the privilege of serving the King!!! He has asked me to do that by making motherhood my priority and for now, that means mothering children I did not give birth to as well. These little girls have taught me more in 11 months than I could have learned after a lifetime of reading books. This “school” they have brought to me has a great reward system though. I get kisses and hugs, songs and smiles, and I get to hear I wub you, Moma dozens of times a day. They are precious little souls encased in beautiful little brown bodies. They have hearts that are easily broken, and they will spend an eternity somewhere. It’s our PRIVILEGE to point them toward the kingdom of Christ and pray that they will seek Him and find Him because He first sought them.

I would like to close with this parable that the Lord spoke to me about a couple of years ago. When He did, I cried because I had made an idol out of pleasing my flesh—maybe you have to?

“Will anyone of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table?’ Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink?’ Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants, we have only done what was our duty.’”

I am an unworthy servant, forgiven of terrible offenses against my pure and holy God, I have not yet done what is my duty. I pray God gives me breath and life to do my duty.


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