We've chosen to go through the county and the way their process works is really cool. While there are still some families who choose to only foster, the county has worked to transition to mostly foster families who desire to adopt. This eliminates the foster home hopping around - which is so mind blowing to me! They call this concurrent planning - it's like track A and track B are both going at the same exact time. When a child is placed with us, everything is moving forward for them to be reunified with their biological parents, yet at the same time everything is moving forward for adoption. That way if the reunification falls out, the adoption is already in place and ready to go. This is amazing for the kiddos (especially older ones) because they know they will either be back home or at stay at their foster home. However, it can be brutal for the foster families......because this does mean we could have a child for months and then they go back to the birth parents.
What set us up really well for this process was a class our church did about adoption along with a book we read. One night a lady came in from the county and shared her story and the process they use. Everything she said convicted our hearts and showed us the places we hadn't even realized we'd wanted to control the process. She kept saying "you don't enter the foster system hoping to get the "least damaged" child possible and hoping to complete your perfect family unit". We realized we would have to embark on this journey with hands wide open knowing we may have several babies in our house before we even are given the option to adopt. That class also changed our whole perspective from US getting a child to US SERVING a child, for however long that is needed. It became less about our family and more about helping these children who needed security, love and safety.
When the social worker has asked me how we're prepared to cope with all this I've usually answered, "Well I'm not sure lol, I've never bonded with a baby and then had it taken away...." but I can honestly say we feel so much peace about this and I know the Lord will pull us through even the very hard times. They train you so well in how to create support networks around you and you're also required to meet with foster family support groups. The social worker has given us great verbiage to use with our kids like about how we're going to be helping a baby/toddler because their mommy and daddy are sick. It's very very easy for kids to transition from the baby being there 9 months and then staying forever if that is the course it takes, it's a lot harder to tell them they are staying and to have them go just a few weeks later.
So everyday we are praying for this precious kiddo that will come into our home. Our bracket it age 0-2 and female. The age is because the county greatly encourages you to keep the current birth order of your kids and the gender is because they require only 2 kids per room per gender even your own biological children - and we're pretty excited to have a baby girl in this house again. Bring on the bows and princesses again.
We were told that for the age bracket of 0-2 it's almost always a newborn - which really surprised me at first! She told me this is because unless a child is at a daycare or something is noticed at the grocery/in public, then few people interact with kiddos in those toddler years. Once they are 5 and enter kindergarten a lot are noticed for abuse or neglect and at birth they are noticed due to the mother's health. This broke my heart as I thought about all those babies and toddlers needing to wait years until they will be helped. If our girl is in that category I just keep praying for her and her parents. That God would give her comfort as she waits and that he would help the parents to love her and make good choices. Being a parent, I do feel it helps you in this process. The ideal is for that child to be back with their parents. However often that's not a safe environment......so here we wait.
The parallel to our own spiritual journey is so vivid to us these days. We didn't accidentally land into God's family and therefore he has to call us his children and love us, but instead he came to us and chose to bring us into his family. He saw everything about us - all the grime and yuck that we were stuck in and still pursued to adopt us as his children and give us life with him.
There's something so powerful about being chosen, wanted and adored - it gives my soul rest in midst of everything else. I often feel completely inadequate to do this process and can see clearly see all the things that could go wrong or how we could get hurt - but He has called us to do this of that I am sure. And that means he will provide the strength through his spirit and give us peace only he can provide.
