Yup. It's time to finally stop being afraid of the what if's and come clean - Andrew and I are in the process of becoming licensed foster parents!
There is still a long way to go, including, but not limited to: home visits, finishing the last couple sessions of our 24-hour caregiver training and TB tests. But, although some of our friends and family know about this huge and exciting and terrifying new step for our family, we wanted to announce it to all of you for a few reasons.
First, and most importantly, we absolutely have to be covered in prayer. It already is an emotionally and physically exhausting process, and we fully expect it to continue to become more so as we progress closer to being licensed and when we get our first placement(s). Please, please pray for us whenever we cross your mind. Send us emails or texts or call us and encourage us, because quite frankly, there are moments when everything feels overwhelming, but there's never a moment when we are doubting that this is God's next step for our family. Support is critical and prayer is essential. For those of you already covering our family and this process in prayer, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Secondly, we wanted to start to prepare you all, our friends and family. Yes, we understand that you are not going through this process, but there are going to be a lot of things that are the same when we become licensed, as well as some massive changes that have to take place especially concerning our transparency with details of our family life (namely the information regarding our foster children). We typically have been an extremely open family, and I am clearly not shy to broadcast our struggles, joys, and prayers aloud for all. With this new step though, there are going to be many things that we simply cannot share with you and many things that you all will just have to be ok with knowing little, if anything, about.
I have been looking into ways to share this type of information with everyone, and found an amazing blog which freely offered a form letter for friends and family. What follows is portions of that blog (which the author gave permission to freely use and change at will) and some of my own heart and ramblings. Please, please take a moment to read through it.
Beloved friends and family,
We know that our decision to foster will affect you as well, and we are so hoping and praying that this blog (also being sent out to family and friends via email and snail mail) will help to answer some of your questions and set us all up for success in this new season.
I want to start off by saying that I apologize for this being so long, and sometimes a bit bossy in tone. If you know me even a small bit, you know that I am terribly afraid of hurting people through words, but I pray that this blog/email/letter is received by everyone in the way it is intended - I love you, Andrew loves you, and we just want to make sure our future kiddos feel loved as well. Please don't hesitate to ask me, or Andrew or both of us any questions whatsoever - we love talking about this stuff! And don't worry, you'll be bombarded with information and will totally not be left in the dark when we, Lord willing, get our first placement.
What to Expect
We know that the process of becoming fully licensed can take several months, but our prayer is that we will have our first placement before the end of this year. We are open to one (or possibly two if the Lord so should make that clear to both of us) children from birth to about 2 years old. Boy or girl. Any nationality, language, culture. We could get a call for a placement the day that we're licensed or it could be several weeks or months before we get a call. The child(ren) could be staying with us anywhere from a few days to several years.
Confidentiality
When we get a placement, we will share with you (not on social media though) the child(ren)'s names, ages, birthdates, personalities and other such details. However, the family history, reasons for placement, medical status and other specific aspects of the children's lives are strictly confidential and we will not be able to share these details with anyone, including our most intimate friends and relatives. Please do not take this personally, but we absolutely cannot share many details about the kids.
Pictures
Policy is quite strict with pictures of foster children, and before you post any pictures of our future foster children, please contact us to make sure they are ok and that we approve any pictures or tags or comments about said pictures before posting. I know this is going to be hard for some people, but please trust us, and know that we are trying our hardest to have their best interests in mind, as well as following the WACs that we signed off as consenting to follow. We will really need your cooperation in this one.
Inclusion in Family and Gift Giving Policy
Other than those confidentiality issues I mentioned, we will treat these children as members of our family. We must insist that everyone respect this policy. The foster children will be treated equally to how our biological children (well, Owen so far... this is not an announcement of something else so don't read into that one...) and this is especially relevant when it comes to holidays, birthdays or other gift-giving occasions. We never expect gifts for any of our children. But, if you choose to give gifts, you'll need to plan to give equally to all of the kids who are in our care at that time.
What Do They Call Us?
Our foster children will have the option of calling us by our first names, or "mom and dad". We will invite them to address you all with the same terms as Owen uses.
What Do We Call Them?
No child wants to be known as "the foster kid". We will refer to any children in our care as our kids, our son, our daughter. We ask that you please be sensitive to this, and do not refer to a child or introduce them as a "foster child". Feel free to refer to them as you would with Owen (my grandchild, my niece, my nephew) or if that isn't comfortable for you, you can refer to them as our child (my brother's son, my friend's daughter, etc.).
With all that being said, we are incredibly thrilled to start walking this road. We feel so supported and loved already, and have had many tear-filled and joy-filled conversations with so many of you already. Thank you for loving us and our family as how God has it today, as well as in the future.
I'll be posting a blog in the coming days/weeks about why we decided to walk towards foster care, and what we believe the Lord has burdened our hearts with specifically. Please, again, don't hesitate to ask questions or contact us. We can't wait and want you to walk with us :)
