Hip Hip Hooray - Foster Classes Are...

...OVER!!!!

These past 5 Saturdays have absolutely flown by! After class today we packed up our papers & walked to the car. I said to Jay, "It seems like only a week ago we just decided that we were interested in fostering. Now we're already finished with all the classes!"

We still have a mound of paperwork to turn in. And once that's turned in we'll still have a couple of months to wait until we're approved.

We've learned SO much through these classes. Here are a few things:

1) It's important to work with the birth parents if possible. They're usually not bad people. Often they just made mistakes & need some help to get their lives straightened out.

2) This is not about us. This is about the children. This is about loving them the best that we can while we have them. After that, we have to realize that it is out of our hands. They may go back to the birth parents. Or we may end up adopting. But our job is to love them to the best of our ability while we have them.

3) Even though these kids may have been abused or neglected they will usually want to go back to their homes (at least in the beginning). This one was so hard for me to understand until they did a guided imagery exercise with us. In this exercise they led us through the process of strangers coming to our home and taking us away to a new home where we were loved and wanted. The exercise was so powerful & even left a knot in my stomach as I experienced it. It opened up my eyes to see how children could want to be at the only home they ever knew even if it wasn't a good situation. It's helped me to be more compassionate & understanding toward what the kids may be experiencing in those first few uncertain weeks or months of foster care.

We don't know what God has in store through this. We may only foster. But our hope is to be able to foster and adopt a baby or toddler. Yet, our hearts are open, and we know that God's plans are sometimes not our own. It will be exciting to see God's plan unfold!