February 18, 2008

• Just the two of us?

  We celebrated Valentine’s yesterday because we were busy with seminary studies on Thursday.  Sam brought some special food home and decorated the table with candy-hearts, candlelight and chardonnay.  After dinner, he played some love songs that he had picked out just for us, and he asked me to dance.  So we danced and danced, just the two of us… and enjoyed ourselves in our very last Valentine with just the two of us.

  They say that when you have a lot of love, the natural thing is to want to share that love. 

  And so after much talking and praying and hashing things over, Sam and I are going to become foster parents.

  What does it mean for us to be foster parents?
  The foster
  care agency that we have our eye on specializes
  in babies from infants to 3 year olds, who have been taken from their
  parents because the parents could not care for the baby (neglect, abuse or
  abandonment, etc).  The babies, therefore, need to be put in foster
  families as the courts give the parents time to become more responsible
  individuals.  If the babies don’t go to a foster family, they stay at the Polinsky Children’s Center, where they will not have
  a consistent caregiver.  So for us to be “foster parents”, this means
  that we will have one baby (at a time) that we will take care of until the courts
  are able to decide what is best for the child.  The goal is for the
  baby to be reunified back with his/her mom/dad if the parent has taken positive
  steps (get a job, become sober, etc).

  What do we have to do to get prepared?
  We have to become “licensed” in
  order to be foster parents.  This process will take a few months,
  because we need to take an 8-week course on foster parenting, become CPR
  certified, do lots of paperwork, etc 
  
  So why do we want to do this?
  It will give us an
  opportunity to contribute to a baby’s life, give them love and
  structure — and hopefully, give them the foundation for a better life
  in the future. 

  If the courts decide that the parent of the child or a biological
  family member is suitable for taking care of the baby (because they taken the positive steps so that they can be reunified), then we will
  relinquish the baby to the biological family (and entrust him/her into God’s hands).  If the courts decide that none of the biological
  family is fit for raising the child, then the child will be up for
  adoption.  In this case, there is a possibility that we will consider adopting the child.

  In conclusion…
  So the exciting news is that if the Lord continues to lead us as He has been, sometime
  this summerish, we will probably have a foster baby!  We are both really
  excited about all this.  We
  continue to talk and pray about all the different things that may come
  up, all the difficulties and challenges that we may face, and the more
  we talk and pray, the more we know that this is what we want to and must do.  We believe our lives will be wonderfully changed from this
  experience — and anyone else’s too who would like to be a part of our lives as we take this journey.

  • 2:54 am
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