Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Holidays

Just a few of my favorites, from this amazing time of year!





Friday, December 3, 2010

Feeling very much called

I'm feeling very much called to somehow someway share our stories of foster and adoption to help promote and recruit foster parents. Most recently I have had many people inquire about how, where, when about fostering and I feel like there is a need to get the word out more and have many more not just ok foster homes but Great foster homes. I guess the problem that sticks our in my mind though is coaching and promoting foster when the system is messed up and it gets messy and ugly sometimes but I keep falling back on, being focused on the children that need great families not the system that somehow continues to fail whats in the best interest of so many of the children in the States Custody. There are many agencies in Oklahoma and where to start, I guess is a personal decision based on usually who someone talks to about getting involved. I was very naive when I started inquiring and had no idea what to do other then pick up the phone and call up to DHS. I didn't even know almost 5 years ago that all the agencies existed. I had no idea the resources available to foster parents as far as helping out, it's kinda like you get what you get as you go.
As I begin to unravel somehow what my next step is I will share, I will never say it's easy, it's not. And if I had a penny for every time someone tells me, " Oh I could never do that, I could never give them back", I would be a wealthy woman. And honestly if that's how you feel then you shouldn't foster because it's not until you completely surrender what your earthly person can and cannot do and completely lean on God and how he wants to use you to make a difference in a child's life then your ready to foster. It is definitely a day by day deal you wake up in the morning and you love these children you play mommy and daddy but it's really not playing you are mommy and daddy only for the state to step in and say, your not. If you want to adopt and it's looking like the case and court is moving forward in that direction and you start to get a moment of hope I promise you it will change on a dime and leave your emotions in despair. It is a roller coaster, "fostering" you will definitely know you are alive, if not from all the appointments, visits, and court dates then by the sleepless nights of your babies maybe sick or maybe just needing some extra loving on. But if even for a week a month 6 months you were there for that child when that child needed you most and god has a perfect plan already planned out and somehow you are a part of that plan as accepting the responsibility of fostering, nurturing and loving on a child of his a child that is helpless without you!
My heart aches for the children in the system it is definitely my calling, and God has some great plans for me I can really feel it coming on. We are done taking foster children in, but I believe in my heart that whatever it is God has planned for me to do is big and to make a difference in many children's lives. I know I can't take more in but I sure can help find good homes, good foster parents and help make a change for the better.