It is easy to be absorbed by the negativity that surrounds foster care and foster parenting.  Ask me about any facet of foster care and I can quickly give you a response about how hard, challenging, and terrible it is.  It is much more difficult to view foster care from a positive perspective and I often find myself wondering if anyone would choose to become a foster parent based on what I have told them.  I can’t say that I have given foster parenting a five star review in recent years.

However, there are lessons I have learned that have changed my perspective on how I view the world and I consider that to be a positive development in my life.  Positive growth from a negative situation, such as foster care, is how we learn and mature, regardless of our stage of life.

I developed empathy.  There are situations in life that we truly cannot understand unless and until we go through it ourselves.  Some examples that come to my mind are parenting a child with special needs,, being in an abusive relationship, and co-parenting with multiple parents.  Experiences that are not universal leave one feeling lonely, misunderstood, and depressed.  I have personally felt that way and I know other foster parents, birth parents, and kids in care have too.

Empathy is a learned trait through experience.  It offers us the benefit of heightened situational and emotional awareness.  Empathy allows us to experience the hurt of another, rather than only acknowledging it.  This has changed the way I view foster care and has changed my daily interactions with people in general.

My faith increased. Growing up in a Christian family, my faith has always been a guide for how I live my life.  My life has also always been admittedly easy and shall we say, privileged.  I never had to wonder where my next meal would come from.  I never had to question if my parents were capable of taking care of me.  I always knew that if something bad happened to me, I had a safety net of people that would boost me back up.  I took this for granted well into my young adult years.  

Enter foster parenting, where I quickly learned that my privileged life is not the norm for many people in our own communities.  Food, education, and reliable adults are lacking in our own neighborhoods.  Of course I knew this, but I didn’t actually take notice.

I have witnessed the impact of terrible trauma from abuse and neglect and have been put in broken situations I could not fix.  I have questioned God’s plan during eight years of foster parenting more times than I can count.   I have allowed myself to be angry and bitter.  Yet I know my reliance on my faith in Jesus has pulled me through many dark times – times where I could not see a clear way forward.  I do not believe in the popular saying “God does not give you more than you can handle”.  God intentionally gives us more than we can handle so that our only option is to fully rely on Him and not ourselves.   It is through increased, intentional faith and the grace of God that we have survived eight years of foster parenting.

I established boundaries. I am a people-pleaser by nature.  I do not like to say no to people and I dread conflict and confrontation.  If I have to choose between fight or flight, I will most likely pick flight…except when it comes to advocating for kids in care…then I most definitely will pick fight.  Pick your battles, I suppose.  But overall, it is easy for my life to fill up with responsibilities and relationships that I don’t actually want because I am afraid of disappointing someone.  

Inviting foster care into my life added a layer of overwhelm I have never experienced.  About half way into my foster parenting journey, I realized that in order to not only survive, but to do foster care well, my boundaries had to be well-defined, though it is easier said than done.  From a foster parenting perspective, this might look like saying no to a placement request for a child that you know is not going to fit well into your family, or a child who has needs you know are too much for you to handle.  There is no shame in establishing boundaries when it comes to accepting placements.

From a personal perspective, it  means prioritizing your time.  My husband and I adopted a sixteen year old.  We missed the first thirteen years of his life. We prioritize attending every sport, activity, or special event that he participates in and everything else takes a backseat.  We say no to other things so that we can be present and build core memories as a family of three. We do this unapologetically. 

Boundaries are necessary and good.  Boundaries do not mean you are uninterested or selfish.  Boundaries are a form of self-preservation, for yourself and your family. 

This post was inspired by my sister who challenged me to write something positive after we had a conversation about how easy it is to focus on the negativity that surrounds foster care. My challenge to you is to find the good in your hard situation.  It may take almost eight years for it to make sense, like it did for me, but there are valuable lessons to be learned from every one of our stories.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:21-23