Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Preparing a house to become a home


I'm starting this blog further into my fostering process than I wish I had, but I'm going to stick with the "better late than never" mentality.  This roller coaster of an inkling of the idea to foster, to sitting at my dining room table after recently contacting my case worker with a photo of my newly purchased first aid kit, has been so unbelievable and felt like 3 weeks and 3 years all at once. I need to document it for fear of forgetting these important moment.

To quickly introduce my situation, the past few years I've felt this pull to live my days for something greater than myself. I'm a strong, intelligent, independent woman who loves coming and going as I please. I work in job fields that I love, cheer for teams that I swear are the greatest and try new activities that scare me. But after 34 years of doing whatever I desire, I had to address this missing chunk inside of me that I couldn't fill.

I've been praying about the next big step in my life for years now and have been stumbling around trying to make these square puzzle pieces fit into the circle hole in my life - praying that I can jam these squares into these circles and somehow make it work. But jamming things of any size into any space is pretty painful and uncomfortable.

Everything changed last April when I found myself in Nashville, TN, sitting in church and hearing a sermon series on vulnerable children. Now, I've taken the mission trips, I've sponsored the children in Nicaragua and I have the friends who have adopted children, but never had I thought that hearing about the millions of kids in our country that need someone to care for them, look out for them and provide a safe place for them could resonate so strongly. All of these things I've taken for granted my whole life and I knew that I could provide these things easily to a young one. I also knew that I wanted to mentor older kids and not raise the babies. Most everyone wants a young child that they can raise as their own, but I want to help young teens learn how to treat their friends, how to respect themselves and how to navigate the almost adulthood task of learning to drive, spending money wisely and graduating school.

The following accounts will be my journey of wrapping my head and heart around this step into fostering a family.