When you say "yes" to fostering, you're not just saying "yes"
to children. You're saying "yes" to families.
I saw recently you had a little guy, Champ. He was with you for a while and
reunified, which is, you know, we love that and celebrate that because that's awesome.
Is that the first time you've interacted with mom and Champ since then? Or was it
an interaction with mom? How does that kind of look like since that transition?
So we brought him home from the NICU and he was with us for 8 months. And you just,
I mean, we fell in love with this child.
Your daughter did too.
Yes, because he was, he came home 4 weeks before she was born. So we had these two little babies.
It was the sweetest, sweetest thing. And our older kids just fell in love with him. And so, but we
saw his mom, you know, fight so hard to get him back because she loved him so much. And she
worked so hard. And God just really changed my perspective towards her to just really be able to
celebrate her and cheer for her. Because when you say "yes" to fostering, you're not just
saying "yes" to children. You're saying "yes" to families. And it's not just about helping
and walking with and loving on children. It's about the whole family. And so to get to see
her in her journey and to be able to cheer for her, even though it was the hardest thing for me
to have to let him go, to have that last night in our home and then for him to go
live with her. He was like my son for all intents and purposes, and I then
didn't know what the future would hold. But his mom, she, she is just such a brave, amazing
woman. She told us, "I want you to continue to have a relationship with him. I feel like
that is what is best for him." And so she has continued to allow us to be involved in his life,
and so we usually get to see him every few weeks. We get to take care of him. We got to celebrate
his birthday. We got to celebrate Christmas with him, and he is just thriving and doing so well.
And I think walking through that and seeing that has helped us to just have a different perspective
also on birth parents. And how, we saw how he did well in our home, but that biological tie,
when he went back to live with her, he has just succeeded in all sorts of way. His therapy,
he went from just having some developmental delays to now he has just taken off, and he is just doing
so well. His eating, he was struggling to gain weight. Soon as he went back with his mom, he
just decided he loved food. And it was just really cool to get to experience that and witness that.
And I think that that's changed my heart to really want to even more fight for birth parents. And I
know that there's a lot of kind of stigma there, and a lot of people are like, "How could you have
that heart?" But I really feel like, ultimately, reunification is the goal. And it's not always
the best choice, and so, yes, we're to advocate for the child and when that's not the best choice,
that's our job as foster parents to advocate. But, to cheer and celebrate and love on
birth parents, I feel like God's just changed my heart so much in that, and I'm just grateful.
So you guys had, you did a couple emergency placements, I think were the older siblings,
possibly. Mhm. And then you've had two infants since then? Did you specifically choose infants
or are you open to other ages?
So when we were going through the licensing process, in Tennessee you have to be open to 0-18,
and so we said we were open to 0-18 but maybe not in every season of life. So right now with
having a 16, 14, and 12 year old and then a 1 year old, we've just felt like being able to
foster infants is kind of our sweet spot. And because of our work situation, we both work from
home and we have very flexible schedules, it works our well. And so both of the infants that we've
fostered had a lot of medical needs. The one that we're currently fostering, he has Down syndrome,
cleft lip, cleft palate, and he has a feeding tube. He has lots and lots of developmental delays
and so there's lots of doctor's appointments and therapies. And so it works out well. He would be a
hard-to-place situation but because of our current work schedule and family life set up, it works out
well for us to be able to do that. And my husband is super involved and so we can tag team on that.
And so he's been with us for 4 months. We got to go through his cleft lip surgery. I've learned so
much about so many things. I've spent a lot of time at the hospital. We've had multiple
emergency room visits, and, but it's been, it's changed our perspective on just families who have
a child or an adult with special needs and how much work it is and how much they need support.
And we've also discovered that there's a huge need to foster children with special needs because
there are a lot of hard-to-place situations where a child has a lot of special needs, and there are
just families, they're scared of it. And it feels like a lot. But we have been so blessed by having
him in our home. And every morning, like just this morning I went over to his little crib, and he's
just smiling and laughing at me. And he's just the sweetest, sweetest little boy. And, you know,
I think for me one thing that has just cause me to think a lot about is, he, his case is one that,
a lot of children if they had a diagnosis of, if the parents had gotten a diagnosis of Down
syndrome and cleft lip, cleft palate, probably the doctors would have recommended abortion. In fact,
we have discovered that there are very, very few people who have Down syndrome and cleft lip,
cleft palate. Wow. And probably that is, it's not only a rare thing but probably because that's just
such a complex medical diagnosis that, you know, a doctor's going to recommend to terminate the
pregnancy. And it just has make me thought a lot about, you know, if we say we're pro-life,
are we willing to actually live that out? What does that mean? It's not just about being pro-life
for an infant but for the entirety of someone's life. And our hearts have just been so changed and
challenged by having him in our home. In fact, my 14 year old was just telling me about, she said,
"Mom, people just don't understand." There's this boy that has Down syndrome on TikTok, and she was
showing me his videos, and she was just talking about how he's gotten all these really negative
comments. And she said it just breaks her heart because he's the sweetest boy. And just to see
his heart for him, I know that that probably wouldn't be the same. She would haven't that
depth of care and compassion had we not had this sweet little boy in our home and walked with him.
And you were worried about your older kids and seeing them thrive. It is amazing how kids teach
us so much and are so resilient, but that's beautiful to hear and see. So now that you're
on this side of this journey, thinking back to where you were before your small group or during
your small group or even in those classes, is there something that you would either say to
yourself or say to other families who are thinking about this and have that pull on their heart?
I think the biggest lesson that I've learned is that God is so faithful. And there's something
about fostering, stepping out and saying "yes" to something that feels completely overwhelming.
For instance, when we said "yes" to the little boy that we're fostering right now, we call him
Baby D, it was 6 days before my book was supposed to come out, and my husband and my 16 year old and
my 14 year old were out of town on a school trip. And I had a bunch of media lined up. They call us,
and it was 9:30 at night. They tell me he has a feeding tube. I said, "I've never done a feeding
tube before." They said that, you know, they told me all the different things. They're like, "I know
he has a bunch of doctor's appointments, but we don't even know when they are. We don't even know
who his doctors are. We know he has surgery coming up. We're trying to figure that out, but we don't
even have a clue really. And we're trying to piece things together." And I just, almost had to laugh,
because I'm like, "Okay, God! We're doing this." And God was so, so faithful. But I got to see Him
show up and be faithful because I couldn't do it in my own strength. There was no way that
I could do this on my own. And just instance after instance after instance after instance
where I show up, I call my pediatrician the next day who, she's just been a godsend through this
fostering, and I said, "I have this little boy, and I need to come in today because I don't even
know how to take care of him, and I need your help." And I call up and find out that he had
gone to a sister clinic just recently, and they had a whole bunch of his records. So she was able
to figure out a bunch of his doctors and get me in touch with all of that. Like, that was just
a God thing. And I just had to sit there and be like, "Okay, God, you're taking care of this." And
again and again and again, He has just been so, so faithful when I felt like I don't know what to do,
I don't have what it takes, this is too much for me. God doesn't call those who are qualified. He
qualifies those whom He calls. And so if you are feeling that tug in your heart,
you're scared, you're fearful, you have a lot of things that, what-ifs, and you're wondering how
this is all going to work out. You can trust God. He is a big God. He is a faithful God. And when
you step out in faith and say "yes" to something that is greater than yourself, you get to see God
show up and show off and do exceeding abundantly above what you could ever ask or think.
I just love that you're sharing your family's journey. Like, you've been completely honoring
of every child coming into your home, but you're not hiding anything. You're
transparent. You're sharing the hard things, the good things, and most important in all of it,
as you said, God and how He loves for every child and specifically these vulnerable
children who don't have a voice. So thank you for being a voice and joining us today.
Thank you for the opportunity and thank you for what you all are doing.