foster care.

I never thought of myself as a foster mom.  I had always wanted to be a mom, though, and when the time came, I really loved it (and I still do).  I loved being pregnant, loved the baby stage, even with all of the demanding, labor-intensiveness of it.  When Naomi was born, I always thought we would be having more babies. It never happened, but we always had room in our hearts for more.

So randomly about a year & a half ago, I said to Matt one evening when we were on a date, "I have a crazy idea.  We could do foster care."  (He's usually the one with crazy ideas, so it's always kind of fun when I come up with something he might think is crazy.)  Matt said something in his laid-back way about it, like maybe we could. 

A few days later, we visited another church in our town on a Saturday night just for fun.  During the service, they played a video about their foster care initiative, a way to get the church involved in the huge need in Arizona.  (I can't remember if this was the video, but it was one like this... also, the numbers they mention in the video are much higher now. Shockingly higher.)

Matt & I looked at each other like, "Whaaat?"  It was too weird that this was right after we had just been talking about foster care.  Kind of like it was a God thing.  We attended an informational meeting a week later at that church and scheduled ourselves to go to a foster care orientation session.

But then we realized the timing wasn't right for us right then.  Marissa was finishing up her last weeks in homeschool, and a few months later would be going 2200 miles away for college.  It just didn't seem right to spend those last few months with her at home working on getting licensed for foster care.  So we put it on the shelf.

 
And on the shelf it stayed.  Until late this summer.

Our family went to a Defund Planned Parenthood rally in a nearby city on August 22.  As Matt maneuvered the car to find a good parking place, we drove past several protesters holding signs about saving the unborn babies.  

All of a sudden, I felt this intense feeling deep inside me push right up and I began weeping.  Audibly weeping.  This is not something normal for me.  Matt looked at me and I just blubbered something about the babies.  I have never experienced something like that before and I still can't really explain it. 

We walked past this young woman on our way to find a place to stand at the rally we were a part of.  (Photo credit: AZ Policy.)

Later I was saying it's good to protest abortion and selling baby parts, but it just didn't seem like enough.  Like there must be something more.





A few weeks later, on September 11, a foster mom I follow on Instagram posted this photo.

Her words were intense and a little in your face.  But that was all I needed.  My heart exploded... all those babies without a home to be in.  And us just sitting here not pursuing foster care.  Ugh. 

I showed the photo and caption to Matt, and less than a week later, we had attended a foster care orientation meeting at a local church and had a packet of information.  The next step was choosing an agency from the list of 29 local foster care agencies. So we pored over the information and I started calling several of the six faith-based agencies. 

There were two or three agencies that sounded promising. We ended up choosing a new agency that has only been approved to license foster homes since this July.  It was founded by a Christian couple who have a lot of personal experience with foster care and adoption, and they are really great.  The wife came over and met us and took a quick walk-through of our house.  She shared their story and how God led them to start the agency, and we shared our testimonies of God's work in our lives.  After reading through their statement of faith, we signed on with their agency and she gave us a TON of paperwork to fill out.

We submitted our application to her the next week, along with our fingerprint cards and some other paperwork about our family.  We're told the fingerprint/background check is what we'll be waiting for after everything else is submitted.  She requested our safety inspection right at the start, since it takes about 6 weeks to get it scheduled.  We have a couple house projects to finish up and several things to do before we're ready for that (here's the booklet explaining in great detail what we need to do to have our home ready).  Let's just say it's good that we have that long to get ready. ;) 

So that brings us to where we are today.  By the end of this week, we will have been through 21 of the required 30 hours of PS-MAPP training.  (I know you're wondering.  PS-MAPP stands for Permanence and Safety: Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting.) This is a state-mandated training for all foster and adoptive parents.  We are really enjoying the training put on by our agency.  They are doing a great job teaching the materials, and there are a lot of hands-on group activities that help the concepts sink in a bit more.  There are only six couples in our class, which is a nice size for being a part of the discussion.  We really like the other people in our class; there's a lot of cultural diversity, some kinship foster families who are already caring for their children, and just a lot of really good discussion that happens in our class.  It's really good.

Oh, yes.  Homework. Lots of it for our PS-MAPP class.

So that's the story of how we came to this place.  This month has really felt like it's been on fast forward, and it makes sense when you think that it was only four weeks ago that we called the agency to set up our first meeting. It will take at least 2-3 months before we get our license and then our first placement.  So it's going to be a while yet.  But there's our story. :)