That's the button we just pressed on our pursuit of being foster parents. It's a decision that I'm simultaneously really sad and totally confident about.
Homeschooling the two princes while trying to enjoy the toddler stage of the princess is always time consuming and often exhausting. Randomly throwing infants (we'd only foster babies at this point) into the mix, especially ones that are often higher maintenance than the average baby, would just make life too stressful for me at this point.
If we were expecting a baby of our own in the immediate future, then I'd be excited. A baby who is part of your family is much different to deal with than babies who come to you at various and unexpected times when their worlds are falling apart.
If we weren't homeschooling, then I'd be ready to pursue fostering right now. But we are homeschooling and we're confident about that decision. I don't know how long we'll homeschool, but the early years are the most important to me. While I can foster at any point in my life, I can only homeschool my kids' early years of school while they're still in those early years ... and that's now.
I need to be a good mom to my own kids and desire to be a good mom to foster kids. Right now the needs of my own kids is trumping the desire for foster kids. However, our hearts are still with foster kids, so we'll find a way to bless them without having them live with us. And we'll complete the application process sometime down the road, though I don't know if that will be in a year or five or longer.
If you're thinking "buck up, you can do it, the foster kids need you, other people in similar circumstances manage it", then please keep your thoughts to yourself. I'm pretty sad about this decision. I have to go take down a crib that we were hoping to rest a sweet little person in, a baby who needed someone to love them while their parents got their lives together. I have to tell my boys that we're not fostering anytime soon. I have to acknowledge the limits of what I can do, even if I don't like those limits.
If you're thinking "thank goodness, I thought you had too much on your plate already, glad you changed your mind", then please keep those thoughts to yourself. I'm confident that we're supposed to be working with foster kids. Caring for orphans (and kids who don't have parents to care for them, even temporarily, are orphans, in my opinion) is a biblical command, plus it's where our hearts are. We will find ways to make the lives of foster kids better. Those ways may change over the years, but we're not giving up on those kids, even if we can't house them at this point in time.
Doing the right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing. So we'll wait for the right time.
7 comments:
I doubt if even one person on the planet is thinking "Buck up". It sounds like you made a wise, well-thought-through decision.
*hug*
I think you made a great decision, and the Lord is going to bless you for that! I've been going through something sort of like it where I feel the Lord has called me to nursing. I LOVE nursing and want to do disaster relief someday with it, but for now I feel the Lord has called me to stay home with Logan full-time. I feel like it's the best thing for my family. So even though nursing and helping people is something the Lord has put on my heart, now is not the right time. Like you, I must take a step back and follow His timing, even though it is hard. His ways are perfect.
Hey friend,
What a tough choice to have to make (for now) - and we definitely feel for you guys. It is so hard to balance life with the kiddo(s) that you already have and think about how it will work to stretch your time, energy, resources, etc...with more. We aren't quite in the same spot, but feel similarly as we approach our future hope of adopting. Praying for you guys to have peace about it, and wisdom to know when to hit "play" again.
I love you so much!! I admire how you make decisions. So that being said, I love you the same (actually more everyday!) no matter what your decisions are.
Oooops-- the anonymous above is actually me, Pam Carter. I still never know how all this fancy computer stuff works and somehow ( I never know how!) when I was typing in my name I did something (I never know exactly what!) and my comment just showed up as "anonymous". I still love you.
I think that you did a great job in realizing the need and desire of being a mom and a foster mom. The way you think things out and getting it all out on paper (well, the computer)really is impressive. Great job being able to set something aside for the TIME BEING. I am sure you can help out lots of foster kids right now and in the future.
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