Let me set one question to rest right at the beginning, we are not leaving our church or our jobs. Also – we are NOT pregnant! (Come on, I know that’s what some of you were thinking) I want to get all that out of the way because I don’t want you to wonder about that as you read about what we believe is next for us in our foster care journey.
We’re making plans for really big changes, and I want to share where we’re headed for a couple of reasons:
1 – Because I want to encourage some of you on your own journey
2 – Because some of you might want to be a part of this journey with us through encouragement and prayer.
We would really love those things from all of you. Fostering isn’t just about one family who takes kids into their home, it’s about their entire community around them. We’ve learned that over the last 10 years. This blog is written primarily with you in mind.
If you know us, you know that our foster care license closed this year. It wasn’t through our own choosing, it happened because when we took our last adoptive placement (which made 11 kids in the home under the age of 18) the state approved the placement on the condition that we would close our license when the adoption was finalized. 11 kids under 18 is too many to consider new foster placements, so it was time for us to be finished with that chapter. Those adoptions finalized this spring during COVID shutdowns, with court hearings happening over ZOOM, of all things.
We still live in the same house that we bought when we got married 18 years ago. It’s twice as big now as it was then. I’ve pulled and completed 3 building permits over the years to add on and change things around, and today we live in a 2200 square feet (plus a tiny Michigan basement) house, with 7 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. The kids are getting bigger, and somehow the house is feeling smaller. Even with 7 bedrooms we are really feeling the pinch, and with so many bedrooms the living spaces are pretty quickly overwhelmed with kids and activities.
So we are feeling the pull toward something bigger, and instead of adding on again, we feel like it’s time to start from scratch and build new on vacant property. That prompted a search that started out as a dream, but is quickly becoming a reality. How we got to the location where we are ending up will be the subject of a future post, it’s not a super long story but it deserves its own telling.
So we’re planning to build a new house and move, that’s not super noteworthy, is it? That happens all the time.
Well, here is where we get into our next chapter of our foster care journey. If we are going to build a bigger house for our family, why not make it just a little bit bigger so that it can accommodate more than just our family?
Every year in the US 23,000 kids age out of the foster care system. They turn 18 and try to go it alone, without savings, support, or credit to be able to rent an apartment or buy a car. 20% of them become immediately homeless. 70% of them want to pursue college, but only 3% will ever complete a bachelor’s degree.
So we got thinking, why couldn’t we make the house just a little bit bigger, and include some space for some of those kids?
We’ve seen firsthand how kids coming out of foster care have a hard time finding apartments and have to settle for less than ideal (or even downright dangerous) living arrangements. If we had some space to offer to help them make that transition and take off some of that pressure, as well as provide access to a supportive family to help transition, that seems like a good thing.
How many kids are we planning on helping? Well friends, that’s a little bit TBD. But when I tell you about the property we are in the process of buying, I’ll be able to give you a little better picture of what we’re thinking.
Cool stuff is happening. God is leading us somewhere. Can’t wait to tell you about it.