The One Where Johnny and Rachel Do Something Crazy

UPDATE: Since this post, we have flung ourselves feet first into fostering.  If you'd like to learn more about our fostering experience, tell me a little about yourself and ask to follow our private fostering blog, From Foster to Family.  The blog is private due for confidentiality reasons, but if you are interested in fostering, we'd love to share our experiences with you!

This is one of those posts with no pictures.  If you want to skip it, I understand.

Some of you might be thinking, "Gosh, Lila is already 8 months old.  When are Rachel and Johnny going to have another baby already?!" I know, I know, we are just so unreasonable, but we actually do have some sibling plans in the works; it's just not necessarily the way we originally thought we would grow our family.

We knew that moving back to Kansas was obviously an act of God.  Johnny was interviewed and hired at a company where he didn't even attach his resume to the initial email.  We sold our house in Philadelphia after three days on the market, and I was able to start right back up working with the Adams.  What we didn't realize is that in moving here we would be able to reconnect with our Wheaton friends Tate and Abby at the Global Orphan Project benefit last year.  In talking to them there and numerous times later on, we were able to hear about their passion for helping local orphans through the foster care system.  As we learned more about the system, God continued to throw other friends in our path who had made similar decisions.

Johnny and I had talked about adoption before as something we might be interested in at some point, but after learning more about fostering and seeing the help that our friends were providing these children, our hearts quickly softened to the idea.  A few months after Lila was born, Johnny and I decided to start pursuing becoming foster parents with the intent to hopefully adopt out of the system. (The primary concern as a foster parent is to reunify the child with the biological family, but adoption becomes a possibility if the original plan doesn't work out.)  We began taking our ten weeks of classes in October, leaving us at this point with only two left.  After the classes are over, we have a few little things to complete, and then we will have our house inspected.  We thankfully don't have too much to do; nothing like Tony Felich having to cut larger windows into his basement walls.  We were initially thinking that our first placement would be sometime in March or April, but we realized last night that it is likely we would have one much earlier than that, as soon as we have our temporary license. 

So will you see me driving around in the Partridge Family bus sometime in May with a bunch of teens, preteens, and toddlers?  Most likely not.  For Lila's safety, we are only planning to take kids around her age and younger.  So that means we'll be looking at kids under two, but as she gets older, the ages we accept will continue to grow.  We're also planning to only take in one at a time because I don't think I can get into the grocery store with three children under the age of two.

Obviously a lot of thought, prayer, and planning has gone into this decision, but I won't bore you with all the details.  I am not writing about this so that people will think we're great for doing this...or crazy as most people seem to see it.  The main reason I'm writing about this is because we need help.  We do have a lot of fears going into this.  I worry all the time about raising a child as my own and then having to return him or her to a family I don't necessarily approve of.  I worry about more sleepless nights with an infant.  I worry about Lila getting used to having a younger sibling and possibly losing that sibling.  But none of these worries or fears seem sufficient to me to not do my part in saving a child in danger.

So how can you help?  Here's a list:

• Prayer.  If you think about our situation or the situation of others who are fostering, lift us up quickly because we could surely use it.
• Clothes. We are pretty set on little girl clothes, but we have very few little boy clothes (though we do have a few because we all thought Lila was a boy. Sorry Lila!).  If you have some lying around that you're wanting to get rid of, throw them our way.
• Big Items. We need another crib, baby gates, another high chair, a bigger stroller, another car seat, etc.  *I will say that Johnny and I are financially stable people.  I am not asking you to go out and buy us a crib; we will be able to get these things.  But if you have things to get rid of, we are happy to take them.
• Love. These little kids are going to need a lot of extra love, so if you have some to share, feel free to pile it on our little extra kids whenever you see them.

Fostering is a very confidential thing, so I won't be able to tell you much about our child's background or even be able to post pictures of him or her publicly on the internet.  I am, however, planning to start a private blog to chronicle our experiences with this next endeavor.  I will be happy to tell you when I begin that, and if you want to be a part of the audience, I can let you on in.  Thank you already to everyone who has been encouraging us with this process; we've very excited to see what happens!