Why Do I Foster? Why Am I The Middle Mom?

For me, it began when I was 17. Our youth group would sponsor children in Haiti. We all received an information sheet on the children we were helping. That following summer, our Sunday School Teacher, Rene went on a mission trip to Haiti. She got to meet one of the little girls that we were sending money to each month. This made it real for me. There were kids in this world that needed our help. From that day forward, since I was a pianist, I was going to marry Michael W Smith and we were going to have a house full of Haitian children and pianos in every room.

The marrying Michael W Smith thing didn’t happen. God sent me Joey, 2 beautiful kids, and 1 piano. Joey knew of my longing to help kids from day 1. After we had our own children, the desire to adopt and foster just became stronger for me.

Joey would get me a new dog, and refer to it as our “China or Haitian” baby. At one time, we were up to 5 dogs, 2 cats, 1 guinea pig, 1 turtle and lots of fish.

A few years ago, the story of Michael Ore was told in the movie, “The Blind Side”. After taking our youth group boys to see that movie, the boys just knew that I was going to go look for homeless kids to bring back to the house. We were driving the church van so I could have loaded it full of kids.

 Lastt fall, we both felt a calling for something bigger. My 40^th birthday was just around the corner. 39 was a year of trials. Job loss, cancer and a family death. It was a hard time but our Faith stayed strong and our desire to serve was BIG.

That little voice in the back of my head was getting louder.

 Our daughter SheblyJo was making a life poster for school. What do you want to be when you grow up? What will your future be like? The picture of the whale meant she wanted to be a marine biologist. She wanted to live in Florida in a purple house with zebra stripes. The only picture that I didn’t understand was of a lady holding a child. Shelby said that she wanted to be a foster mom.

WOW! I don’t know how much louder God could get. That following Sunday, our sermon was on foster care. Okay God, we get it! To this day, Joey thinks I paid Pastor Alex to preach that sermon. My birthday was the following Sunday. For my birthday, I asked if we could be a foster family. Not just foster parents but a family working together. We began paperwork that same day. This year I’m asking for a spa day and 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. A vacation would be nice too.

Fast forwarding to this past May, I began nesting. Cleaning out every closet, putting up the crib, buying baby supplies and hitting every baby garage sale that I could find. Close friends and family thought we were crazy. We weren’t approved and didn’t know if we would even get a baby. For months, we would volunteer at The Laura Dester Children’s Home and take care of babies. On June 5^th, a Tuesday, I called the children’s home to see if I could come love on the kids or take a child in for emergency care. At 6pm, our first foster baby arrived. She was tiny at 8 weeks old. Not even 6 pounds. Ruby is now 9 months old and doing great. We’ve had three other foster kids over the summer. They were difficult cases and are now with other family members.

My kids have been amazing! We’ve had a lot of hiccups over the past few months, added stress, and sleepless nights. I began teaching piano lessons full time to 45 students in September and had no idea how I could take care of a baby, help with algebra/geometry homework and be a super mom. Now, we are all in a good routine and everyone pitches in to help with our foster kids. ShelbyJo changes diapers…even dirty ones, Destin can hold Ruby and text at the same time and Joey loves to make her laugh. No, we don’t know what the future holds. We love each child as if they are our very own!

In James 1 it says,

Religion that is pure and good before God the Father is to help children who have no parents…

Ruby is asleep which is my cue to do the same. And our journey continues...