Small Houses and Open Hearts

We've been slowly but surely working our way through foster care training, so here's a little update. We've been through about 4 training sessions, and as you can see from the picture below I recently had my physical done to make sure I don't have any communicable diseases. I'm good. We do still have to have background checks and a personality test/psych eval done, and while we are kinda crazy, we're not THAT kind of crazy, so I think that'll be all good. ;) After we finish all of that we will do our home study and all that.

I have really enjoyed the training so far. So much of it just reminds me of why we wanted to do this in the first place. So many kids in heart-wrenching situations, so many of whose families just need help getting things set right. While we do want to eventually adopt, we are planning to just foster at this point and are not necessarily looking to adopt yet unless the need is presented to us. So much of foster care is aimed at reuniting families, which is ideal if it can be done. So I'm glad we can hopefully be a part of helping heal families who need help.

I have loved the agency we are working with. They are amazing at not only caring for kids, but reminding us that they also want to look out for our family as well. I like how they value our kids, and making sure that they are protected and not lost in the shuffle as well. I think the only thing we are concerned with at this point is how tiny our current space is. I'm not sure we will be able to fit an extra person in our current house. And while our hearts are open, we don't have a lot of actual open space round here. We are currently looking for a larger home to rent, since Billy can't be approved for a home loan for 2 years with the nature of his job. So as we have from the beginning, we are moving forward with the mindset that we will just see what happens. We want to do this wholeheartedly, but also realize that there is a time for everything. (Prayers for a larger space appreciated. Even if we aren't going to be foster parents, we could definitely use some more room.) I think just going through the process of working towards opening our home to help people has been a learning experience for us. Even if the answer right now ends up being "wait", we've been humbled and thankful and can't wait until we see how God uses our family in this to help other families.