This past Thursday my wife and I traveled several counties over to take our last pre-service class. During the classes offered in our own county, we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary and had planned a short get-a-way together. As a result, we missed one class and had to attend a make-up class with another county. As we often do, we planned our route using Yahoo! Maps. Normally this map program seriously overestimates how long it will take to travel but even so we added an extra half-hour to be sure we would be on time. We stopped only once for fuel and to grab a hot dog (also at the gas station) but somehow still managed to find ourselves running late. We did manage to make it to class within the required window (you can only miss 15 minutes of the class in order to be counted for attendance).
The class that we attended was on Preventing and De-escalating Crisis (session 6). The class was very informative and we were impressed by the instructor and appreciated her personal experiences adopting from the Foster System. We also found something more unexpected. As I noted earlier, we had made friends with the folks with whom we had spent seven weeks with in class but we really anticipated that for this make-up, we would just sort of drop in and take off. Instead, what we found was another class full of folks who, though very different from one another and who were there for a variety of reasons, were still connected through a common bond of their love for children and the desire to make a difference. On top of that, before we left, we made another friend or two. During the class and afterward, we found ourselves in conversation with another couple. While we had thought that everyone would leave after the class was over, this couple wanted to continue to talk and get to know one another better.
We have also made a call to our social worker at Jobs and Family Services and let her know that we have completed the pre-service training. With that step behind us, she is now planning our home visits and some additional paperwork (physical forms, vet forms for the pets, etc) so that she will be able to finish our home study before July. My wife and I are still somewhat unsure of where this new adventure will lead us. We began thinking that we only wanted to consider adoption but now that we have taken the classes and learned so much (both from the instructors and from the other parents) we are planning to be certified as foster parents as well. I remain a little uncertain about how we will do in the long-term. I have no doubt that we have something to contribute, that our family can make room for a few more and that we have enough love to share nor do I have any doubt that we can make a difference in the life of a child. My only doubts are how we will be able to hold up when a child we have cared for is allowed to return home to his (or her) birth-parents. I suppose that there will be a joy in seeing a family reunited, but what feelings of loss will we feel as well?
Please pray with us as we consider where God might be leading in this new adventure.
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