Why Should You Be A Foster Parent? For This One Simple Reason.

“What you will do a as a foster parent will truly be making a tremendous difference in the lives of children in need.”

Can I share something with you? Being a parent has been the second best thing I have ever done. The first, of course, was marrying my wife! To be sure, being a parent has made me a much better person, in so many ways.

Yet, the road to being a parent for me took a sad path in the beginning. My first child died of a disease known as Anencephaly, a condition where the brain, scalp, and skull never truly form.

When my wife gave birth to our child, she was in labor for 92 hours before our first daughter was born. When my wife gave birth to our child, the tiny infant died immediately upon reaching oxygen. The next several months saw my wife and I both suffer from overwhelming grief. We both reacted differently with the loss of our first child. Kelly grieved in a healthy fashion, while I did not. I remained in denial for quite some time, in fact for the next two years. I buried myself in my work, refusing to grieve or feel sadness. It was not healthy for either I or for our marriage.

Since that time, my wife has given birth to three healthy children, and we have adopted three more from foster care. Furthermore, we have been foster parents to over sixty children, as we have tried to help children in need. As a result of our first child dying, I have come to realize that the gift of children is a precious one, and that the responsibility of raising children is one that is so very important.

There have been those moments when I have questioned whether or not I was making a difference. There have been those times when I have grown frustrated with the system, as I have had to stand by and watch some of the children in my home go back to environments and situations which I knew that were not healthy or safe, for that matter. To be sure, I have also watched my wife’s own doubts, and her desire to no longer foster, as her heart had been broken numerous times from the many…