FOSTER Care: The Reynold's Story
Written by Daniel and Kristen Reynolds, published December 2022.
I never thought I would be a foster parent. I didn’t grow up with a desire to foster or adopt all the kids. I honestly was one of those people that said “being a foster parent would be too hard for me, it would hurt too much”. Spoiler alert: I am a foster parent and it does indeed hurt sometimes. But the goodness of God and the way I’ve seen him work through it all makes it worth it. Let’s start from the beginning…
Daniel and I have been attending Paradox for years. We have heard adoption taught and seen adoption happen at the church. After hearing about an adoption/foster care meeting, I decided to attend just to see how we could help out. At the time I was pregnant so we really weren’t in a position to do anything but it got the wheels turning that maybe this is something that we could be thinking about doing. Years later, our good friends, the Trivetts, became foster parents and we were able to see how much foster parents are needed as well as how God used them and our community to serve these kids.
Daniel and I never had a “vivid dream” or “burning bush” moment where we were sure we should become foster parents, but through just gentle nudging of our hearts and conversations decided maybe God was at least calling us to be open about it. So we signed up to begin training just letting the door open, even though we were nervous/scared about it. We officially became licensed in April 2021 and got our first foster baby that same month.
Oh man….it was hard; it was heartbreaking; we lost so much control of our lives to God and government workers, but we wouldn’t trade it for anything.
God has called us to lay down our lives to serve him. The lack of control of circumstances as a foster parent is so scary to me. I love my control. But God…he showed up in big ways. Our faith has grown through this journey, knowing we weren’t alone. Our community surrounded us, brought us meals; random church members gave us money and bought us registry items to love this little child. A random neighbor brought us cookies on a really hard day, and our city group loved this child like their own. People checked in on us. It was so overwhelming and comforting to see God work in our lives and how he used the church community to serve us as well.
Some people are called to foster care/adoption, some are called to other ministries but I pray that others are open to it. There are so many ways to push back darkness through foster/orphan care. It doesn’t have to be like Angels in the Outfield where you’re caring for a house full of kids. It could literally mean just doing it for a short season and affecting one child’s life… or maybe even doing it for years. Or it could look like coming along foster families and jumping through the hoops required to baby sit or by bringing a meal or providing some sort of physical need for the age of the child. There are so many ways to care for the orphan and kids in crisis.
All that said, there is nothing special about us. We aren’t amazingly capable and strong people. We are not super Christians. We are a normal family. We have limited capacities. We get tired and let the stress overwhelm more than we might let off. But we just allowed doors to open and waited to see what God had planned for our lives.
We don’t do it because it’s easy, we do it because God has called us to lay down our lives and follow him.
The love/support of our church community has meant so much to us, frankly we couldn’t do it without this incredible gift from God.