Today we become parents [again]!

This time, to a 15 year old girl. We had a 17 year old girl stay for respite a few weeks ago, just for one night, but it was definitely different. This time, we know her, or at least my husband does. She’s a student at his school.

This isn’t a kinship placement though, we were called from our agency about a (seemingly) random placement.

For quite a while, I felt like the Lord was nudging my heart back toward foster care. I was a little resistant, because our experience the first time wasn’t so great. It was the hardest thing we ever did, and we ended with no warm fuzzies and no baby (hello, it’s FOSTER CARE, so I’m not sure what I was expecting). But. This time around, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to convince my husband, so I didn’t. I prayed about it for a long time without saying anything to him about it. Which, if you know me, you probably can guess that was really really hard.

Then, one day out of the blue, he said, “you know, I would almost do foster care again if it meant I could help a kid like Annabelle (name changed for privacy reasons). Side note, this name just popped into my head, and I don’t love the sound of it so I was googling for a different nickname, but saw that Annabelle comes from the Hebrew word for grace, and the French word for beauty. Together it means favored grace. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard something more fitting for this girl, so I’m leaving it and I’ll call her Annabelle here.

Anyway, he said he would be willing to foster again if it meant we could help a kid like her. His only stipulation was that the classes be online. Thanks to COVID, they were!

We got licensed and were about to take our first placement, and we called to ask if she was settled where she was. It took some digging, and our case worker had to track down her case worker based on only a first name, but we heard back that she was fine where she was and that the family she was with wanted to adopt her.

Fast forward to us, 6 months later. Things have changed. She’s changed and has gone through some hard stuff. We’ve changed and have gone through some hard stuff. She came to my husband’s classroom one day and said she needed help. They were going to move her to a new foster home, and she would likely be moving far away and have to change schools. He listened, told her he would be praying. Then he texted me and asked me to pray as well. The text I got read, “I’m not pursuing this, but pray if we are supposed to take Annabelle that someone will call us about her.”

2 hours later my phone rang.

(to be continued)….