What if the Adoption Plan Falls Through?
“Mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance.” Jude 1:2
Ephesians 1:5-6 says, "It was always in his perfect plan to adopt us as his delightful children, through our union with Jesus, the Anointed One, so that his tremendous love that cascades over us would glorify his grace —for the same love he has for the Beloved, Jesus, he has for us." TPT
Did you catch that? God always wanted to adopt us! His delightful children. He sees us as delightful. Have you looked around? There are a lot of people that I would not call delightful. But God looks at them as only a father can, and he sees through their bad behavior and loves them.
While many people are content to foster without planning on adopting, many others go into foster care hoping to adopt, or they fall in love with their foster children, and soon find themselves becoming open to and even hoping to adopt. Sometimes when the caseworker calls even before the family has met the children, they are told that a child or these children need a pre-adoptive home because their case will likely go to adoption. So the worker is looking for a family open to adopting if the case goes that way.
Foster parents, eager to help a hurting child, fall in love with the child or children, despite challenges. Many of them love these children as their own. Parents' hearts swell with love just at the thought or sight of them. Their love cascades over these children, and they choose to have grace for hard things because they know what their child has been through. The plan to adopt brings the family excitement!
Just like our Heavenly Father. His plan was to adopt each of us, the children he created. But he is GOD - and he doesn't always get to adopt the kids he wants. It falls through sometimes. The process may start when someone says they want to be adopted (they want to follow Jesus), and then they end up running away instead. The Father's heart breaks when they refuse to speak to him for days, months, a year, or indefinitely. They don't want to be in the Father's presence because they are angry with their heavenly Father or act completely indifferent as if he has no feelings or they don't matter.
Did you know that children nine and older have to say they want to be adopted by you before the process can take place? The concept of adoption is hard for some children to understand, and being forced to say they want you instead of their mom and dad is something some children are not willing to do for many different reasons.
In an eagerness to love and help a child, a family doesn't realize there are valid reasons why a child's adoption might not work out. Well-meaning parents are sincere when they tell a child they just met that they want to adopt them. Sometimes, it is not to be. Other times, a child moves on to another family, and they continue to consider one or more of their previous foster family's children as their siblings.
It is always complicated, like feelings, family, and life.
Looking back to conversations with foster parents, no one knew that a new child's presence would cause significant challenges to a child already in the home. A new foster family didn't realize taking in a sibling group of children that aren't in school yet would cause them to miss work and use up all their sick leave, impacting their finances.
No one foresaw an extended health issue like post-concussion syndrome from a simple fall where I could no longer juggle activities, appointments, and the stress of having a large family group, or after a year and a half, the doctor saying, being home from work wasn't enough. "If you don't reduce your stress, you might not get better."
What about a grandma that emerges from seemingly nowhere that has been trying to find the children? Or a new caseworker changes the projection of the case, and the children will go home now?
Should we not take large sibling groups? Should we say no to kids needing childcare? Should we say no to kids that might run away? Should we foster at all?
Looking back to Ephesians 1:4 it says, "In love, he chose us before he laid the foundation of the universe."
Before God created the universe and earth in Genesis, he chose us! That is a long time to plan, and hope to adopt a child! But that is how long God hoped and planned to adopt you and people who haven't even been born yet! He is still waiting for people who have been on the planet for decades.
Foster care is known for drama. It is rare that a child goes into foster care and on to adoption, "and the family lives happily ever after."
Should we expect our fostering and adoption process to be easy when God has to wait to adopt us through all the drama around us and the drama we create ourselves? Many horrible things happen on earth to people because of other people, but God does not give up hope. He does not hold back his love to protect himself. God invests in listening to those talking to him and sending help to those ignoring him. He spends his free time creating beautiful sunrises that we often miss. But he makes them out of his love for us in hopes that we will look up and see it and know he loves us and he's thinking of us.
God created us in his image, and we are to be like him. Loving, hoping, persisting.
Don't shrink back. As humans, bravery and fear are the closest of friends.
Be brave and love well.
Step up! Let's do what we can when we can. God will take care of the rest. Choose to trust him with your life and the lives of your children.
Will you trust him with your children when they need to move on? After all, at the very least, they all grow up and move out someday.