Hey y’all, thanks for visiting Journal 127. I’m so excited to have finally created this outlet to share our family’s experience in foster care. 

My name is Kristen. I’m a 27 year old, college town native of Southern Illinois. I married my man Jerod almost 6 years ago. We met at our local church back in 1999. Who knew that I would end up marrying my 5 year old crush?! 

Jerod and I are followers of Jesus. He is the reason we stepped into this world of foster care. His unfathomable love for us and His command in His Word to care for the vulnerable is why we do what we do.

My husband and I became foster parents in 2018, after we finished the long process of licensing. Our first placement was a little, 4 day old boy that we picked up from the hospital. Our first child. Not our first foster child, but our first child…EVER. We decided back in 2017 that we wanted to foster before we tried to have biological kids. We made the decision to foster first because we wanted our first placements to get our undivided attention and to know how BADLY they were wanted. It’s just one way to go about foster care, but this was the perfect way for us.  

After two years, we still have our beautiful baby boy! We have been advocating for him in court over two years. We are still solely his foster parents but have the hopes of adoption. We have been blessed to be able to get to care for our son in every stage of his life so far. We’ve given bottles every three hours during the newborn stage, gone through the 4 month old sleep regression, been able to celebrate two birthdays with him. etc.

When I think about what my son has been through, I get angry. I get frustrated. Even though our little man was taken into care at birth, I think about the fact that he will not know his bio parents at all.  Many would say, “Well, the good thing is he won’t remember anything about them.” While I agree that he won’t remember the heartache, my son will still grow up wondering, wondering what happened, wondering why his parents didn’t fight harder for him. It’s a heartbreaking thought because I don’t want my son to  ever feel the pain of that loss. I know he will feel it in his own way, but Jerod and I will do everything in our power to explain his story to him if we get to chance to adopt him. He deserves to know. It is his story.

I’m just so grateful to Jesus that Jerod and I get to be a part of our son’s story. I’m so grateful we’ve been given the privilege to raise him, love him and share with him how much Jesus loves him and wants to be in relationship with him. Our son talk to Jesus and is learning who Jesus is. We will do everything we can to keep teaching little man how Jesus served and loved His neighbors. We are already seeing such an empathy gifting in him. His story is a beautiful one.

We were naive to foster care for far too long. Now we know more than we ever thought we would. You don’t just go back from that. As of 2020, how many kids would you say are in foster care? I bet your guess wouldn’t be over 400,000…That is WAY too many and the number continues to rise. Friends, we have to keep talking about it, we have to keep discussing the realities and beautiful moments of foster care. Think about it. How can you get involved?

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