Yup, it's gonna hurt.

A fellow Foster momma posted THIS article on her Facebook this week, urging her friends and family members to take a few minutes out of their day to read it and try to understand why her family has chosen the fostering path. 

I use the word "chosen" for a reason. This article perfectly explains what Brian and I have talked about over and over again over the last six months. 

If you've been following our journey, you know that we didn't really know we should be foster parents before we started all of this. Honestly, we began taking classes and studying the foster care system long before we chose to go all in. 

Just like the father describes in the article, we hear the same phrases all the time, "Wow! That's incredible. I don't think I could ever do that." "I don't think I'd be able to say goodbye." "Gosh, that would just be too hard, I don't know how you'd give them back to their parents."

After about a month of reading, researching, and taking Foster classes, I expected to feel at peace or convicted about whether or not we should completely jump in and say, "Yes! We're going to do this. We're going to become foster parents." I expected to feel something by then. I thought I would just know if it was for us, or if it would just turn out to be 30+ hours of family and education classes that would help us in other areas of our lives. Around this time, I came across a (different) article that was called, "How do you know if you should be a foster parent?" It seemed like God was speaking directly to me through my phone! To sum it up, the foster dad asked these questions:

1. Is there a need? (YES!)

2. Can you fill that need? (Yes.)

Become a foster parent. (Dang.) 

I'd been waiting for weeks for a feeling, an answer, a conviction. Here it was in black and white. There's a need and we can fill it. I guess I thought it'd be more complicated than that. Maybe a part of me thought the clouds would part and a little note would fall from the sky that read, "Yes. You should become foster parents. Love, God." And then I realized that's what the Bible is....God's handwritten love notes. 

Please, please, please understand that it is not my intention to make you feel guilty or less-than for what I'm about to say, but you should know that the Lord isn't just speaking to Brian and me and other foster parents in this verse; he's speaking to you, too. 

"Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you." (James 1:27 NLT)

I understand that some people cannot "fill the need" of fostering, so you serve Him in other ways. BUT, there are so many people who can fill the need, and they choose not to. Because it's too hard. Because they don't want to give up a child. Because it might hurt. 

We've just accepted that we are going to go through things in life that hurt. Trying for a baby for more than two years hurts. Watching friend after friend after friend become pregnant with their second or third child hurts. If we chose IVF or other procedures, we might get pregnant and lose a baby. That would hurt. The pressure of trying to conceive hurts. 

We could try for years, and maybe we'd have a baby in the end, and maybe we wouldn't, but we knew it would hurt.  

In the end, we decided we weren't going to wait for notes to fall from the sky. We would trust that God's call for us to take care of kids who need help (and who've experienced more hurt than we will probably ever experience) was just as true today as it was thousands of years ago. 

I hope you'll carefully and prayerfully consider whether or not your family can "fill the need."

Chances are, you can.