(Time to get out your hick boots people): What It’s Like to Be a Foster Parent

I am very sorry for posting this. And I suggest that if you read the following article, that you hold on to your lunch, because there are some things being said here that will make you want to vomit. Remember, these could be your kids he is talking about.

The article is titled: What It’s Like to Be a Foster Parent And what we have here are some desperate infertile's who have decided to adopt through the foster care system.

I am now going to copy and paste a line which was particularly troublesome to me. A few paragraphs down he says, "Like many couples, we became foster parents, hoping that eventually we would have the chance to make the arrangement permanent."

Now translated into reality, we have a preacher who quite possibly shoots blanks and a wife who God has chosen not to give a child of her own to, for whatever reason, who now feels entitled to somebody else's child, will pass it off as doing God's work without consideration that there is a heartbroken mother out there who will never see her kid again. These people indirectly hope and prey for some kid to get abused and come into the system then indirectly hopes and preys that the real parents rights are terminated so that they get to adopt. Of course they leave all the thoughts about the real parents out of it. Nope, the families are demonized, and their feelings are not considered in the least when making their decision to adopt through foster care. Nope. They just want a child of their own.

Now perhaps to the untrained mind that was a rather harsh interpretation of this particular situation, as society blindly believes that people who help children like this are saints amongst us, but further down, the guys drama queen personality shines right through. Check out what he says here...

We don't pretend that it's been easy. All children come with baggage. Foster children come with more. We've endured social workers, teachers, therapists, adoption agents, doctors, judges, temper tantrums, food hoarded and rotting in pillowcases, self-injury, anger, suicidality and consequent hospitalization. We've been lied to, raged at, punched, kicked, bitten and run away from. We keep things locked up and an alarm on at least one bedroom door.

The poor thing. I mean really, my ass bleeds for you brother. You had to deal with Social Workers, who btw were not there to steal your child. You had to deal with shrinks, well what did you expect? With all the child welfare fraud going around these days, and shrinks being some of the most often paid of all the System Sucks, of course the kids are going to be diagnosed. I suppose you really wanted a healthy white newborn, but it just didn't turn out that way. So you'll just make due with what the Child Protective Industry, who BTW is not God, gives you.

The other thing that we have never lost is the sense that these are our children. I don't want to say that these are the kids we wanted, because as the theologian Stanley Hauerwas puts it, to have to be a wanted child is a terrible burden. I don't agree with all of Hauerwas' conclusions about abortion, but he is right on one thing:

The crucial question for us as Christians is what kind of people we need to be to be capable of welcoming children into this world, some of whom may be born disabled and even die.

I might add: "...some of whom may be deeply disturbed in their emotions." The point remains the same. Our adoptive children are not the children we wanted. No child could ever measure up to that standard. But they are the children that we welcomed into our family, and to whom we continue to extend our deepest love, compassion, and hospitality. They are more than the children we wanted: they are the children we hoped and longed for just as Abraham and Sara hoped and longed for Isaac.

And this dude wants to throw in a bit of theology to justify doing all of this. Not the children they wanted, but they'll have to do, right? No. Wait. They are the children we hoped and longed for just as Abraham and Sara hoped and longed for Isaac.

That may be. But in order for you to get them, they had to suffer the loss of their parents. The parents had to suffer the loss of their children. And all kinds of bad things had to happen first. But you got your kids now. And you're damn well gonna see it through right? Just like a real parent.

Then he babbles a bit more, but then he actually goes on and makes an interesting point.

It would be short-sighted to limit the scope of our choice to the decision to continue or terminate a pregnancy (in our case, to adopt or not).

So, if I get him right, he's actually comparing the decision not to adopt a child with a woman's decision to have an abortion. Which reduces to the Child Protective Industries decision to take a child from a foster parent and reunify them with the real parent, is like having a miscarriage I would imagine.

I can't even go on about this creep anymore. There's just something seriously wrong here with the perspective of the people who they give our children to.

If you know what I mean.

Love
LK