From Simple and Comfortable to Messy and Hard: Here’s Why I Decided to Foster
The evening was winding down. My husband was at the fire station working an overnight shift. I had just finished putting my two older girls to bed, and I left my phone out on the kitchen counter while I went into the nursery to rock my foster baby to sleep. I eventually laid her down in the crib and walked back into the kitchen, ready to sit down and relax after a busy day of parenting. I grabbed my phone and saw a missed call and voicemail from an unknown number. It was a caseworker calling about a new placement. A sibling set. An emergency removal. Three little ones needing somewhere to go that night.
My brain started running through the logistics – Our car only fits five car seats. What would we do for sleeping arrangements? Can we really go from three to six kids overnight?
I didn’t have the answers to any of those questions. I didn’t know what it would look like. But what I did know is that those kids needed somewhere safe to sleep that night, and so I said yes.
Several hours later, long after I would usually be in bed for the night, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a caseworker with tiny toddlers in tow, looking up at me with big eyes. And just like that, our family doubled in size. My husband left for work that day and hugged three kids goodbye, and came home the next morning to find six kids crowded around the table for breakfast.
Our family has been involved in foster care for a handful of years. We began the licensing process five years ago when our oldest was a toddler and I was newly pregnant with our youngest. During the last few years, we have had teenagers, babies, toddlers, school-aged kids, and a teenage mom in and out of our home. We have taken long breaks and have taken multiple placements at once. We have had insanely busy seasons and seasons of rest and renewal.
When we first began the licensing process, we got a lot of questioning and pushback from our families and friends. It was hard for people to understand why we would disrupt our life, inviting in trauma and chaos and court dates and caseworkers and pain. And now, several years in, we still get asked those questions often - why are we still doing this? How do we keep going, after loss and heartbreak and turmoil?
I have thought about that a lot lately as I spend my days running kids to appointments, wiping noses, changing diapers, passing out snacks, offering snuggles, calling caseworkers, co-regulating during trauma meltdowns.
Why?
Why did I step out of a comfortable, simple, much easier life into the messy world of foster care?
And it feels a little too simplistic of an answer, but what I’ve landed on is this: Because every child deserves to be safe, and every struggling family deserves to be supported. The family is sacred. And it is an honor to step out of simple and easy into messy and hard if it means that we can be part of helping children stay safe and helping families heal.
For more information about how to get involved with foster care in the state of Montana, please visit https://dphhs.mt.gov/cfsd/Fosterparent/index or reach out to your local Child & Family Services office.
