July 21, 2024 • 18 mins
On today’s episode, we will talk about the emotional highs and lows, the moments of judgment, and the lessons of grace.
It wasn’t until I had fully exited the world of foster care that I truly looked back and analyzed my heart’s posture. Knowing the intimate stories of the 77 children that entered our home and the hundreds more that I helped mentor the families of; my heart was broken. It in a place of judgement towards the biological families of these foster children. I wrestled between anger, disappointment, pain and it all settled into disapproval of how hard the lives of these children were.
It ended up filling my heart with exactly the opposite of what led me to become a foster parent.
My hope in sharing all of this with you today is that you will embrace the 4 tips I share with you and that it will help you to stay in a place of Grace, acceptance and Gods love through your foster care and adoption journey.
If you are struggling right now as a foster or adoptive parent, I am so thankful that you found this episode. I want you to know that you are not alone. You are seen, valued, loved and known.
After you listen to this episode, I would love for you to head on over and join our inner circle of foster and adoptive mamas. Our Facebook group is your gateway to valuable resources and connection.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/fostercareandadoptionforchristianwomen
Thank you for being here. Go grab your cup of coffee and let's dig in.
XO-Christine Marie
If you found this episode helpful, I would love for you to leave me a review on apple podcasts. This will help others just like you to find my podcast and be encouraged along their journey: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-to-expect-while-fostering-and-adopting-adopting/id1701306333
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(01:18):
Back at the person that I had become throughout my foster care journey,
I had to have a really hard look in the mirror and conversation with God and
say, wow, I have become a person that I'm really not proud of.
And I'm not sure that people from the outside would have known how judgmental
I was, but I had really become so judgmental. And I'll give you an example.
(01:43):
So it really began And in the beginning of, I really want to help and serve
these kiddos and help their families.
And it came from a really good place of really wanting to help the orphans and
serve and share the message of Jesus and adopt a child.
But every time that a child came into our home and I heard the story of what
(02:06):
they had endured with their biological family or parents, it wrecked me.
Some of the harder cases that we took, really too even traumatic to ever share
out loud with somebody else. It made me so angry.
It made me angry that these parents and other people in their life would allow
(02:28):
these children to be placed in the circumstances that they were and that they didn't step in.
Or that they would allow these children to go without food or be physically
abused or be put in some of the situations that they were, that I was honestly appalled.
I was taken back that somebody didn't intervene sooner.
(02:51):
Some of the kiddos that we took in had been in very terrible situations for
a super long period of time.
It made me want to protect these children from their own biological family.
Because I sat back and said, how could they have not stepped in?
How could they have not intervened? So I need to step in and I need to intervene.
Because, and even in some of the situations, you know, child welfare was notified
(03:15):
or, you know, child protective services was notified and they kept giving chance
after chance after chance or they lost track of the children and then they couldn't intervene.
And it felt like I needed to be the one that helped them. I needed to be the
one who spoke up for them.
I needed to be the one that stepped in and protected this child from whatever
(03:35):
that circumstance or situation was.
And for the most part, that circumstance or situation was their birth parent or family.
Over time, over the course of 77 children, I became very judgmental.
My heart became very hardened towards people that would allow their children
(03:56):
to be abused and neglected in the way that most of these foster children were.
You know, the caseworkers would say, yes, I understand, you know,
when they were sending a child back to a, quote, minimally adequate environment
with their birth parents, but
And to me, it was 10 steps, 20 steps.
(04:16):
It was night and day difference between what they had in our home and then they
were going to go back to a minimally adequate home.
That made me frustrated and judgmental again. Like, how could these caseworkers
allow this child to go back to a not perfect environment or not great environment?
I was judgmental of the caseworkers. I was mad that they didn't bring up every
(04:39):
tiny detail of what I had shared with them I'm in court.
And I ended up feeling like, you aren't even protecting the child.
I am. So I needed to get louder and more vocal.
I got more frustrated and I got more hardened.
I got more judgmental. And after that door was closed with our foster care journey after 10 years,
I took a look back and said, wow, I am so thankful Jesus isn't judging me the
(05:05):
way that I judged these other people. Because I'm not perfect.
I wasn't a perfect foster parent. I'm not a perfect mom, perfect wife,
perfect business owner.
There's so many things on a daily basis that I fail at.
And could you imagine if you came from a home life or a generational repeated
cycle of abuse and neglect, and you truly felt like you were doing the best that you could,
(05:32):
and then child child welfare or child services or DHS or whatever it's called
in your area, took your child from your home and then placed them in another home, which.
Is I'm sure completely traumatizing on its own for you and your child.
But then you have this foster parent who is so judgmental and has an attitude
(05:54):
of how dare you treat your child like this when you were just thinking you were
doing a good job or you were just surviving.
And that was what I had to take a hard look at is saying, wow, who had I become?
Why had I become so hardened important that I couldn't put myself in the situation
or in the shoes of this biological parent or family.
(06:17):
And I do believe I had the child, the foster child's best interest at heart.
I truly do. And I don't think I was coming from a bad place,
but I think that I missed out on that piece of grace.
Because grace is what covers all failures, all sins.
And I wanted grace from Jesus, us, but I wasn't willing to give it to this birth
(06:39):
family because they obviously messed up.
They obviously made terrible mistakes.
What if was the question that I asked myself all the time.
What if child welfare or DHS sends this child back to their family?
What if they go back and the same thing happens?
What if it gets worse? What if then they step out of the family and the child is hurt it again.
(07:04):
My mind was constantly flowing with the what ifs. And so I just protected them even more.
I stepped in. Or in addition to that what if that I was presented with recently
was what if you add the word so to the beginning of what if?
So, so what if? And that really shifted a lot of things for me in my mind.
(07:28):
Because what if I had employed that thought back then when I was a foster parent?
So what if it does happen?
Is God not bigger than all of this? Is God not the person who intervened in
the first place to help this child?
Did God not orchestrate the steps and the occurrences to have this child placed in my home?
(07:50):
So what if I built a strong relationship with this biological family or birth
parent so that I could help when hard things come up?
So what if, instead of protecting this child, I helped protect this family?
So what if I didn't look at this child as a separate entity from this birth parent?
(08:12):
What if I looked at them that they were one unit because God created them as one unit?
God created that child to come from that family, that birth mom.
So what if I looked at them as one? Because I didn't.
And so what if God has them on their own journey and this is part of their healing?
(08:32):
So what if this family came from generational
trauma abuse and neglect and the
grace i would give them would be the first piece
of healing that this family would ever have and
the strongholds that would begin to break so what if my judgment got in the
way and stopped that from happening i would imagine that a lot of you listening
(08:55):
today have struggled with judgment
like i did and that's where God's grace comes in and covers all sin.
And I want you to be really honest with yourself and say, what if I gave them
the same level of grace that I want Jesus to give me?
Because I walked away from foster care with a lot of regrets.
(09:16):
With a lot of regrets that I was so judgmental and that,
I couldn't see the big picture because all I was focused on was me and how I
was protecting this child and how I was going to be helping this child and how
I wanted to give this child.
Provide them the best clothes and the best house and the best services,
(09:37):
the best therapy programs,
and that somehow me giving them this level of care somehow made any other level
of care that they would receive less than. So that's actually not the truth.
That was my truth when I was a foster parent. That was a really hard piece for
(09:57):
me is that just because somebody else's level of care was way less than what
I felt this child deserved,
it doesn't mean that it wasn't right and perfect.
I can't imagine being in that situation as a birth parent.
What What if I was the birth parent and I was struggling?
Maybe I was addicted or in some sort of really dark valley and my children had
(10:24):
suffered and maybe I had made some really, really bad choices.
And so my children were in the situation that they were and child welfare did
come in and remove my children. What would I need?
What would help me the most? Would it be compassion and love and kindness from the foster parent?
Or would it be the foster parent wanting to take and adopt my child?
(10:48):
Because that was something that I had to really ask myself after our 10 years
of foster care was, could my judgments of these families have impeded,
and I guess the level that I put myself on?
Like I said, guys, I am being so raw with you guys because I feel like it's
super easy as a foster parent to somehow see.
(11:13):
Than the birth families, better than other foster parents,
better than you fill in the blank, because your true desire,
and I'm sure like mine, most of your true desire is to provide the absolute
best foster home out there, the very best level of care for these children, the best resources,
(11:37):
because that was my heart, is bringing in the absolute best to help these children
so that they could begin to heal.
And so I didn't really see my blind spot until we stepped away from foster care.
And so I want to encourage you with a few things today that I really think would
have helped me when I started feeling that rising up.
(11:58):
And it's a feeling inside when you get frustrated, like how could this person
or this parent or this caseworker do this or make this decision?
How could they move this child from my home to be in this other home,
even though their sibling is in this other home?
How could they do that? Because this child is thriving in my home.
(12:19):
How could they say that I can only keep this child if I also take the siblings?
How could they say that this adoptive family was better than ours?
They just don't understand.
I've got to give them more information. All of those thoughts.
That as you continue on your journey through foster care and adoption will come
(12:41):
up. What could I have done better?
These are some tips that I want to share with you when those thoughts do come
up because they will. The first one is to get curious.
Anything that is really, really hard, overwhelming, and you find yourself in
that place of judging somebody else or comparing yourself to somebody else,
(13:02):
I would encourage you to get curious.
Get curious to understand the
big picture. Get curious to understand the history of this birth family.
Get curious to understand the emotional and physical, mental health,
medical needs of this foster child or your own family, right?
(13:22):
Because I've seen a lot of times where there's children who maybe need to be
without out other children in the home because of a safety risk,
but you desperately want to keep them because you're attached to them.
But it's honestly not what's in the best interest of this child.
So the caseworker might need to make a decision to move this child and you then
(13:43):
go into a place of judgment because you're upset and you disagree.
I think one of my biggest places that I was stuck in judgment was when I didn't
agree about the case plan for a child with the caseworker.
Because the caseworkers have a lot more pieces to the puzzle.
Now, do they always get it right? No. And that's the piece where we just have
(14:06):
to lean on God and know that ultimately God is working everything for his purpose
and not our own. But I want to encourage you to get curious.
And then number two, put yourself in their shoes. So if you find yourself judging
the birth parent, I would try and put yourself in their shoes.
What have they been through? What have they survived?
What have they endured? If you find yourself frustrated with the caseworker,
(14:28):
try and put yourself in their shoes.
And this one too, you might find yourself judgmental towards the foster child.
So when you've told your foster child and explained and talked about and discussed
and any other word you can put with you've had a conversation about a certain
subject and they They continue to make the same mistake or same choice over and over and over,
(14:52):
and you feel like a broken record, and you are so frustrated and at your wit's
end, I would challenge you to put yourself in their shoes.
That has been something that has been really challenging for me,
especially with our own children, our own adoptive daughters,
because there have been some choices that they have made that are so frustrating to me.
(15:13):
But when I put myself in their shoes and what their life experience and what
they've been through and what they've been exposed to and the journey that they've
had through foster care, it suddenly makes sense.
It doesn't make it easier, but it gives me compassion.
It gives me peace.
(15:34):
Allows me to give them grace, just like God gives me.
The third one is take a break. Take a break and allow yourself to feel your
feelings without doing anything.
So I tended to be the foster parent that I would be super upset and I would
go type an email and I would shoot it out.
(15:56):
And then I would say, oh my gosh, why did I send that? Have you guys ever done that before?
And it was back in the time where you couldn't retract it.
And so that was fun. But I would encourage you to not make the phone call.
With most situations, give yourself 24 hours to process, to work through the
(16:18):
emotions, allow yourself to feel, and then take action.
Sometimes 24 hours can save you a lot of frustration because you chose to do
something that just needed you to take a break on.
And then the fourth one is pray for wisdom.
Wisdom is so powerful. And if you just take the time and ask God for wisdom,
(16:41):
sometimes he can give you incredible perspective that you would have never had.
One of the Bible verses that I was reminded today of is Judges 6.12.
When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, the Lord is with you, mighty warrior.
Gideon was in a pit. He was in the darkest valley.
And he didn't believe in himself, but God did.
(17:05):
And he needed God to show him his own strength.
And he didn't have that strength on his own. He only had that strength because God gave it to him.
God anointed him for what he was about to do.
So when you really take a look at it and you say, the Lord is with you,
knowing that you're never alone in this, and knowing that when you partner with
him in your foster care and adoption journey and that ultimately this child is his.
(17:32):
Every single child belongs to him. Is it always going to be perfect?
No. But knowing that you might be in the hardest valley, the deepest valley.
(18:21):
Music.
Music.
(01:18):
Back at the person that I had become throughout my foster care journey,
I had to have a really hard look in the mirror and conversation with God and
say, wow, I have become a person that I'm really not proud of.
And I'm not sure that people from the outside would have known how judgmental
I was, but I had really become so judgmental. And I'll give you an example.
(01:43):
So it really began And in the beginning of, I really want to help and serve
these kiddos and help their families.
And it came from a really good place of really wanting to help the orphans and
serve and share the message of Jesus and adopt a child.
But every time that a child came into our home and I heard the story of what
(02:06):
they had endured with their biological family or parents, it wrecked me.
Some of the harder cases that we took, really too even traumatic to ever share
out loud with somebody else. It made me so angry.
It made me angry that these parents and other people in their life would allow
(02:28):
these children to be placed in the circumstances that they were and that they didn't step in.
Or that they would allow these children to go without food or be physically
abused or be put in some of the situations that they were, that I was honestly appalled.
I was taken back that somebody didn't intervene sooner.
(02:51):
Some of the kiddos that we took in had been in very terrible situations for
a super long period of time.
It made me want to protect these children from their own biological family.
Because I sat back and said, how could they have not stepped in?
How could they have not intervened? So I need to step in and I need to intervene.
Because, and even in some of the situations, you know, child welfare was notified
(03:15):
or, you know, child protective services was notified and they kept giving chance
after chance after chance or they lost track of the children and then they couldn't intervene.
And it felt like I needed to be the one that helped them. I needed to be the
one who spoke up for them.
I needed to be the one that stepped in and protected this child from whatever
(03:35):
that circumstance or situation was.
And for the most part, that circumstance or situation was their birth parent or family.
Over time, over the course of 77 children, I became very judgmental.
My heart became very hardened towards people that would allow their children
(03:56):
to be abused and neglected in the way that most of these foster children were.
You know, the caseworkers would say, yes, I understand, you know,
when they were sending a child back to a, quote, minimally adequate environment
with their birth parents, but
And to me, it was 10 steps, 20 steps.
(04:16):
It was night and day difference between what they had in our home and then they
were going to go back to a minimally adequate home.
That made me frustrated and judgmental again. Like, how could these caseworkers
allow this child to go back to a not perfect environment or not great environment?
I was judgmental of the caseworkers. I was mad that they didn't bring up every
(04:39):
tiny detail of what I had shared with them I'm in court.
And I ended up feeling like, you aren't even protecting the child.
I am. So I needed to get louder and more vocal.
I got more frustrated and I got more hardened.
I got more judgmental. And after that door was closed with our foster care journey after 10 years,
I took a look back and said, wow, I am so thankful Jesus isn't judging me the
(05:05):
way that I judged these other people. Because I'm not perfect.
I wasn't a perfect foster parent. I'm not a perfect mom, perfect wife,
perfect business owner.
There's so many things on a daily basis that I fail at.
And could you imagine if you came from a home life or a generational repeated
cycle of abuse and neglect, and you truly felt like you were doing the best that you could,
(05:32):
and then child child welfare or child services or DHS or whatever it's called
in your area, took your child from your home and then placed them in another home, which.
Is I'm sure completely traumatizing on its own for you and your child.
But then you have this foster parent who is so judgmental and has an attitude
(05:54):
of how dare you treat your child like this when you were just thinking you were
doing a good job or you were just surviving.
And that was what I had to take a hard look at is saying, wow, who had I become?
Why had I become so hardened important that I couldn't put myself in the situation
or in the shoes of this biological parent or family.
(06:17):
And I do believe I had the child, the foster child's best interest at heart.
I truly do. And I don't think I was coming from a bad place,
but I think that I missed out on that piece of grace.
Because grace is what covers all failures, all sins.
And I wanted grace from Jesus, us, but I wasn't willing to give it to this birth
(06:39):
family because they obviously messed up.
They obviously made terrible mistakes.
What if was the question that I asked myself all the time.
What if child welfare or DHS sends this child back to their family?
What if they go back and the same thing happens?
What if it gets worse? What if then they step out of the family and the child is hurt it again.
(07:04):
My mind was constantly flowing with the what ifs. And so I just protected them even more.
I stepped in. Or in addition to that what if that I was presented with recently
was what if you add the word so to the beginning of what if?
So, so what if? And that really shifted a lot of things for me in my mind.
(07:28):
Because what if I had employed that thought back then when I was a foster parent?
So what if it does happen?
Is God not bigger than all of this? Is God not the person who intervened in
the first place to help this child?
Did God not orchestrate the steps and the occurrences to have this child placed in my home?
(07:50):
So what if I built a strong relationship with this biological family or birth
parent so that I could help when hard things come up?
So what if, instead of protecting this child, I helped protect this family?
So what if I didn't look at this child as a separate entity from this birth parent?
(08:12):
What if I looked at them that they were one unit because God created them as one unit?
God created that child to come from that family, that birth mom.
So what if I looked at them as one? Because I didn't.
And so what if God has them on their own journey and this is part of their healing?
(08:32):
So what if this family came from generational
trauma abuse and neglect and the
grace i would give them would be the first piece
of healing that this family would ever have and
the strongholds that would begin to break so what if my judgment got in the
way and stopped that from happening i would imagine that a lot of you listening
(08:55):
today have struggled with judgment
like i did and that's where God's grace comes in and covers all sin.
And I want you to be really honest with yourself and say, what if I gave them
the same level of grace that I want Jesus to give me?
Because I walked away from foster care with a lot of regrets.
(09:16):
With a lot of regrets that I was so judgmental and that,
I couldn't see the big picture because all I was focused on was me and how I
was protecting this child and how I was going to be helping this child and how
I wanted to give this child.
Provide them the best clothes and the best house and the best services,
(09:37):
the best therapy programs,
and that somehow me giving them this level of care somehow made any other level
of care that they would receive less than. So that's actually not the truth.
That was my truth when I was a foster parent. That was a really hard piece for
(09:57):
me is that just because somebody else's level of care was way less than what
I felt this child deserved,
it doesn't mean that it wasn't right and perfect.
I can't imagine being in that situation as a birth parent.
What What if I was the birth parent and I was struggling?
Maybe I was addicted or in some sort of really dark valley and my children had
(10:24):
suffered and maybe I had made some really, really bad choices.
And so my children were in the situation that they were and child welfare did
come in and remove my children. What would I need?
What would help me the most? Would it be compassion and love and kindness from the foster parent?
Or would it be the foster parent wanting to take and adopt my child?
(10:48):
Because that was something that I had to really ask myself after our 10 years
of foster care was, could my judgments of these families have impeded,
and I guess the level that I put myself on?
Like I said, guys, I am being so raw with you guys because I feel like it's
super easy as a foster parent to somehow see.
(11:13):
Than the birth families, better than other foster parents,
better than you fill in the blank, because your true desire,
and I'm sure like mine, most of your true desire is to provide the absolute
best foster home out there, the very best level of care for these children, the best resources,
(11:37):
because that was my heart, is bringing in the absolute best to help these children
so that they could begin to heal.
And so I didn't really see my blind spot until we stepped away from foster care.
And so I want to encourage you with a few things today that I really think would
have helped me when I started feeling that rising up.
(11:58):
And it's a feeling inside when you get frustrated, like how could this person
or this parent or this caseworker do this or make this decision?
How could they move this child from my home to be in this other home,
even though their sibling is in this other home?
How could they do that? Because this child is thriving in my home.
(12:19):
How could they say that I can only keep this child if I also take the siblings?
How could they say that this adoptive family was better than ours?
They just don't understand.
I've got to give them more information. All of those thoughts.
That as you continue on your journey through foster care and adoption will come
(12:41):
up. What could I have done better?
These are some tips that I want to share with you when those thoughts do come
up because they will. The first one is to get curious.
Anything that is really, really hard, overwhelming, and you find yourself in
that place of judging somebody else or comparing yourself to somebody else,
(13:02):
I would encourage you to get curious.
Get curious to understand the
big picture. Get curious to understand the history of this birth family.
Get curious to understand the emotional and physical, mental health,
medical needs of this foster child or your own family, right?
(13:22):
Because I've seen a lot of times where there's children who maybe need to be
without out other children in the home because of a safety risk,
but you desperately want to keep them because you're attached to them.
But it's honestly not what's in the best interest of this child.
So the caseworker might need to make a decision to move this child and you then
(13:43):
go into a place of judgment because you're upset and you disagree.
I think one of my biggest places that I was stuck in judgment was when I didn't
agree about the case plan for a child with the caseworker.
Because the caseworkers have a lot more pieces to the puzzle.
Now, do they always get it right? No. And that's the piece where we just have
(14:06):
to lean on God and know that ultimately God is working everything for his purpose
and not our own. But I want to encourage you to get curious.
And then number two, put yourself in their shoes. So if you find yourself judging
the birth parent, I would try and put yourself in their shoes.
What have they been through? What have they survived?
What have they endured? If you find yourself frustrated with the caseworker,
(14:28):
try and put yourself in their shoes.
And this one too, you might find yourself judgmental towards the foster child.
So when you've told your foster child and explained and talked about and discussed
and any other word you can put with you've had a conversation about a certain
subject and they They continue to make the same mistake or same choice over and over and over,
(14:52):
and you feel like a broken record, and you are so frustrated and at your wit's
end, I would challenge you to put yourself in their shoes.
That has been something that has been really challenging for me,
especially with our own children, our own adoptive daughters,
because there have been some choices that they have made that are so frustrating to me.
(15:13):
But when I put myself in their shoes and what their life experience and what
they've been through and what they've been exposed to and the journey that they've
had through foster care, it suddenly makes sense.
It doesn't make it easier, but it gives me compassion.
It gives me peace.
(15:34):
Allows me to give them grace, just like God gives me.
The third one is take a break. Take a break and allow yourself to feel your
feelings without doing anything.
So I tended to be the foster parent that I would be super upset and I would
go type an email and I would shoot it out.
(15:56):
And then I would say, oh my gosh, why did I send that? Have you guys ever done that before?
And it was back in the time where you couldn't retract it.
And so that was fun. But I would encourage you to not make the phone call.
With most situations, give yourself 24 hours to process, to work through the
(16:18):
emotions, allow yourself to feel, and then take action.
Sometimes 24 hours can save you a lot of frustration because you chose to do
something that just needed you to take a break on.
And then the fourth one is pray for wisdom.
Wisdom is so powerful. And if you just take the time and ask God for wisdom,
(16:41):
sometimes he can give you incredible perspective that you would have never had.
One of the Bible verses that I was reminded today of is Judges 6.12.
When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, the Lord is with you, mighty warrior.
Gideon was in a pit. He was in the darkest valley.
And he didn't believe in himself, but God did.
(17:05):
And he needed God to show him his own strength.
And he didn't have that strength on his own. He only had that strength because God gave it to him.
God anointed him for what he was about to do.
So when you really take a look at it and you say, the Lord is with you,
knowing that you're never alone in this, and knowing that when you partner with
him in your foster care and adoption journey and that ultimately this child is his.
(17:32):
Every single child belongs to him. Is it always going to be perfect?
No. But knowing that you might be in the hardest valley, the deepest valley.
(18:21):
Music.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.