Day 7: Adoption Issues

First thing. Watch this video.

Wow. Isn't Shane amazing? There are so many things in this video that scream at me. Like when he says he still lives with the pain of being rejected over and over. But how sometimes that rejection could be replaced with hope, when there were potential adoptive families. And how that hope was quickly erased by disappointment. Like how he wondered why families would send him back. Because he would lie from time to time, or stole every once in a while, or acted out. Or when he says he felt as if he wasn't quite good enough. Not good enough to get a home. Or a family.

"Who wouldn't want to call me son, now? Who wouldn't be proud of having me as a part of their family? And how many children out there would say the same?"

Only 1 to 2 percent of the children that go into the foster care system are considered to have extreme behavior. So when Shane says that he perhaps acted out, what child doesn't act out? What child doesn't lie? One time I stole a piece of gum from a store. Among many other things I stole from my sister's growing up. Makeup, perfume, candy, you name it.

It's amazing to me that even among all the rejection, and never actually getting a family of his own, he was still able to rise above the odds. Do you want to hear the odds? 70 percent of teenagers that age out of the system {meaning they never get adopted, and are released from foster care at the age of 18} end up either dead, on drugs, or homeless. 70 percent! Now you can begin to understand the importance of stability in the lives of these children.

We have turned in our paperwork, of which states that we are willing to be the foster parents for children ages 0 to 10. If the biological parents of these kids end up having their parental rights terminated, then we are first in line for adoption. And highly encouraged to do so. Adopting a 10 year old is so different than fostering a 10 year old. Or is it? It's the exact same thing if I'm doing my job as a foster parent. How weird to think I could be the parent of a 10 year old. I could never do to a child what those foster parents and potential adoptive parents did to Shane and his little brother. This is when we have to dig deep and find what it is that God really wants us to do. It doesn't matter the age of these kids, or the individual behaviors, if God wants the kids in our home, who can argue with that?