If they call back, we'll say yes!

Up to this point I haven't spoken much of mine and Jeff's experience being foster parents. We started this process long before I even thought about going to church. However, I can't get to the next step without updating you on this important part of our lives.

I'm going to take a second however to get on my "soap box". I'm sure most of you have heard many a bad story about foster parents and how poorly they treat children. Well that's the problem, our society only speaks of the bad apples in a group. Our experience was nothing but loving people giving their time, homes and yes believe it or not money, to help children that were not theirs and probably never would be. I always love how people automatically assume that people foster for the money. Just so you know the money is about the cost to feed a family of 4 a day at McDonald's. Definitely NOT enough to rearrange your life at the drop of a hat for. There are not enough good people out there doing their part either. There are hundreds of children with no one, and very few homes to put them in. (OK, off my soap box now)

So sometime in 2002, Jeff and I had decided to become foster parents. We had no children of our own and had no intention of having any, (don't judge). That was truly the one thing we both agreed upon, neither of us wanted to have children. We both wanted to help the children already in the world who had no one. So we went through the hours of training, home studies, background checks, interviews and all that goes along with the process. We were finally approved almost a year later.

We only wanted young children, we had heard horror stories about the teenagers. We didn't care about anything else, but our age limit was around seven years old and younger. We received our first child in the summer of 2004, Tyler, he was with us for a while and we both got very attached. Jeff was devastated when he left to go live with his mother, he said, "this is too difficult, I don't want to do this anymore."

Then about a week later we returned home from being out and had a message on the answering machine it said, "we have a 13 year old girl who needs a home for a while until we can find a permanent placement." Jeff said, "delete it, no way." I was standing at the kitchen sink doing dishes and a thought came too me, if they call back tomorrow then we should take her, that means they couldn't find anyone. The chances of that were slim and I thought he would go for it. I asked him if that was okay and he said, "yes." The next afternoon he called me at work and told me to call them they had called back. That Friday night in August we picked Montessa up, she was only going to try it out for the weekend. See if she fit in to our home, she was beautiful and funny and I must say she talked a lot. We loved having her around, and needless to say she never left.

After much prayer and Godly counsel, November 30, 2004, I adopted Montessa. You might be wondering why I said I, well because Jeff and I weren't married and legally we had to be for us both to adopt her, so technically I was her only legal parent. Jeff however always called her his daughter and loved her as if she was always his. Our little family was coming together slowly but surely. I wrote in my scrapbook about the adoption, "Montessa was the child either we chose or God gave us, either way we were blessed. The joy a child should bring came from one who I did not bear." She is, aside from my salvation, the best thing that ever happened to me.

Is God asking you to help someone? I have found the best way to forget about my own problems is to focus on somebody else. If there's something you want to do to help someone pray about it, God will show you exactly how to do it.