And Then We Were Foster Parents!
- Dr. Lee McBryde- Nesbitt
- Feb 6, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 14, 2020
Today my husband and I submitted our Foster Care Licenses to our Foster Care Agency, Firm Foundation. December 12, 2018, we became the placement home for two beautiful children. The little fella was seven months, and the little lady was 16 months when they came to us. Now 14 months later, they are safely home with their well-deserving parents.
When I served as Director of Children and Families for a large child development center and a private kindergarten program- our organization often had up to 15-20 foster children enrolled at the facility.
Summer 2017, one specific fostering couple enrolled three little girls, who were sisters. The girls had been with us for maybe three months when their case manager brought their two brothers for a visit. Witnessing the family being reunited in the foyer of our building, dropped me to my knees in tears. The five children were hugging, crying, laughing, and climbing on top of one another.
The scenario was the Aha moment for me. Matthew 18:5, " Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me." At this moment, I believed no matter the sacrifice; we were called to keep at least one family together as they experienced probably the most difficult time of their lives.
Often my husband, who is without biological children, asked me to consider being a foster parent. His mother fostered six children and adopted four, during the nineties. He was instrumental in the care of each of the children from their arrival when they were days old until now they are each in their late twenties and still part of the family. He believed it was his calling to foster and raise children. So, he was surely on-board when I said ok- I can do the fostering for at least one family.
We had six sets of foster parents with children at our facility, and we had extensive conversations with each about why they chose to foster. The wife of a military Colonel said, “We became foster parents because I always wanted a house full of children but was only blessed with one child”. When Val married She’ron, She’ron had been fostering children for 14 years, so Val married into a foster family.
GaGa, a local school bus driver and cafeteria engineer, had a tremendous amount of love for a child on her school bus route who was in a local group home, she wanted to provide a permanent home for him.
We started classes to become foster parents at the beginning of the 2018 year. March, we learned my mother-in-law had to face the fight of cancer. Although we finished our classes and received our license, Anne Nesbitt became our primary focus for the 2018 year. Throughout the 2018 year, when we received the telephone calls from Firm Foundation asking us to take children, our obligations to Anne Nesbitt forced us to respond, "with not now". Finally, we got an all-clear for my Mother-in-Law on December 6, 2018, and we welcomed our Little Nathan and Nevaeh in December 2018!
In conclusion, my husband and I became foster parents to try and keep families together as they journey their way to stability. My husband desired to foster babies; I hoped to foster a pregnant teenager or a teenager with a child. I hope this post brings the conversation to why some people chose to become foster parents. There are over 400,000(1) children in foster care, and in many states, in the US, there are less than 10,000 beds (2). African -American, Latino, and older children are harder to place. Fostering children makes you a direct helping professional. If you seek ways to help in your community, consider fostering children.
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