If you have not yet had kids, people are probably telling you to make the most of these days. Now is your time to travel, to sleep in on the weekends, to spend your money on whatever interests you, to take a class, to party, or develop a hobby. I wouldn’t say that any of those options are inherently wrong and I can understand how they become much more complicated when you have young children, but I want to challenge you to something more. Something deeper.
When I talk to my peers today about investing in kids from crisis situations, I realize there are limits on what many families can do. And rightly so. I intentionally encourage parents to foster kids who are younger than their youngest to minimize the potential for harm that can come when a child with a complicated life experience is exposed to children from a sheltered upbringing. While we want to do our best to offer help to kids who need it, we don’t want to do that at the expense of the children God entrusted to our care. Creating issues in our children while trying to solve the issues of other children is counter productive.
So when I’m answering questions about what kind of help a family like mine is capable of offering, I find we’re often missing the areas of greatest need. The older kids. The sibling groups. The images of precious kids I have known over the years come to my mind. Girls who needed mentoring. Boys who needed stability. All of them with a history and a soul. It makes me want to find more people like Brian and I were 10 years ago. Back when we had some childless years to offer.
When I was 22 and Brian was 23 we became parents to a house of boys. Over the next 5 years we were able to have a hand in helping to raise 17 young men ages 6-18 before the adoption of our son (via international adoption) and the end of our childless years. We grieved deeply our infertility during that time, but also found our arms and hearts full as we loved boys who challenged us greatly and brought us much joy.
I know that young adults without kids may feel unqualified to invest their lives in the kind of work we did. We felt really intimidated by it, too. But we found we had energy to invest in these kids. We were very flexible as far as being willing to learn new techniques to work with kids instead of thinking we already knew from our previous parenting experience. We didn’t have to worry about the needs of our own kids. We were creative about problem solving. We weren’t that far removed from teenage culture and the memories of those struggles. It was actually kind of ideal.
I’m really thankful that we invested those childless years in doing something meaningful. We invested those years in something bigger than ourselves and didn’t see it as a time to be self-centered, but a unique time to engage in ministry we’d find difficult later. We were blessed to partner with a group of college-aged interns who had made a similar choice for their life and we saw God bless our efforts and draw us together in community.
I don’t think every childless couple is called to work with kids in crisis. In fact, probably relatively few are equipped and willing, but I think every childless individual (whether through infertility or a delayed decision to have kids or because of singleness) needs to think about the purpose of their childlessness. How can we be making the most of that time? What are our gifts? How may God be calling us to serve our community? What can we accomplish during these years that we won’t be able to do once kids enter the picture?
For us, there was something very redemptive about investing those painful years. We can look back and see how God was actively using us during a time where we felt very discouraged and frustrated with our ability to grow our family. Our desire for parenthood was being met even before we officially became parents. And we were blessed to learn a lot about parenting in the process. I remember one of our teenage boys saying, “Man, your kids aren’t going to get away with NOTHIN.” We learned so much about how to love, discipline, train, and mentor children and we have seen that investment pay off in our daily acts of parenthood now.
As much as we were heartbroken to leave our houseparenting days, we also see how God has used us in this new phase of our lives. Babies have found permanency, stability, and advocacy in our home. We are able to now look at the prevention end of the problem and devote ourselves to being sure we aren’t raising a future generation of children who won’t be able to be safely raised at home. But even today so much of our work and passion is influenced by what we learned in the trenches of working with kids who missed out on the stability we are now able to offer the babies who enter our home. I love the kids in my home as an act of redemption for the kids who missed out. I love the parents of my foster and adopted children because I have known and loved mothers like them before.
So take a second look at your plan for your childless years. How could God uniquely use this time to make the most of your childlessness while also preparing you for the plans he has down the road? Don’t underestimate your value or the gifts you have to offer. Don’t lose yourself in either our culture’s expectation that this is a time for splurging or in infertility’s tendency to wallow in grief.
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