I have six kids and the oldest is twelve. Our family has been in the habit of adding a baby to the mix every couple years either through adoption, birth or foster care. But a few years ago, we found ourselves without the typical addition of a new baby once the “old” baby learned to walk. I got rid of every diaper in the house, gave away the crib, packed away a few sentimental outfits and started grieving that that phase of our life was over. And because of our own unpredictable fertility and the fact that we had too large of a family for the state to place any additional kids with us, that season of our life was over with or without our consent.
In my sadness I wished for another child. I wished for the tiny onesies and precious midnight feedings. I even missed the upheaval and intensity of foster care. All these skills I’d developed over the years of group home and foster care work of helping kids from trauma learn how to trust, all the negotiation skills, all the research and reading I’ve done, all the joy at watching someone develop new skills and change old ways of thinking. . . it all felt like it was coming to an end.
And while I was still wishing for a new baby to love and a new family to invest in as we cared for their child, God dropped a single lady graduate student into my world.
Her story is hers to tell. With her blessing, I can say that she needed some things that our family had to offer– people to talk her through her history with understanding and empathy, people willing to read and research the road she’s walking so we could be a good support to her, people happy to include her in part of our family in all its chaos, noise and kid-centric routines. While I was grieving that a new soul wouldn’t be entering our family, God ordained that a new soul would be entering our family. She was just already potty-trained.
Those skills I learned in diplomacy and helping people navigate big life transitions? I could use them again. My love of research and reading? Very necessary as reading resources together became a way we could show each other that we cared about what the other was going through. It turned out our big, crazy, unpredictable family was what God wanted to use for that season to help bring healing, stability and community to someone who needed it.
Instead of midnight feedings, it was midnight texting. Instead of visitation schedules, it was Christmas at our house and Easter with our extended family. She’d bring movies the kids loved, giant cookies from her favorite bakery, and lunch for me and the only kid not yet in school so we could spend time catching up. When I had to make a middle of the night ER trip, she was the person who picked up the phone and immediately came to stay at the house with the kids. She became not an outside observer of our family or critical judge of our family, but simply part of our family.
Over and over during the course of the last two years with her I have thought of one of my favorite Karyn Purvis quotes:
“Relationship-based trauma can only be healed through a nurturing relationship.”
I know nothing about the pressures of being a grad student in an intensive field. I haven’t personally walked through the history she’s experienced. I’m not faced with the difficult choices she’s had to make. But I know how to nurture. Raising a lot of kids over the last 16 years has made me really good at that. It’s a gift I can offer, not just to little ones who need a temporary or permanent home, but to anyone God has called me to love.
This friendship doesn’t get me the public recognition of foster care. It doesn’t make people want to go out to coffee to talk about how their family could be doing what we’ve done. It has mostly flown under the radar and nobody has known all of the blessed hours we’ve spent together, the worried nights about how she was doing, the fun family outings that included this extra honorary family member. Loving an adult that needs what your family can offer is very different from taking in or birthing another child, but there’s also so much that’s the same.
It’s about nurture. It’s about structure. It’s about healthy boundaries, failures, forgiveness, working through hard times, and experiencing joys together. It’s about growth on all sides.
For those of us with crazy, chaotic families, it’s easy to feel like we have nothing to offer the single person in our church. We’re too much and too overwhelming. But what if the warm, exciting, noisy tearful, joyful family experience is just what somebody needs? What if our desire to give love and nurture is meant to be used not just on our children, but as a gift we can give others in our circle? What if we took our ache at no longer having little ones and turned it into a curiosity about who needs exactly what we have to give?
Opening up your home, family and heart that way is not without risks. It’s not without difficult moments. But it’s also one of the most rewarding things I’ve been blessed to do. This is someone who doesn’t have to love me, isn’t preprogramed through years of relationship to trust me, doesn’t owe me anything. And yet, she chooses me. She chooses our family, even when it’s hard. By working through her own trauma honestly, she becomes an example to my children of resilience, humility, and faithfulness.
My heart will always be pulled towards the little ones, the voiceless, the ones who can’t advocate for themselves. But now my eyes are opened towards the needs of those who didn’t get what they needed during those early years for whatever reason. Even when I feel out of my depth and out of my mind to consider joining someone on their healing journey, I’ve seen how God can use exactly what I have to offer. I think that’s what it means to be the Body of Christ. I think that’s what the church is supposed to do. And I think when we do it, we become a light to the world around us.