Families from within a local church volunteer to open their homes to children of other families in crisis. These families in crisis are in the local community, typically single mothers in need of a temporary home to place their children in. The "crisis" can be anything really: homelessness, hospital recovery, unexpected trip out of town, job loss, etc. The purpose of this ministry is to step in and help families before their situation turns into one in which the state needs to get involved. Unlike foster care/Child Protective Services, Safe Families comes alongside both parent and child to bring recovery and healing to the crisis situation. The goal is to place the children back with their families as soon as possible. The host families from church do not get reimbursed in any way, nor do they take on a "parent" role for the child they're hosting. Instead, they work with the parents and keep open communication flowing between parent and child. The parents can talk to and see their children whenever they like- their retrieving of their child is not conditional on anything. The soul purpose of the host family is to simply show up emotionally, physically and spiritually for the family in crisis. (Believe it or not, that is the short version!)
The more I learn about this program, the more passionate I am for the cause. It's about time the church family stepped up and opened their doors and homes to the community around them! After A LOT of prayer, Zach and I both felt the Lord leading us to become a host family ourselves. The single moms in crisis we can help sound very much like the type of women we've been matched with through our adoption process. What if those women had a Safe Family they could turn to? Their lives could be completely changed. We feel strongly that this is what we are meant to do while we wait for a child of our own. (The Safe Families program is very flexible- we can opt out at any time, or relocate the child we are hosting if we have an adoption scenario come up.) The nursery in our home is full of brand new baby items collecting dust. We don't know how long it will be until we can use those things for our own child, but in the meantime we feel called to turn that room of sadness and loss into a ministry for other children. We will worship in the waiting.
I know we've shared this decision with some of you already, and we thank you for your support! We're so blessed to have such wonderful friends and cheerleaders. Many of you have commented how "strong" we have become and how "impressed" you are with this decision we've made. We'd like to be clear that our strength comes only from the Lord. Without His mercies and His healing, we would not be where we are today. Just this morning we watched our friends dedicate their baby girl in front of the church, and I couldn't hold back the sobs. Everything in me longed to have a baby of my own to dedicate to the Lord, to celebrate with our church family. While we do feel very strong and we marvel at how far the Lord has brought us, the scars from our journey are still very real.
