Yesterday, surrounded by church family and friends, our own Tim Counts and his wife Melanie heard these long-awaited words: “David and Timothy are now your sons.”

The courtroom erupted in cheers. By the kindness of God, the unknowns, visits, fears, and the chaos of the foster care system gave way to adoption as sons. The gospel of the adopting love of God was on full display.

I rejoiced, phone in hand, trying to capture the memory for Tim as others graciously had for us when we adopted our son Asher almost seven years ago.

With the ink on the Counts boys adoption certificates still wet, I want to share with our STS friends a bit of our story, the outstanding need, and how the Master may have a role for you to play with regard to caring for children in need–a good work for you to walk in (Luke 19:31; Eph. 2:10).

The Need

The need for open hearts and open homes to welcome foster kids as Christ has welcomed us is great everywhere. But in New England alone, there are 22,000 youth living in foster care systems and 2,000 kids awaiting adoption. Every year, 800 New England teenagers “age out” of the system without ever being placed permanently with a family to call their own. 1

Many of our small towns are laden with the kind of abuse, addiction, and poverty that make the foster care system necessary. When our family first considered fostering almost 10 years ago, there were over sixty children in need of placement and seven newborns arriving into the world in need of stable homes just in our little county in Vermont! Our local Department of Children and Families was desperate for families who would care for children in the midst of our county’s drug crisis.

The need for Christians to participate in foster care or support those who do is even greater in a non-Christian context like much of New England. We know that each of these precious kids need a loving home, stability, and to come to know and treasure Jesus Christ. Every time a Christian steps up to foster, that’s one more child rescued from the possibility of being raised in an unbelieving home that denies the lordship of Christ and would raise the child in an environment devoid of the hope of the gospel.

I’ll never forget the way our little church and others like ours and Tim’s stepped into the gap in that season ten years ago. By God’s grace, the members of our church, which has never been bigger than 100 in attendance in a town of 12,000, have fostered or adopted over ten children since 2016. Tim’s church and two other churches very near us have similar stories.

Very many of these children have come to know and treasure Christ and have been adopted, not only into our families, but into the family of God.

When we hear that there’s 22,000 kids in New England foster care, we can get overwhelmed by the need (that’s much bigger than many of the towns we minister in!). But we can also consider the possibilities. What if God wants to use you to change the entire life and eternity of even one of those children?

Field Notes from the Journey

Whether you’re a pastor seeking to lead your flock in loving the least of these, a prospective foster parent, or a Christian wondering how you can help, here are some principles I’ve gleaned along our journey that I’d like to share with you as you consider participating in foster care.

1. Wait on the Lord, not the perfect time.

My wife Kayla and I always wanted to adopt, and we imagined that we would adopt children from among the nations. Because we didn’t really want to risk growing emotionally attached to a child only to have him or her reunited with a birth family, we weren’t interested in fostering (more on that below). Then we ran into a problem. Each time we pursued international adoption, Kayla got pregnant and we had to halt the process. It was not the Lord’s timing, and little did we know, not the path for adoption he had for us.

After a couple years of years of living in Vermont, the Lord changed our hearts on fostering and burdened us with the local need. This time, even though Kayla was pregnant (yes, again!), and we had just closed on our new house, the Lord dropped a fostering opportunity into our laps.

We had been praying about whether we should still foster if we got a call about a placement, and the Lord led us to passages like James 2:15-16 and Proverbs 3:27. How could we merely say “be warmed and be filled” when it was in our power to do what was good and needed for a child in need? My wife likes to say that God gave us the answer before he asked the question.

Very many other seasons besides that one would have been a better fit for saying “yes” to adoption or fostering. We had a five-year-old, three-year-old, one-year-old, and Kayla was two months pregnant. We had moved into our home about two weeks prior, every room still littered with unpacked boxes, when we received word about a little newborn boy who was in the hospital with nowhere to call “home”. The next day we met our now-adopted son when he was only five days old. It wasn’t the timing that we would have chosen, but it was God’s. And it was perfect.

2. God will prepare you for your unique role.

I think sometimes when people talk about some righteous action they’re passionate about, they sometimes unwittingly make people feel pressured or guilty if they don’t share their zeal or their specific application of God’s commands. That’s not my intent–not everyone is called to foster children.

God always equips us for what he calls us to do. Kayla and I read convicting Scriptures and blog articles that tilled the soil of our hearts and softened them to what he had for us. Some in our church joined us in fostering children. Others surrounded us with love and care, helping to watch our other children as needed, providing transportation for our son’s visits, providing respite care, diapers, and meals. Fostering our son was a group effort by our church family.

The proverb that God used to prepare us for adoption implies that all don’t have the same capacity or ability to do the same kinds of good to those in need (Prov. 3:27). But even the smallest good done in Jesus’ name toward these children in need and those fostering them is hugely helpful here and now and has eternal significance (Matthew 10:42).

3. It will be costlier than you think, and you’ll receive more than you’ll give.

Tim and I have spoken often about overcoming our self-protective hesitations around fostering. When considering fostering, he and I shared a fear of growing attached, of our families growing attached, and then having to experience the loss of a child we’d grown to love.

But God used this well-known C.S. Lewis quote to highlight that the cost we were afraid to experience was woven into the fabric of true love:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” (2)

Fostering is costly, whether the child stays with you for days or for a lifetime. It’s likely your heart will ache at some point, and it will give you an opportunity to grow in Christ-likeness. The love that God has lavished on us in Christ was a costly love. It's that same love that compels us to love others without respect to what it costs us–the kind of love that puts our card on file for their needs (Luke 10:35).

The Lord used fostering to teach us a new dimension of his love. We realized early on, as we fought the desire to hold back parts of our heart from this boy we weren’t sure would be ours forever, that loving him with all of our hearts and giving him Jesus for as long as we were able would be the greatest gift we could give him. My wife captured this reality beautifully and memorably in those early days:

I'm learning a new kind of love over here. It's a strange thing to love a tiny person that you didn't birth, and that you have no guarantee of keeping. To give them love not because they are your blood, or because they are or will be your child, or because they can be grateful to you in any kind of way, but just because they are a child–and children are valuable. And because the Master said "will you care for one of My lambs?" And there's only one answer to that question. It's hard to love fully knowing that you might have to let go, but to be able to sow seeds of eternal prayers in a little person's future? And to be able to sing the name of Jesus in their ear and pray they never forget? It's an honor of the highest kind.

And a greater honor still is that, since then, our son has called on the name sung in his ear all his life and on the word of the gospel he’s heard daily in our home. According to God’s good pleasure, our Asher’s adoption into our family led to his adoption in God’s family.

There are 22,000 kids like Asher, David, and Timothy in New England foster care waiting for homes. If the Lord calls you to show costly love in the world of foster care, you’ll find he has many blessings for you in this unique way of adorning the gospel. And you may just be the means God uses to bring them into his family, our Lord Jesus presenting them to the Father with the same words Tim got to hear yesterday: “These are now your sons.”

Endnotes

Stats are from Fostering Hope New England
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves.