I’ll never forget the first time foster care was brought up in my life. My husband and I had our first baby young, and right in the middle of diapers and sleepless nights, he looked at me and said, “What about being foster parents?” Honestly, I thought he was crazy. We had just started our family. We were still figuring out who we were. I pushed the thought out of my head and moved on.
As the years went by, we added three more children to our family, all girls. And again, my husband brought it up. “Foster care.” I looked at him like he had lost his mind. I had four little kids under my roof. The last thing I wanted was to bring a stranger into the middle of our chaos. But he didn’t let it go. He told me to pray about it. He told me that one day, we’d do this.
And little by little, my heart began to change. God started nudging me in small ways. At first, I still said no. No to the idea, no to my husband, no to God. But after years of shutting the door, I finally felt Him softening me. We went through all the licensing classes and paperwork, and I’ll be honest, the whole time I thought, “I don’t know if I can actually do this.”
Before our license even came in the mail, the phone rang. It was a worker asking if we’d take a little boy, five years old. My heart leapt. Yes, of course yes. I hung up the phone and told the kids. Everyone was excited. But then the phone rang again. Plans had changed. The boy was going to be placed with his sibling. My heart sank.
That same worker then asked us another question: would we take a twelve-year-old boy? He was brand new to foster care and the only way he could stay in his school was if he came to us. Twelve felt like a world away from five. But after some talking, we said yes. An hour later, he walked into our lives, scared and quiet.
That boy changed us forever. He needed stability, love, and people who wouldn’t give up on him. And as we gave him those things, he flourished. Looking back, I realize how lonely we felt during that time. There wasn’t much support around foster care then. It was just us, figuring it out. But we knew we would never go back to “comfortable.” He became our forever son, and our hearts were bigger for it.
Fast forward eight years. Foster care is still a big part of our lives. Our oldest kids are now adults, but our home is still full, ten children under our roof. Life is noisy, messy, overwhelming, but it’s also beautiful.
On the other side of this story is Lisa. Her foster care journey started differently than mine. She and her husband struggled with infertility and went through IVF, which gave them twins. Life felt complete. But foster care kept tugging at her. She tried to push it away too, until one day she heard her pastor say, “God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him.” That sentence stuck.
She and her husband went through training and eventually got their license. At first, they provided short-term care, but then came the call: a baby boy needed a home. Lisa said yes, and that little one became theirs. Later, his baby brother joined them too.
Then one day, Lisa got asked to take in a fifteen-year-old girl for just the weekend. It was supposed to be short, but that weekend turned into weeks, and then something much bigger. Parenting a teenager was overwhelming, and she didn’t know where to turn.
That’s where I came in. We had met briefly at a Christmas event, but we didn’t really know each other yet. When Lisa’s world started to feel heavy, I stepped in to help. At first, it was just respite care, giving her a break. But soon we were co-parenting, advocating, showing up to meetings together, and doing everything we could to give this girl stability.
That season bonded us for life. We called ourselves “Sister Moms.” Our families blended, our kids became close, and our husbands built their own friendship. It wasn’t always easy, foster care rarely is, but together, we found strength we didn’t know we had.
People around us even gave us a new name, a mix of our last names: “The Jantoyas.” To us, it means more than a nickname. It means two families, once strangers, now one big village, standing together, letting God write a story bigger than either of us could have dreamed.
