After getting married we realized we wanted to foster and adopt, so we started the process earlier than planned.
We took her advice. That week, I called the local Department of Human Services (DHS) office and asked how we could get started. We quickly signed up for a foundations class and were excited to begin the process. We thought a year sounded like a great timeline we weren’t quite ready to have kids yet, but we were getting there.
In the foundations class, we started to get a clearer picture of what it was really like to become foster parents. We were a little scared but were becoming more and more passionate about it and looking forward to the future.
The next step after the class was to fill out an application. When we completed the application and dropped it off at the DHS office, we decided the occasion called for a celebration. It felt like the first big benchmark in becoming parents, in starting a family. So, we celebrated the best way we knew how: by going to Chuck E. Cheese and playing games and making Build-A-Bears to give to our future foster children.
After that, there was a bit of downtime while we waited to be assigned to a certifier. We thought waiting was something we would have to get used to in the certification process, but we would soon find out that wasn’t the case. During our first meeting with our certifier, he asked a lot of questions about us and began writing up our home study a file of information about who we are that is to be used to match us with potential foster and adoptive children after we become certified.
They unexpectedly learned about three siblings who needed a home and even with doubts and no preparation, they kept saying yes until they choose to become their parents.
The date was set for the weekend before Thanksgiving. We had a few weeks to prepare. In addition to getting the house ready, we decided to take a ‘babymoon’ to Seattle to spend time together. One of the scariest things for us was wondering what would happen to our relationship.
Would we ever be the same? Were we throwing away our newlywed years? (We had just celebrated our first year of marriage the month before.) Was our relationship going to suffer? We didn’t have the answers, but we had hope that things would go well.
On that Saturday before Thanksgiving, we were both a bundle of nerves. We were behind on preparing and cleaning and got a late start making breakfast. We were in the middle of making pancakes when the doorbell rang. And just like that, we were parents. No turning back now.
The first few weeks felt so strange. We were a group of strangers trying to be a family. The kids were wonderful. They were struggling to adjust to a new home (a challenge I can’t even begin to comprehend), but they were doing so well overall. We loved them. The adjustment was hard for us, though.
Even though we loved them and even though this was what we had signed up for, we were having a very difficult time. Emotionally, we were trying to catch up with everything, with instantly becoming parents. This wasn’t babysitting, it was full-blown parenthood we had just stepped into. No easing us in, no subtlety, just all at once.
We cried a lot, and we honestly weren’t sure if we were cut out for it. But we kept going. And each day we chose to keep going was the best decision we ever made. Because over time, we truly became a family. There was no one moment when it happened. But after a while, when we heard them call us ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’ we started to believe it. We were learning in messy and imperfect moments how to be their parents.
The fostered children with love faced heartbreaking goodbyes but kept choosing to open their heart again.
