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1. Foster Care, Adoption, and Saying Yes to the Unknown
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We recently found one of our daughters crying in bed. She had seemed ne the last we had seen her before going upstairs, so this took us a bit o guard. In a home with four daughters there always seems to be something to cry about, but when she calmed down enough to share with us what it was this time, we were shocked.
Hitler. at’s right, HITLER was on her mind, and apparently had been for the past several weeks. What?! She told us that her class was doing a research project at school and that each student could select any topic they wanted to learn more about. She didn’t choose butter ies or dolphins or dandelions or the North Pole. She chose, of all possible topics, Hitler, and had been haunted by the things she has learned ever since— justi ably so—and afraid that bad things like that might happen to her—understandably so. “My mind can’t stop thinking about it,” she confessed. Having carried this burden alone for so long, she nally broke that night in bed.
Is she one day going to learn about these horri c events of the past? Yes, this detail will inevitably become a part of her education. Should she? Probably—it’s important for her to understand that part of our history. But not right now. Not yet. No nine-year-old can comprehend these things. No nine-year-old should have to. (We arranged to have the research topic changed!)
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The mercy of not knowing
ere’s danger in knowing things before such knowledge is necessary, appropriate, or helpful. It can be too much too soon. is is true in the “big” things of life but also in the daily, mundane, routine ones. I don’t want those gruesome images haunting my nine-year-old for the same reasons I don’t want my four-year-old to know how to open a childproof bottle of medicine. She isn’t ready to carry the weight of that information. It could be detrimental, not useful. Harmful rather than helpful.
We see God making the same kinds of assessments in Scripture. He called Abraham to leave his fairly settled and comfortable life to journey toward a new land with which he was wholly unfamiliar. In Genesis 12:1, 4 God says to him, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. . . . So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”
He le the certainty of his homeland for the uncertainty of what God hadn’t yet shown him. Not because it was the easiest thing to do, but because God had called him to do it and promised that it would be worth it in the end. Hebrews 11:8 summarizes long a er the fact: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive and an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” Abraham had no idea how signi cant the hard things or how plentiful the good things would be along the journey. All he knew was that God wanted him to
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go, . . . and so he did. e rest of the information unfolded, as needed, along the way.
God will intentionally, lovingly, and mercifully refrain from providing us with certain pieces of information at certain times along our journeys—not to deprive us of knowing things but to protect us from the burden of knowing too much too soon—a seemingly subtle distinction with signi cantly di erent implications. is mercy of not knowing, in fact, is one of His most profound acts of mercy toward us. He says go, we ask where, and He simply encourages us to not worry about that right now.
A whole lot of hope
ere are very few things about the foster care and adoption journey my wife and I knew before stepping into it. We knew there was a huge problem in our city, that vulnerable kids needed loving homes, and that God was leading us to get involved. But that was about it. We knew what we needed to know at the time, and it was enough to allow us to step into something largely unknown. It was frustrating and intimidating at times—not knowing what we didn’t know— but perhaps knowing more would have been even more frightening.
If you had asked me ve years ago to tell you what I thought fostering and adopting would be like, there could have been no way for me to have anticipated with any accuracy what was to come. e experience has ebbed and owed in intensity, and
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evolved our family through multiple iterations, scenarios, and compositions—driven by what seems to have been a constant reality of chaos punctuated by moments of calm. It has been a collection of experiences and emotions for which we could never have fully prepared, some ending in beautiful ways with others continuing to linger in broken ways. We’ve discovered that there really is no conclusion to any of this—this endless succession of good and bad, beautiful and broken—that these experiences and their lasting implications will remain a forever ongoing part of what and who we are. In many ways the most impactful aspects of foster care and adoption today were at one point the most hidden and least expected. We were simply unaware and mercifully incapable of comprehending all that was to come. Mercy. e mercy of God spared us from the burden of carrying information that would have potentially paralyzed us; He simply invited us on a journey: He said go, we asked where, He said don’t worry about that right now, and we said — with a little bit of fear and a whole lot of hope: “Okay, let’s do it.
All the good and the bad, the easy and the hard
Foster care and adoption have turned our family into something it would never have been able to become on its own. e good has far exceeded anything we could have hoped would come from this endeavor, permeating places in our home and hearts of which we had been largely unaware. Five years earlier, if God had told us how good this whole
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thing would be, we likely wouldn’t have believed Him. But He didn’t do that, and for that we’re grateful.
At the same time, foster care and adoption have required our family to grieve and struggle under the weight of hard things we would ordinarily have gone to great lengths to avoid. e experience has been far more di cult than we could ever have anticipated, pressing us down into the cracks and crevices of other people’s broken stories, while exposing the deep aws in our own. Five years ago, if God had told us how hard this thing would be, we likely wouldn’t have moved forward in obedience. But He didn’t do that, and for that we are grateful.
We’ve seen a little girl placed in our home on a permanent basis, becoming a crucial part of our new forever family. We’ve wept through the heartache of having to say goodbye to another we also loved as our own—despite her begging us to let her stay, we had absolutely no control over the situation. We’ve struggled through the seemingly insurmountable hurdles of fostering a teenage mom on the brink of aging out—a baby struggling to raise her own baby with a lifetime of past trauma rearing its ugly head in every aspect of her present reality. We’ve invited another young mom, and her newborn twins, into our home in order to prevent foster care from becoming a part of their precious, brand new, and completely innocent stories—a clash of worlds under one roof, with uniquely beautiful and unbelievably di cult outcomes born as a result.
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In the end, it’s the mercy of God that He doesn’t show us everything that will unfold in the foster care and adoption journey the moment we rst say yes to it. All the hard would be too unbearable and all the good would be too unbelievable.
A hope that outpaces
Whether you’re just now considering leaving your land of certainty to set foot into the vast unknowns of foster care or adoption or are immersed in the journey already but uncertain how this whole thing is going to play out, let your faith in what you do know drive you. Never let your fear of what you don’t know deter you. I’m convinced that God is far more pleased by your willingness to be faithful on the journey than He is concerned about your inability to control any of the good or bad that will inevitably come along the way.
So let’s allow our hope in what’s to come outpace all the uncertainties of what it will take to actually get there. It will be far more di cult than you could possibly imagine, . . . and far more beautiful than you could ever have hoped for.
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PERSONAL REFLECTION
1. How has foster care been more difficult than you thought it would be? How has it been more beautiful and rewarding? 2. What one aspect of the experience, had you known up front how hard it would be, would have made it more difficult for you to say yes to foster care? After the fact, what have you learned through it? In hindsight, how has God been merciful in the “not knowing”? 3. What one thing, had you known ahead of time how amazing it would be, would you have had a hard time believing? What has been one of the most surprising highlights of the fostering journey for you? How has
God demonstrated His mercy through this experience?
GROUP DISCUSSION
1. What truth, idea, or “aha!” has stood out for you most clearly in this session? Why? 2. In what other areas of your life has God “intentionally, lovingly, and mercifully refrained from providing you with certain pieces of information” to protect you from the burden of knowing them too soon? 3. What have been the most difficult aspects of fostering for you? The most beautiful? Have either of these surprised you? What have you learned about yourself, the world,
God, and the gospel through these experiences?
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4. What are one or two primary ways in which you have experienced the “mercy of not knowing” in your foster care journey?
PLAN OF ACTION
1. What specific perspectives, attitudes, or ways of thinking might need to change in order for you to more effectively live out the ideas discussed in this section? 2. What specific actions or behaviors might need to change in order for you to more completely live out the ideas discussed in this section? 3. Based on what has been discussed in this section, complete the following statement as thoroughly and honestly as you can: I will choose to honor God through this experience by . . .
God does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us rst one stick, which we are to carry today, and then another, which we are to carry tomorrow, and so on.
JOHN NEWTON
