Reckless Love

Foster and adoptive parenting is the most reckless kind of love.

Taking your “perfect” family or “perfect life” and opening it up to “kids with problems”? 

Reckless.

Signing up to knowingly parent a child who could have a lifelong battle overcoming their traumas?

Reckless.

Choosing to jump in the fire when no one else will because it’s too scary to them?

Reckless.

Being there for a child you are going to lose?

Reckless.

Saying yes when people will call you crazy and who tell you you should say no?

Reckless.

Allowing your home to be evaluated and judged on safety at any given moment that the case workers feel like popping in?

Reckless.

Allowing your parenting style to be judged by therapists, coaches, and caseworkers?

Reckless.

Continuing to foster when you KNOW good families who have been eaten alive by the system (the system is NOT SAFE for ANYONE—the kids or the families who help alike)?

Reckless. Maybe extra reckless.

A friend recently asked me what the “benefits” are of kinship foster parenting. 

The more I mull over that question, the more I laugh at the irony. 

Besides being able to pray to Mother Teresa ? Besides spending a temporary amount of time with a little person who needs love? Besides knowing that one less child in this world is staying in a shelter, group home, or DCS case office? Aside from those types of benefits, THERE ARE NONE!

It’s 100% Reckless. MAYBE 1,000% RECKLESS.

Knowing that people lose homes and marriages over the financial and emotional strains that come from jumping into this type of fire, and DOING IT ANYWAY???

RECKLESS LOVE!

What’s so beautiful about the foster adoption journey is that every day it teaches me more and more about GOD’S Reckless Love for all His children. It’s uncomfortable, it’s unconditional, it’s work, it’s selfless, it’s exhausting, it’s fulfilling, it makes me broken which I know is what makes me strong, it’s teaching my kids things they couldn’t possibly learn in any other way at this phase of their lives, it’s life-changing, it’s contradictory, it challenges the framing of the way I had ever looked at EVERYTHING. And it’s almost like the more people tell me I shouldn’t be or don’t need to be doing this, the MORE I WANT TO. The fear of the unknown used to terrify me and my husband but we took the leap of faith anyway. The fear of the worst case scenarios used to basically cripple me but now that I’ve been a parent with bio, foster, and adoptive kids, the concept of this reckless foster love almost gives me an adrenaline rush (it’s easy to be excited about it since I’m writing this as the kids are sleeping; when they wake up it’s all back to work again...😂.)

The passion of believing that everyone “should” adopt is part of what led me to where I am today. Now I understand that not everyone can or should. But I’ve learned that just because it’s a hard path to take doesn’t mean that my husband and I “shouldn’t”. And certainly, just because someone else couldn’t or wouldn’t choose to do it, doesn’t mean for one second that it’s not the right path for us to give this kind of life our very best shot.

I have learned that I don’t need other people to get me or understand me. I just need to be me, and when I am authentic to who I am and who I want to be (the person God has called me to be), that makes me happy. 

Even if it’s reckless to be me. 

Here are 2 Christian Songs that explain in beautiful ways just how Reckless God Himself can be:

Reckless Love by Cory Asbury

So Will I by Hillsong United