You never want to be the one who answers the phone. If it goes to voicemail you can check it later. Maybe by the time you call the social worker back some other family has said yes to caring for these kids. You could say, “Oh, that’s great. We would’ve done it, but I’m glad you found someone.” And then go back to your regularly scheduled life.
But when you’re the one who answers the phone you have to give the voice on the other end some answer. It’s hard to say yes, especially if you’ve ever done it before. But it’s even harder to say no.
Last Wednesday my wife was the one who answered the phone. She called me within a few minutes and we agreed that getting two toddlers would be a challenge, but a manageable one. The next day they arrived.
I sometimes feel like a detective the first week of a foster placement. I never get to visit the crime scene, so to speak, but I imagine it. Eight kids living in one house without much adult interaction as the older siblings struggle to care for the younger ones. If you’re twelve years old, I imagine keeping toddlers breathing each day is about the best you can hope for.
The kids came without any structure. They grew accustomed to eating when they pleased and sleeping when they pleased, which isn’t much at all during the daytime. But we’re working on that.
The older one, almost three, doesn’t talk. He hears okay and can get plenty loud, but a lot of times he’s in his own little world. His younger sister knows how to get what she wants, but mostly she just wants to be held. They both act much younger than their ages, which is pretty normal for kids who’ve been neglected.
The first morning we found them sleeping in the same bed. “At least they have each other,” I told my wife.
There have been plenty of reasons to be glad this week. Peek-a-boo is still a lot of fun, but my kids don’t think so. They all go to school in the morning, so I play it with our newcomers to the family. Toddler snacks still taste pretty good. I got a five-gallon barrel of cheese balls the other day. Those haven’t been in the house for years. Even our cat remembers them fondly. The older boy thought he was in a roller coaster when I was driving, putting up his hands and cheering across turns and hills.
There has also been a fair amount of chaos. Foster kids are almost invariably sick when they first get placed. We’ve had emergency baths at 11PM one night, 8AM another morning, and I smelled something this week I’d never smelled come out of someone’s body before. I had to open the bedroom window and put a fan in it. In January. In South Dakota.
I’m not supposed to say this, but it’s easy to imagine life with just my own family during the first week of a foster placement. Or even life with just one of the two kids, like some foster version of Sophie’s Choice. I imagine which one I’d prefer to keep. I admit, I’m not so sure right now. They both have pros and cons when it comes to what would be easier for me.
Of course, easy doesn’t come into it. Foster parenting is never easy. We all know this. That’s why most of us never sign up to do it. That’s why I didn’t want to do it. I entered the foster world backwards. It was a matter of geography, mostly. We lived several hours away from any private adoption agency—who am I kidding? we’d never afford that five-figure-dollar route—so we thought we’d look into adopting through the state. A few years later we’ve not reached one step closer to adopting a child, but we are a proud foster family.
It’s our vocation, or calling.
Vocation includes the work we are paid to do and how God uses it for his good and our best, but it also extends to how we choose to invest all of our time. And, more importantly, who we choose to invest it in. Frederick Buechner says, “the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
The news can become quite overwhelming as every single thing that is wrong with our hungry world splashes all over our screens. We become outraged. We let people know we are outraged too. But we let the problem go to our voicemails, hoping someone else will actually figure it out.
It’s easy to focus on some deep hunger that will never show up at your door one day. It’s simple to throw money at a problem, or—better yet—petition a politician to throw other people’s money at it. It’s therapeutic to boycott this or that and signal your virtue for your fellow tribespeople to see. And then you get to go back to your regularly scheduled life.
But when will you decide to answer the call God has for you?
The world’s deep hunger isn’t some abstract concept. It’s right under your nose, in your neighborhood, your family, your circle of friends, your workplace, your school.
Being a foster family isn’t everyone’s vocation. But your deep gladness can meet someone else’s deep hunger, even if it isn’t the hungry stomachs of a couple toddlers from across the river. It could be the hungry outcry of a lonely widow, the hungry despair of a workaholic parent, or the hungry outbursts of the angriest person on your news feed. I’ve heard the saying, “think globally, act locally.” But there’s rarely any action at all these days, just words.
The next time God calls, answer. Don’t let it go to voicemail, hoping someone else steps up.
Whoever said you get to schedule your life, anyways? It’s more fun to get on the roller coaster.