My Adopted Childhood
I’m adopted. My older sister is too. She once found her birth family. I didn’t. She said I’d change my mind when I had kids of my own. Nope. Every now and then, especially when pro-life and pro-choice themes clash in the headlines, I think about my birth parents and thank them both in my heart, especially my birth mother. But that soon passes.
All I know about my birth parents was that they were young and not ready to start a family in 1978. They weren’t married. I doubt they were even a serious couple. She was part of the prestigious music program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He was a welder. I’ve supposedly got some Mexican blood in me, but my sunburns, blonde hair, and blue eyes make me doubt just how much.  I’m no musician, either. I was given birth one hot summer’s night in the downtown hospital of Kansas City, Missouri—the one that takes in anybody who comes in because they have to.
After spending several weeks in foster care my adoptive parents, or who I call my parents, raised me in the suburbs of Kansas City. They always told my sister and me that we were adopted. It was our normal. I never thought much more about being adopted than I did being left-handed, and being left-handed was quite annoying in school with special scissors and writing desks to use. Sometimes classmates would be shocked to hear I was adopted, but I wouldn’t know why. I never viewed it as something bad, let alone odd. After all, my sister was just like me. It’s who we were.
Sometimes I’d go with my Dad to work. Well, “go to” is a bit much. He was a courier who used his own vehicle. I’d walk into offices and machine shops to pick up and drop off deliveries where people would make the usual small-talk about taking the kid to work. They’d also say I looked just like my Dad. He had a dark complexion, was tall, and very big. He too was adopted. My Dad would smile in reply, but not say much. We both knew we looked nothing alike, but what’s the point in saying that out loud. After all, my Mom said one reason they got to adopt me was because I was a big baby and my Dad was a big man.
Our Natural Family
Once I grew up and got married my wife and I had no trouble having kids of our own. We conceived somewhat accidentally a whopping seven weeks into our marriage. We were both students and scared out of our minds. I worked part-time stocking grocery shelves at one of our college town’s seven Wal-Marts. “Babies aren’t as much trouble as people make them seem,” said my mother-in-law. “They certainly don’t need all the stuff people say they do. Just give them love, and they’ll be fine.”
She was right. We were fine after one child and then two and three. The year my wife turned twenty-eight years old we were already a family of five. I was still a student, but no longer working at Wal-Mart. I had moved on to raising funds on the phone and stocking light bulbs at a warehouse. With one boy and two daughters we were blessed, but my wife always thought we’d have more children. There was one problem, though. Each pregnancy was harder on my wife’s body. She almost died after giving birth to our oldest daughter and the last trimester of her third pregnancy left her body on the brink of diabetes. It didn’t seem wise for us to try to have any more kids. It was…settled. But we weren’t.
Our Hopes to Adopt
Once I finally stopped being a student and moved into our first home we thought about how our family might still grow. My sister had adopted an older boy out of the foster system in their state after having two kids of her own. We had lots of friends too who were adopting kids out of foster care in the state where we used to live. We caught the fever. “Why don’t we adopt?”
That’s the easy part. We told our kids about the idea. One of them asked where we’d get these kids from. “Are they, like, just on the street or something?” We told them that some parents aren’t able to raise their kids, so they need families like ours to say we’ll raise them and they’ll be part of our family. I told them about me and my sister, about their Papa who was also adopted, and about his Dad, their great-grandfather, who was an orphan at one time.
We live in a city of 450 people in rural South Dakota. The nearest private adoption agency is a good 4-to-5-hour drive away. We quickly learned it wasn’t feasible, or affordable, to go that route. We contacted our state’s Department of Social Services. It took some time for us to be licensed, but once we were we could then look at matches: the right fit for our family.
Unfortunately, we learned rather slowly, that no child was ever going to be deemed a good match. We never even got to the first step of being considered as adoptive parents with any child we inquired about. If there were special needs, our community wasn’t a good fit to provide for them. If it was a child in our state’s foster system, it was likely Native American, making us by federal law a last resort—at best—to be their forever family. Adopting turned into a pipe dream.
Our Foster Family
Although we never thought we’d end up as a foster family, that’s exactly what we became. We were already licensed, so when the first call came with a child who needs a place now, not a forever family, not someone to raise them for years, but just somebody for now, for however long “now” may last, it was hard to say no. We found each time we answered that call how much harder it is to say yes.
In five years we’ve had about a dozen different children come through our home. Some were just for a night or two. Others, for a week. A few of them for months. They’ve ranged in age from ten years to two months. All of them were easy to love, and most of them presented challenges while in our care.
One infant was freaked out, never resting day or night. She finally got on a reasonable schedule the day before she left us. One toddler couldn’t speak well and wouldn’t go to bed on night one without his “aerbayy!!!!” We had no idea what that meant. We’d just met him. He got out of bed continuously. He screamed. He cried. He punched. He kicked. The next morning we were putting on his jacket in our entryway and a tiny toy airplane fell out of the pocket. He happily said, “aerbayy!!!.” I looked at my wife, wondering why we couldn’t be lucky enough have this epiphany twelve hours prior.
The oldest kid we ever had was shuffled to our home after a teenager sibling at his foster family was killed in an auto accident. Although we weren’t the ones who made the decision for him to move to another home away from us, he thought we were mad at him. He had much anger in general and a lot of scars. Actual, physical scars all over his body. His emotional scars, though, dug much deeper. His little brother, who was at an institution across the state, was about eight years old and didn’t even speak.
Fostering is an intensifier. Whatever your normal life holds as a poker hand, foster care gives you a wild card. The good times get better, the bad times get worse, and the stressful times…well, you can only imagine.
But each placement has always been worth it, even when they’d leave and there was a pit in your chest that replaces where they once were. After some time without foster kids in the house our life would return to normal till we’d get the next call and say yes again. Repeat. Our Foster Family on Easter 2017
The Last Time
We’re about to move out of state again. I don’t know when, exactly. It depends on our missionary fundraising efforts.* But with all the changes coming to our family this year we had to make the hard decision that we’d no longer be a foster family. We had a couple kids, starting in late January, and we hoped they would be able to find a good long-term fit by the end of May, before we go on some lengthy fundraising trips this summer.
That was the plan, anyway. In early May my wife had to undergo some rather serious surgery. At first we thought it wouldn’t be too serious. We thought we could have our foster kids back after a day or two, or maybe the weekend, or…maybe not at all. She’ll take weeks, not days, to fully recover.
I hate having to gather all the things up when the kids leave for good: clothes, supplies, toys. My wife has a no-trash-bag policy when it comes to gathering up our foster kids' belongings. But without any planning, I had to use some of them for clothes. It’s a little like cleaning out a loved one’s room when they die. Each item put away brings back painful memories. It’s like a funeral in our family—one that we invite and ask for again and again and again. Things are so quiet.
“Oh, we could never foster. We’d love the kids so much and wouldn’t be able to let them go.” That’s the standard, #1 response people give foster parents. And, on behalf of foster parents everywhere, let me tell you what we’re really thinking in our heads when you say that to us: “We love them too! It’s hard for us to let them go too! We’re not monsters. Like Shakespeare’s Venetian merchant, if you prick us we bleed too. It’s a sucker punch to the gut to let them go, leaving you collapsed on the pavement gasping for air only to be kicked in the ribs.”
But, it’s still worth it, and here’s why:
Hospitality: I can’t say for other adoptees, but hospitality is something I will always treasure. I cry each time the bishop welcomes Jean Valjean in Les Mis. I let strangers come into my home. I get to know people who stay at our little motel across the street. A family took me in when I was most vulnerable, so I love taking others in too. Where we live right now lacks a culture of hospitality, at least for people who aren’t family. Likewise, not many adventurers accidentally wander through our part of the prairie, especially in winter. Fostering has been a way for our family to befriend the stranger, welcome the other, and show God’s love to the most vulnerable.
Selflessness: I love the phrase, “foster family,” because my wife and I are not just the parents, our kids are foster siblings. They give up their space and their parents’ attention. They play, mentor, and encourage. Foster children are often developmentally behind their peers and need intense therapy. Our local physical therapist jokes that the Jones kids are some of the best physical therapists he knows. He gives my kids the next goal for their foster sibling, and they get working on it immediately. As a Christian I believe we are all set to selfish default-modes, especially as children. Fostering has a been a great tool in teaching my kids to be more selfless
We parents must learn selflessness too. Parenting in general is an ongoing exercise in selflessness and foster parenting is doubly so. When I’m cleaning up spoiled-yogurty vomit and changing explosive diapers all in the same morning, I may daydream about a tangent of my life where I’m not caring for these kids right now. The irony being that the only reason I am caring for them is that their own parents, for whatever reason, decided not to. I’ve Facebook stalked birth parents before. The lowest was when one of them was at an art show in my hometown, while I was dealing with a kid who took his diaper off in the middle of the night and created a laundry disaster the next morning. I like art too and haven’t been in my hometown for years after my Dad died and my Mom moved away. But, sure let me go back to smelling things I hadn’t smelled before and doing laundry on little sheets for the fourth day in a row.
Patience: I’d not known about the anger I had in me until I had kids, but I’d not known about the extent of my self-control until I became a foster parent. None of the things they do that annoy me is their fault. None. But I’m tempted to blame, yell, cry, or bargain all the same. Like humility, patience is something never completely mastered, and foster parenting is graduate studies in the endeavor.
Joy: We live in a bustling world that’s loads of fun. Being human, too, is a blast. You get the privilege of introducing bubbles, lemons, Blue’s Clues, crossing state lines, dancing, and more to kids. The first time a little stranger in your house gives out a belly laugh at a dopey dog video on YouTube, you can’t help but smile. The morning routine of dancing before the older kids go to school, as the baby grabs a toy microphone and croons, sticks with you throughout the day.
Hospitality, selflessness, and patience culminate in joy. Fostering has enhanced our lives together as a family, not diminished it. For whatever reasons people tell themselves as to why they would never foster, I say you’re missing out.
The first week after our last foster kids left has been hard. I held my pain in quite a bit as I ran errands, walking back and forth to our main street with watery eyes. I miss those two little kids every day, and I never even got to say a proper goodbye. They’ll always be in my heart.
But we had to let go, and when we did I’m so thankful there was another foster family who could take our place.
Maybe you’ll be that family for someone else.

*I’m always fundraising. If you would like to know more about our journey, checkout: http://nabonmission.org/missionaries/brandon-marci-jones/