When I was seven years old, I went to a private Christian school in Hesperia, California. My teacher's name was Mrs. Thompson. She was rather large, and black hairs stuck out through her nylons on her legs. But I loved her. Surely there could be no teacher so caring as Mrs. Thompson! And she read to us every day. One story she read was Star of Light, by Patricia St. John. The story tells of a fatherless boy who rescues his blind baby sister from being sold to a beggar. The boy takes this baby to a city where a missionary lives. The missionary opens her home every night to feed street children and tell them the gospel. The boy, Hamid, sets his sister Kinza on the missionary's doorstep, hoping the lady will have pity on the blind girl. Of course she does, and everyone lives fairly happily ever after.
This story was the first time I realized that there were children in the world who did not have parents caring for them. I made a vow in my young heart that when I was old enough, I would run an orphanage for kids with no homes.
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| One of the lessons in Toddler Boot Camp: how NOT to drown |
Well, fast forward 21 years, and I realized that I couldn't actually start an orphanage single-handedly. Foster care seemed to be a good way to get my feet wet. So I signed up to take in school-aged children. I got a call for a baby boy. Isn't that how foster care works! Of course I took him, and now he's my own son. I gripe frequently about "the system", about children bouncing in and out of care, about never having a "settled life". But the truth? I love doing foster care! I love taking small children through "toddler boot camp", where they learn to eat properly, talk, play in the dirt, bathe, and sleep through the night.
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