My Family
My family is by no means, ordinary. In fact, most of the children we have are not even our own flesh but they are still our children. Intrigued? Read below to see how God gave me such a unique family and how this path He brought me down has taught me so much about what real love is all about.
As a married young adult, I find that one of the biggest aspects of life outside of career is a family. In fact, many people today should be more concerned with their family than their career. It saddens me daily to see how many young families have incorrect priorities. It’s believed in most parts of the USA that the man does the work and the wife stays at home with the kids and that once the father gets home, the kids need to leave him alone. I cannot accept this because I was raised in one such household where my father worked so often that he was gone more than he was there. As I aged, I began to see how much of a marked impact this had on my siblings and I – worst of all was watching what my father’s absence did to my sister.
With all these things in mind, I committed to myself and to my wife that I would be there for my children much more than my father ever was for me. As my marriage began to prosper, my wife and I were elated about about the concept of having kids. We had been successful in our careers thus far, I had managed to quit smoking, and we really felt that it was the right time to have kids. We both loved working with the kids at our church and they really seemed to be drawn to us. We were lauded by parents at the church for our devotion and our ability to teach. Yet for some reason, my wife seemed unable to bear children. We went to a doctor and found that due to a health issue known as PCOS, she was declared infertile. Despite this fact, we continued to pray and even went through the painful world of fertility treatments. Three years after we tried to have children of our own, we had come up empty handed. Needless to say, we were spiritually devastated and struggled to stay positive.
I recall one night that I walked out on the back porch of my house to see snow begin falling on the city. I was overcome with the beauty of it all but I felt myself burst to tears and I cried out to God “Why can you produce such beauty but cause me so much pain?” I began to beg God for children, I felt such a huge void in my life and Tiff felt the same way. Anxiously, I prayed daily for some guidance and read my Bible daily seeking some form of hope. I finally felt that God gave me something simple, I read that Christians are called to show love for the widows and the orphans and that many children were orphans due to the enemy’s clutches. He finally moved my heart to consider the world of fostering children. When I first asked Tiff to consider this, her answer was a strong “NO!” – she felt that foster kids would be too hard for her to give them up if she had to. Who could blame her? Moreover, both of us felt like these kids might be really bad kids as the general public leads us to believe. Disheartened, I went back to my study and my prayers, I asked God to move on Tiff’s heart if it was really His will that we do this, I certainly could not move it on my own.
After a month or two of more dead ends in having our own children, Tiff finally broke down. She told me that she was in deep pain because she felt like God didn’t want her to be a mommy and that was something she had wanted her whole life (look at the toys little girls play with. 🙂 ). I comforted her and told her that I felt God wanted her to be a mommy, but a mommy who had a much more noble calling than most mommies. After a bit more discussion, I convinced her to TRY fostering. She relented and we began the process to open our home as a foster home. To tell you all of the details would prove very long indeed and might not be all that exciting so suffice to say, this process was a long and grueling process that took at least 6 months and mountains of paperwork.
Once we were finally an open home, the waiting continued. Weeks went by without hearing anything from our worker. Tiff prayed aloud that God had not brought her a child even this way but she heard Him say “I will bring you a child in my time, not yours.” We stopped our sadness and just prayed for God’s grace to provide us with the child promised. Finally, after three or four months of waiting, our worker called us and told us that she had a 3 1/2 year old fiery redhead girl that needed a home and asked if we wanted to take her. She had no physical sickness but was a physical trauma victim which made her a bit difficult at times but that was the worst of it. We agreed to take her and on Sept. 28, 2008, our first foster daughter moved in with us and turned our lives upside down.
Since we had no previous experience parenting, we threw ourselves at the mercy of our foster daughter’s counselors. They were amazing and provided us countless books on parenting and dealing with adoptive children, dealing with trauma victims, and so on. We also followed their advice at every corner. Sure – we have been spit on, kicked, hit, clawed, bitten, and spent many nights thinking we were totally insane for choosing to do this. But our hearts remained strong and our foster daughter blossomed because of it. On August 3, 2009, we adopted her into our family forever. Our families and friends have been an amazing anchor in all of this and thanks to the counselors, we met up with several other families who were dealing with the exact same stuff we were dealing with. Once you become a foster parent, you find other foster parents and can make amazing friends who understand exactly what you are going through.
Tirelessly, we worked to help our foster daughter through her various issues, including PTSD, RAD, ODD, and many others. She eventually graduated from the trauma counseling program. She grew into a teenager and now a young adult. I wish I could say that she turned out great but that would simply not be true. She has chosen to go her own way and is now estranged from our family. I pray for her safety and for God to work on her heart. I know that someday, He will reconcile her at least to himself if not to us. Despite the pain this has caused us, God used this unique child to show us the meaning behind loving others and learning to be “cruel to be kind.” It’s easy to feel like a failure in times like this, but I disagree. We loved her with everything we had, and she chose not to accept it. God loves us unconditionally but sometimes lets us wander in the wilderness until the time is right.
A few years into fostering, we had cared for a few different children but had not had children from my wife’s womb, but we kept trying while still learning to care for the orphans. If God chose to bless us with a child from birth, we would gladly take them. But He brought us another challenge – a newborn baby boy to foster. We picked him up from the hospital a week after he was born; he had stayed there because no families had opened their home to him until we did. It became apparent that this young child had some severe issues that needed to be addressed by a medical professional. We fought with DHS and the courts until we were approved to take him to any medical practice covered by his insurance. After a litany of tests and so many doctors appointments that my wife had to stop her job (he at one time had over 21 doctors and therapists), we were able to determine his battery of needs including: Cerebral Palsy, Autism, Disgenesis of the Corpus Collosum, and many other issues we cannot even pronounce. Life with an autistic child with severe allergies took some adjusting, but we continued. We later learned that this little boy was expected to live only 6 months and never walk or talk. I am pleased to say that by God’s grace, he is now many years beyond that time (over 14 years, in fact) and can do both walking and talking quite well. We adopted him into our family in 2012. Being a special needs parent is not easy, but he is a fantastic miracle of God. He is one of the kindest and most sincere children you will ever meet and genuinely cares about his family and friends.
Only a month into fostering this fragile little one, God brought us another child, a two-month-old infant who had been in an entire body cast until a week before we met him. He was a trauma victim and dark-skinned. We still took him as our own and watched with amazement as he grew into a fantastic young man gifted with high intuitiveness, breathtaking athletic ability, and a frighteningly sharp intellect. He scarcely shows any signs of PTSD and has been healthy for most of his life. We had to fight a grim legal battle, but finally, God granted us the ability to adopt him in 2014. He and his slightly fragile brother are inseparable and, despite looking nothing alike, are more connected to each other than some blood brothers. As he has grown into a young man and grappled with his identity, we have naturally struggled as his parents. Though he wears a tough-as-nails exterior, you can still see hints of the man he can become.
After taking in three children for adoption, it is essential to note that this was not the end of the line. We fostered over 12 children at various times and became actively involved in the community around foster care, including hosting a monthly support group for foster and adoptive parents. Once you are in this world, it is tough to leave it and you find lots of families that crave that support and just knowing they are not alone.
The most grandiose blessing we have ever seen God offer my family occurred in 2014. Through an amazing series of circumstances that could only be possible by God’s hand, my wife and I were blessed with two biological children, twins, one boy and one girl. This was the net result of over 10 years of prayer, tears, seeking, and waiting. These two children show us that God is always faithful, no matter how long it takes. With 4 kids, I think it’s safe to say that our hearts and house are… full.
But God was not done with us yet. After blessing us immensely with a wonderful life, 4 crazy children, a good house with lots of space, and a comfortable life, he brought another change to our hearts—a desire to show love to people of all nations. We began hosting international students with a fateful 1 month period with a Japanese girl that showed us how much broader and more interesting our lives could be. Shortly after that one month, we became an international host family, starting with a high schooler from Japan (we wanted to start with what we knew), and later, another high schooler from Denmark. These two girls blessed us richly and connected us to a whole community of exchange families and students, and God is giving us many new ways to reach and bless others because of this. We have yearly exchange students and also international friends from a local university from time to time.
In some ways, Tiff feels more like Abraham’s wife Sarah than one might expect. From a barren woman and a man with a desire to follow the Lord, our family now stretches across the world and back. We have hosted students from Japan, Denmark, Thailand, the Netherlands, Chile, Egypt, and Germany. Adding the friends of these exchange students who spent large parts of their time with our family, we can add Spain, Brazil, Taiwan, South Korea, France, and Italy to the list. But the story continues! Through our Au Pair, whom we invited to our home to help during the COVID pandemic, we added South Africa to the list and now have our first international grandchild. Other friends from Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Ghana have come to our family. When we add it up, this “barren” family has expanded to include over 36 international children who still keep in touch with us and come to see us if their lives allow. We have also befriended many of the biological parents of our international children and their friends and family. We have definitely been blessed more than we can express by our bonus children.
My family is what you would call “Mixed” or “different,” but it’s still perfect in God’s ways. God adopted us even though we may not be the best children in the world’s eyes. I wish I could encourage everyone to foster and adopt, but with our life experience, I can only say to consider it cautiously. If you expect a simple life with regular parental challenges that are quickly resolved, this is not the life for you. But if you are willing to cast your cares on the Lord, you will find a depth of love and compassion that is only possible by God’s grace.