Our foster daughter is in the hospital...again. We have been here for three solid weeks. Due to legal boundaries, I cannot give any more information about what hospital, what she is diagnosed with, etc. all you need to know is that we are not in Bryan for this ordeal.
What I really want to talk about is how we signed up everyone in our life for foster care when Otha and I said "yes" to taking in kids through the foster system. It seemed like a decision that just affected our family. Boy, was I wrong! We truly committed our entire community to doing foster care with us. And I cry thankful tears that none of them have protested, complained about new burdens to help us carry, or flat out punched us in the face for making their own lives busier.
Our family and church community did not begin participating after we received our first placement, they dove in months before that. Who watched Asher during the twelve nights we did foster care certification classes? Who logged a lot of hours putting our house together to help us pass all of our house inspections? Who filled out recommendations and sat through interviews to prove that the Grahams would not murder foster children? The most annoying of all the tasks, who had to get the impossible fingerprints done and deal with worst-mood-ever-fingerprinting-receptionist? (special shout-out to the Marions and Lisa; Michelle you got lucky). Our family and community. They have been there since step one and have not skipped a beat since.
Fast forward almost a year since we began the process and we are still continually surprised and overwhelmed by everyone's love and support. Otha sent out an email asking for people to watch Asher all week while Otha is at work and I am at the hospital; within 24 hours every single hour was covered. One dear friend made me a CD of songs that spoke to a part of my soul that had previously been filled with hopelessness and confusion. People gave us a crazy amount of money to cover expenses like hospital parking ($12 bucks a day! Who wants to run for mayor and get that changed?), food, and gas. We are staying with a friend's parents for free and have multiple other offers of free lodging offers. Two moms traded days watching each others' kids so that they could each come visit me. Another friend drove down just to watch Asher for a few hours so that Otha and I could be at the hospital together. My mom spent a whole week here so that I could spend time with both Asher and our daughter. We have received many phone calls and emails from people encouraging us, some whom we don't even know very well. That is a small fraction of the ways people have come around us and said with their actions "we will do foster care with you".
Needless to say, we have been taken care of on all levels. I don't have many tears left after these few weeks, but I never fail to tear up when I reflect on how people have loved us. Sure, we believe in taking care of the orphan, but more importantly so does our community. We believe suffering comes with following Jesus; our community believes they should function as the Body of Christ and carry each others burdens and suffer as one. We believe that God can heal our little girl and thus our people pray incessantly for her. They do not treat her or our situation any differently because she is in the foster system or because she technically is not "ours". They are treating us with the same fierce love that they would have if it was their own flesh and blood. One day, I hope to tell this little girl
how deeply she was loved by this group of people when she was struggling for her life, the deepest love she could ever imagine. And it's all an outpouring of their love for Jesus.
If you don't have a community of people like that around you, you are missing out.
I am thankful that everyone said "yes" with us to be foster parents, whether we actually asked them or not. By committing to our community, we commited to support each other through joy and suffering for the sake of the gospel. I can only hope to follow everyones example and say "yes" with my actions to others people's journey of spreading the kingdom.
