I hadn’t talked about adoption in T H R E E years… Xav’s sudden proclamation took me by surprise. I was shocked! The Holy Spirit had been changing his heart and I had nothing to do with it. As soon as we got home, we began talking about adoption quite a bit and started researching different international agencies in all of our free time. It didn’t take long for us to realize that international adoption would take us years to save up for and could potentially require us to live in a foreign country for several months or visit that country multiple times during the process.

Out of curiosity, we began to look at domestic adoption and compare the options. We ended up talking to a few friends who have adopted and one of them asked us if we’d ever consider foster care. My view of foster care was very narrow and my dreams of a perfect family (the one with no brokenness) were still clinging as idols at my alter. I used Xav as an excuse and told my friend that he probably wouldn’t be interested in foster care since he had only recently come around to the idea of adopting at all. Well, to my surprise, Xavier said he would consider foster care and he wanted to look into it some more.

We pulled up the Michigan Foster Care website and suddenly, instead of trying to peer overseas or even search the whole country for a child who we might be able to adopt, our eyes were opened to the immense needs of children right here in Michigan. Right where we live in Ingham county. We began to feel the blinders falling off. As we talked with more people, did more research and continued to learn more about foster care, God showed us that even if foster care is unstable, broken, and painful… we couldn’t look away. Even if it didn’t lead to adoption… we knew we had to move forward.

The good news of the gospel in foster care is that, in the end, Jesus wins, even if along the way we wonder why we’re doing this and if we can handle it anymore. What you are doing is not in vain. Will it be hard? Absolutely. Will it be worth it? Most definitely. Do not give up in doing good.

– Jason Johnson

To be continued…