How we started fostering, pt.1/3

The Journey Begins
Jessica writes: Our journey in foster care and adoption did not start when we welcomed the first foster child into our home. It began long before that — we go back to the season when we were figuring out our mission and values as future husband and wife, while doing a pre-marriage course at our local church in the western suburbs of Melbourne.

Paul and I shared a similar desire to adopt, something that we talked and dreamed about extensively during our engagement. In all honesty, the desire to adopt came from an even deeper desire to see the ending of abortion. And in our passion for this cause, we wanted to be involved in positive, long-term, and life-giving solutions. This was when it all started for us: it stemmed from a profound, Gospel-centered understanding that the Father adopts the fatherless sinners into His family, and that He has called Paul and I to outwork that in the lives of orphaned and vulnerable babies and children.

So our starting point was not necessarily the child and the child’s needs, important as these are. Our starting point was and always will be Jesus, who adopted us into the Father’s family and has lavished us with unconditional love and amazing grace. That’s why we say today that we adopt and foster care in the same spirit that Jesus adopted us with.