Support that Bends and Stretches

I am not a flexible person, physically speaking. I struggle to touch my toes without bending my knees, and most yoga poses are just wishful thinking. But while my body lacks flexibility, our time in foster care taught me a different kind of flexibility, and the importance of having a support team that could bend and flex with our family.

My wife got a call from the county, asking if we would be willing to take one or two boys from a sibling set of three. They had given up on keeping them together, and since we already had five children in our home, they were only asking us to take one or two. After discussing it with each other and our children, we offered to take all three (there is another article to be written here about knowing your limits, but we’ll save that for later). But adding three kids to our existing house meant we had to shuffle our existing family into different spaces in the home.

We had one open storage room in the basement that we wanted to convert to a bedroom in order to accommodate the extra kids. We put out the call to our support community, and they responded. My dad covered the cost of an egress window for the room to ensure safety and once the window was cut out, we needed to paint and move furniture.

Our community group had a regularly scheduled men’s night out every other week. It was always a great time for us to grab a drink together, enjoy some food, catch up on each other’s lives, and pray for each other. But on that particular night, every single one of them skipped the restaurant and showed up to help paint and prep the room. Our oldest twins moved into a new room in the basement, leaving a room upstairs available for three boys who wanted to stay together.

Foster care is unpredictable, and our best laid plans can be scrapped as quickly as a phone call. Having good friends and family who are able to flex and pivot with the dexterity of a yogi is essential to the long-term success of foster families. How can we build communities of support that can set aside plans to offer help in critical moments?

​By Mark Gomez, Church and Community Engagement Manager