Aging Out

http://www.theprojectzero.org/index.php/blog/203-aging-out

According to this Project Zero article there are 20,000 children who age out of foster care every year in the U.S. This means that 20,000 children enter the world at the age of 18 without a family to call their own. That breaks my heart.

I have always had a heart for older children in foster care because I know that adoptive parents want babies to adopt. I believe that one day we may adopt a teenager but I do not feel that that will happen until Alea is older. But, as I have learned this past week...you can tell God your plans and he will sit back and laugh. I knew years ago that I wanted to foster children. Davin was on board with me right away because he was around foster care just like I was (due to dating at a young age he was around the foster care in my extended family just like I was). I thought that we would start fostering when Alea was about 13 and that we would get children into our home that were younger than her and that one day we would foster mostly teenagers (after Alea went off to college).

God puts people into our lives for a reason and knowing my heart for foster care God gave me Haley and her desire to see children in foster homes instead of in group homes. Thanks to Haley's connection with fostering, DHS, and The C.A.L.L. we have started on our fostering journey weeks away from Alea's 9th birthday. God knew my plans and decided to remind me the plans that He has for me aren't always on my timeline.

We serve an awesome God. Please pray for us as we begin this journey. Please pray for the children that are entering the system each day, the children currently in the system, the children who are aging out of the system waiting for forever families, and for the children that will touch our family directly.