Tag: orphans

May is National Foster Care Month, and Foster the Family put out a daily writing prompt.

Today’s is: “Hi, I’m… and this is my why.” So here goes.

Hi, I’m Leah. I became a foster mom in December 2025 and this is my why.

Learning to Care About Adoption

When I was little, if someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d say, “A mommy missionary doctor.” I was surrounded by homeschool moms pouring into their kids. I was captivated by stories of Mary Slessor and Gladys Aylward. I wanted to help people.

If you strip that childhood dream down to its core, I wanted to:

• Nurture children
• Invest spiritually and practically in others in a life-shaping way
• Meet tangible needs (especially physical ones, in my mind at the time)

A few years later, I learned about abortion. It rocked my world. For my eighth birthday, I asked friends to bring donations for a crisis pregnancy center instead of gifts. I wrote them a letter saying I hoped to someday adopt a baby who might otherwise have been aborted.

As I learned more about adoption and orphan care, I realized there were long waiting lists for infants. That shifted something in me. That need, I decided, was already being met.

My attention turned to older children and international adoption. I followed blogs, pored over photo listings, watched documentaries about orphanages, and read books like The Connected Child, When Love Is Not Enough, Adopting the Older Child, and Orphan Justice. Everything I learned deepened the ache.

A mom from our homeschool group remembers meeting me when I was 12 or 13. She was holding her newly adopted four year old when I bounced over and introduced myself with something along the lines of: “Hi, I’m Leah. I want to adopt someday too.”

During this season, I would sit at the piano, playing “Let Your Heart Be Broken,” crying and asking: Why doesn’t everyone care? Why do I feel this so intensely when I can’t do anything yet? Why does the Church feel so quiet? The short film Depraved Indifference resonated deeply.

Learning to Care About Families

I kept learning. I began wrestling with the ethics of international adoption. I learned that many children in orphanages have living parents—that sometimes the issue is not abandonment or abuse, but poverty. I started caring not just about children, but about families.

That shift turned my attention closer to home. I still valued international adoption, but the responsibility of pursuing it ethically felt overwhelming. I read When Helping Hurts and began asking harder questions about how good intentions can sometimes cause harm.

Why look overseas when there were kids and families in my own backyard who needed someone—anyone—to care? I started wondering if adoption was the primary need or a last resort if supporting biological families failed.

I spent hours on AdoptUSKids, praying over photo listings and watching every video. I read Small Town, Big Miracle—the story of Possum Trot, now portrayed in The Sound of Hope. I started a blog inviting other teens to join me in praying and advocating.

Someone needed to care. Someone needed to act. The church needed to step into the gap.

“God, break my heart for what breaks Yours.”

I was frustrated when adults seemed to think my zeal was a product of naivety and youth. I told myself I would not allow adulthood to make me complacent. But it did.

College and early career years tamed the fire. I sponsored children overseas and organized service projects for a local foster care closet. It wasn’t much—but it was something.

Stepping Into Foster Care

One night last fall, sitting around a friend’s dining room table, I said out loud statistics I had known for years: If just one family from each church fostered, there would be enough homes for every child. If less than one family per church adopted, there would be no waiting children in our country.

I went home realizing: I feel like a hypocrite. I can’t keep talking about this without stepping in.

I’m not a teenager anymore. I’m not limited by age or circumstance. I have a home. I’m financially stable.

The only things holding me back were fear and inconvenience. The very things my younger self was determined not to be dissuaded by.

That was the beginning of my licensing journey.
A very long story to share a simple why.

Why am I a foster mom?

Because someone needs to be. Because I believe the church should be on the front lines. Because for as long as I can remember, my prayer has been, “Break my heart for what breaks Yours.” Because when the Psalms say, “God sets the solitary in families,” I want my family–my home–to be available.

I believe the children and families in the U.S. foster care system break God’s heart.

And if they break His heart, I want them to break mine too—enough that I can’t stay on the sidelines. Enough to trust Him to bind up what gets hurt in the process.

Not everyone is called to foster.

But everyone can do something.

Every Christian is commanded to “visit the fatherless and windows in their affliction.”

Let God break your heart.