Yes, this is really one half of my garage. I thought it would help explain the title of my blog. See, it will take a lot of love to fix up things around my home before we have our social worker over to begin our Initial Foster Home Evaluation. But fix and clean it we will. If we want to become licensed foster parents, we must tap into our love for children and work it hard to get our house and property ready!
The love it takes to care for foster children isn't just the warm, fuzzy love that makes you want to bake cookies, help them with homework, or cuddle them up in footy pajamas and watch Toy Story. I am talking about LOVE that WORKS HARD. I am talking about the kind of love that happens when you put someone else's needs ahead of your own, or when you take the time to really listen and respond to a person who needs your help, or when you go the extra mile to make things easier for another human being, or when you give because it is the right thing to do and not because there is something in it for you, or when you forgive someone for being mean to you or someone you care about. That type of LOVE, WORKS HARD.
Life makes love work hard. That also has meaning to the children and parents who are separated by foster care. Life has been so rough on the parents and the children, that their ability to actively love with any endurance at all has shut down. And when love that works hard shuts down, often times no love at all makes it out of a person. Tell me if that makes sense to you, or restate what you think I mean by that. It is a really important concept to embrace when considering the needs of children in foster care.
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