A Force To Be Reckoned With
A Force To Be Reckoned With
226. Why We Stepped Into Foster Care
What would happen if we stopped seeing foster care as someone else’s problem?
Right now, there are nearly 400,000 children in the foster care system, and behind each number is a real child, a real family, a real story. In this episode, we’re sharing a bit about our own journey into foster care—what led us to say “yes” when so many step back, and why the fight for families is more urgent than ever.
We dig into the hard truths about why families are struggling, the ripple effects on communities, and what it really takes to step into the gap. But this isn’t just about fostering—it’s about how all of us can play a role in strengthening families, whether we open our homes or simply open our hearts.
So, what’s God calling you to do? Let’s talk about it.
Episode Highlights:
- Why we stepped into foster care.
- Answering the call.
- Addressing spiritual warfare.
- Sharing statistics.
- Where we place our hope.
- Fighting for family.
Links Mentioned in Episode/Find More on A Force to Be Reckoned With:
- Jointheforce.us
- Follow Bethany on Instagram @bethanyadkins
- Follow Corey on Instagram @mrcoreyadkins
- Find us on Youtube!
- Email Bethany at bethany@adkinsmedia.co
- Get involved at Hope Bridge.
- Listen Episode 160 & 161.
This show has been produced by Adkins Media Co.
We are at war and it's not against our neighbors, spouses, children, politicians or whatever else we feel like we're battling against.
Speaker 2:So the questions are who's the fight against, and are we winning or losing? We're the Adkins, and we are a force to be reckoned with. Are you ready to join the force?
Speaker 1:why? Why did we step into foster care?
Speaker 2:that's a great question.
Speaker 1:Lord, why? Before we go there. How was your week? You know you win some, you lose some. I felt like I won some and lost some this week.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was like a roller coaster.
Speaker 2:Years on your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was an up and down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's March 2nd. It's going to be March 4th when this comes out. Can you even believe it? By the end of this month, we'll be 25% of the way through 2025. That's nuts, man.
Speaker 1:The older we get, the faster it goes by.
Speaker 2:I know they always said that, but I just thought it was a cliche.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always thought it was just something that old people say it's like people, so with that, said it's march?
Speaker 2:oh, you know what? What are you doing, guys, with your?
Speaker 1:goals. Speaking of being old, I have two comments. One I saw kurt warner on tv like announced. You have no idea who that is. You're looking at me like you don't know who kurt warner is. Do you not know who kurt warner? Is an announcer of what sports what sport basketball no, but what did he do before that?
Speaker 1:warner brothers oh my gosh, I don't know he's a quarterback for the greatest show on turf, the rams. Anyways, dude was rocking full on gray hair and beard like full gray, not pepper. You want that salt and pepper? I do want that. But I was just like wow, kurt really just like went all. I didn't. The last time I felt like I saw him he wasn't all gray, it was like salt and pepper, it was like full-blown gray yeah, he wasn't great when I saw him last year.
Speaker 1:You, don't even know who he is the other thing about being old you're not old yet is that, wow, you're gonna be about. I'm putting this in context. Remember what I said to you earlier this week. We were sitting there is like, we said we had our 13th wedding anniversary. Um, I again. I said we had our 13th wedding anniversary, thank you, thank you. Crowd's asleep and you were like, oh my goodness, we're like halfway through our marriage. And I was just like, dude, if we're halfway through our marriage, we're going to die when we're 50.
Speaker 2:For me it's like running a marathon. I'm like, yeah, ok, halfway there 13 more to go, not halfway there, I'm just kidding and I said uh, I said no.
Speaker 1:Hopefully we should be married for at least 50 years. But if we're married for at least 50 years, that's another 37 years and I'm 37, which means I might actually be at my midlife. You know, everybody's like midlife crisis when people are like 50. That's not midlife, bro. Most people isn't the average like death in their 70s yeah, so you're there, buddy. I'm at my midlife, alright. Well, gonna go get that Harley. Oh my gosh, you don't really want a harley, do you no?
Speaker 1:you're not a harley type I would like to like drive a motorcycle like, maybe like own one at some point in time in my life. I always wanted one. I wanted one before we got married, but then kids I feel like this is why I'll knock that right out of them. I think you know, knock that right out of me. I think I'm knocking anything. No, that punch.
Speaker 1:I didn't mean with a punch but I feel like the midlife crisis motorcycle thing happens because guys either had a motorcycle or wanted a motorcycle before they had kids and they had to give it up because kids right, and then they're like looking around, bro, these kids are gone. I got all this extra time getting a motorcycle what a day it will be.
Speaker 2:I mean, listen, we're making it sound really bad, like we hate our lives and it's so hard and but I did post on my stories.
Speaker 2:This past week we had a day date, we had some errands run and we turned it into like a day date and I just said, man, if we make it through this season where kids aren't home and like I mean just think we could, we could do this all the time. We don't have to just squeeze everything that we want to do in a one day, like we could be friends, we were laughing, we were having fun.
Speaker 1:I wonder how many couples get arrested together after all their kids are out of the house, probably just us. Because I feel like that's going to be like people get your bail money ready.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, All right, so foster care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, speaking of getting arrested.
Speaker 2:Foster care, all right, foster care, yeah, speaking of getting arrested, foster care, all right. So our theme last month, iron sharpens eye bear and we had that verse 20 proverbs 27, 17. Do you know the verse?
Speaker 1:no, I'm just laughing because I feel like what you just said wasn't words.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 1:It didn't sound clear unless my ears are filled with cotton balls. But you were like iron, sharpens, iron, I was like wait, what I?
Speaker 2:have a Biden moment I know what she's.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'm having a stroke Iron sharpens you know the thing?
Speaker 2:Do you know? Our theme for last month was iron sharpens iron and so one man sharpens another all right we're not doing a theme this month. Okay, because we started, we were on our date. We talked about the podcast, a lot we have a lot of really good guests that we want to bring on and topics, and we'll talk about scriptures. We're still doing that with our family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so sprinkle scripture here and there.
Speaker 2:Like we're still Christians, don't worry, but we're just not going to do the pattern, okay.
Speaker 1:So anyway, we're starting this month, If anybody's been around since the beginning every year we start off like hey, we're going to do this structure on this and then we get part of the way a couple months in we're like, eh, screw it.
Speaker 2:By August, radio silence for six weeks. No, that's only been like the last year. Listen, it's been rough, okay, and here's why we stepped into foster care. So why did we step into foster care?
Speaker 1:Oh what, you're actually asking me the question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, unless you want me to go. We're just, we're going to be sharing from our heart. We're sharing episodes, practical stuff. Ok, this month or this week we're talking about why we stepped into foster care. So we've shared about this on the podcast multiple times and so we're not going to go into the nitty gritty details and the background story and all that, Just brushing over that we my parents were foster parents. I have two adopt, two sisters adopted through foster care. Never had it on my radar to be a foster parent.
Speaker 2:I just, I just didn't but, when we moved back to Ohio, our friends that we kind of got planted into were everybody was, everybody was foster parents, and so for about two years we were like, oh, that's cool, good for them kidnap us and force us to be their friend. Good for them, good for them, good, yeah, good for you. Guys, you know what you're the you seem like the type of people that would do that Good job.
Speaker 1:What's the thing that people say oh, I was making fun of it. I love that for you. I love that for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, somebody said that to us. Literally it was at somebody's 40th birthday party and they were asking about our lives and actually we told them we were foster parents and her response was oh, I love that for you. Except she said it really snotty. She was like I love that for you.
Speaker 1:I hope she's not listening.
Speaker 2:She's definitely not listening.
Speaker 1:He doesn't listen to podcasts, wow.
Speaker 2:She definitely doesn't listen to podcasts. She's not the type.
Speaker 1:We are not nice people.
Speaker 2:Anyway, listen, sometimes the truth hurts. We, we were friends with these people and we saw the experience. And then, all of a sudden, I just started thinking you know what? Like you see these kids and you see the faces and the stories and the families and you're like, actually I think that like we could do this, and the stories and the families, and you're like, actually I think that like we could do this. And the other thing is, you start to hear the stories of, like, the need and the calls and the heartbreak and you're like, ok, like you start to feel convicted, you know. And so I said to Corey like I think we should do this, and he's like absolutely not. But about a year later we were licensed. So that's the quick snapshot.
Speaker 1:And just my part of that quick snapshot is that it as much as it wasn't on Bethany's radar, it was even less on my radar because I didn't know anybody and register like that were foster parents and when I thought of foster parents I thought of weirdos. Dude, I'm just going to be honest, Weird, weird people and we are weird.
Speaker 1:I mean, everybody's weird in their own way, but you guys know what I'm talking about. Like picture, ok, hold on. Foster couple First. First, imagine the first couple that comes to your mind Ready One, two, three, a foster couple.
Speaker 2:They're picturing us.
Speaker 1:No, they're not, but anyways, in like the community that we were with, they were like just, they were like normal people.
Speaker 2:So that tells me that the paradigm needs to shift within you.
Speaker 1:What do you mean? The paradigm?
Speaker 2:needs to shift within you. What do you mean? Because every single family was normal good people. Are there still weirdos out there that do foster care? Yeah, but overall it's an incredible community of people.
Speaker 1:Anyways and fast forward. It was weighing on Bethany's heart and I think we talked about it before and God started to speak to me and at the end of the day we did it. We saw the need, we saw other people doing it, but God was calling us to do it and we just decided to be obedient. And I still say that to this day, because sometimes people will give us compliments and I don't feel like we deserve the compliments, because we were just being obedient to what God was calling us to do, because God calls everybody different to certain things, and that's truly like living, like we used to talk about living in your purpose. And living in your purpose is really just being obedient to the now, to what God is calling you in in the now.
Speaker 2:Right, and I mean at the heart of it all, the heart of our purpose together combined and is family, and the same goes, for that's the purpose of our lives. That's the purpose of this podcast. We want to be a family with a firm foundation that also goes out into the world, to be a light and like a light for the Lord, to be a witness and to fight against the spiritual forces in the world. So when we rebranded to a force to be reckoned with and I think it was March of 2023.
Speaker 2:So two years ago now we were well like we had been talking about family and being better and practical things, about what we're doing to be intentional and work to raise up our kids, and we talked a lot about the heart and something we were aware of but we didn't really talk a lot about was just the spiritual warfare element of it. So the basis of so the basis was based around Ephesians 6, 12, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, cosmic powers over present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places, and so that's a very real thing spiritual warfare, as, as believers, we live in a broken world, we follow Jesus, and there's also an enemy at play who wants to do everything in his power to get us off track from living the purpose that God has placed in our lives.
Speaker 1:He wants to tear apart families.
Speaker 2:He hates families he wants to tear apart communities and relationships and anything that is good.
Speaker 1:Anytime you're stepping into your mission and anytime that you're doing anything that is what God has called you to do to be in. The enemy hates that and he wants to tear it apart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so we talk about that when we relaunched or rebranded to a force to be reckoned with. That was episodes 160 and 161. If you want to hear more about the heart behind that, you're like, oh, this is kind of weird, I want to hear more about this. And these people in their hearts listen to those two episodes.
Speaker 2:Um, but yeah, overall, just being exposed to foster care, it was like we knew that we wanted to make an impact in our family and raising up future generations and we knew that started within us and our hearts and being better people and then pouring into our kids and we fall short every day, every day.
Speaker 2:So, but yeah, then we saw this world of foster care and once you see it, you can't unsee it that there are literally kids out in our own communities, in our kids' school district, just 5, 10, 15 minutes down the road, all over Kids that don't even have a place to call home. There are kids right now, babies in the hospital, just down the street street, and they don't have anywhere to go. They're being sent hours away, and so once you realize that, it's like, well, ok, yeah, we need to focus on ourselves and grow ourselves and we need to pour into our kids and make sure that we're doing that with our kids. But, man, are we being called to step in a little bit deeper and help these other families too? Families are very evidently under attack in America.
Speaker 2:At the core of it. Families in America are under attack, and so just to reinforce that, corey's going to share some statistics.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So if we just look at families, it's one that once, that is, that 28 percent of kids are in fatherless homes, and there's all.
Speaker 1:There's a whole bunch, a whole host of other statistics about when you have a husband and a wife together, from the, the security, like the kids feeling secure in the home, like the kids feeling secure in the home, the, the parents being able to balance out the, the masculine and feminine way to parent the kids.
Speaker 1:From a financial standpoint, they're more successful that just the one of the foundations of success is having a mother and a father in the home raising the kids together. Um, the other part, and so part of that is there's a 50% divorce rate in the country, and we're not in here to shame anybody on anything, but it just goes back again when you have that now you have homes divided and you don't have the mother and the father in the same home parenting the kids together. And for all you Christians out there, that statistic stays true within the church, that 50% divorce rate is still true in the church. And so when you look at that diving over to foster care, the statistics were kind of scattered a little bit on this, but they pulled together that somewhere between 50 to 70 percent of kids that enter the foster care system have come from a single parent household.
Speaker 2:You say 50 percent 50 to 70 percent. Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:And so that just goes to show you, if you're looking down this trajectory, you know of kids that end up in foster care. Maybe you know one way incentives to prevent or to that incentivize people and encourage people to not be married or to be in a single, in a single parent household.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that reminds me Remember when we first had Carter and we were poor college students living in my parents house because we got married or we got I got pregnant out of wedlock um, and we I forget the whole thing, but we ended up trying to figure out insurance because I think we were getting kicked off if we were going to get married yeah, well, we were too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's what it was, yeah, and so we went to the county because we were poor and they were like, well, yeah, if you get married like, this is before, it was like if you're 26, you could get your parents insurance. It was like when that limbo was happening, yeah, and they were like yeah, I mean that's going to happen.
Speaker 2:But if you guys don't get married? They were like trying to, like it was like a week before we were about to get married and they were like, oh, just don't get married. They were like trying to can. Like it was like a week before we were about to get married and they were like, oh, just don't get married if you don't get married.
Speaker 1:Like you'll get all these other benefits.
Speaker 2:You're gonna get all of these benefits they. Then we were like no, we're dude, we're getting married. And then, like a week later, we got this debit card in the mail. It was like a wit card yeah back then and it had, and we still weren't married yet. And it had, I can't even remember.
Speaker 2:Maybe like four or five hundred dollars on it that we could. It was. It was like literal money, like you didn't even have to pick food, you could just go and they replenish it every month. And we were like that is so weird, like we didn't even sign up for this, they just sent it to us and then we got.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we called him. We don't want this. We were like you sent this to us by mistake.
Speaker 2:Well, that sounds really prideful, but we were just like we, literally.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I mean, it does. I mean we were poor, but we wasn't to the point where we were like I want to take money from the government because of this, but we needed the health care because you were pregnant.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But we were like I don't feel right taking this because Well, it didn't matter, because as soon as we got married, money was gone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so weird, but anyway.
Speaker 1:So and then just to continue into the, just the foster care statistics there are there are 400,000 kids in the foster care system in America. And if you just think like if I don't know the direct correlation, but if, if we could and if, if we supported the nuclear family again and support it, so if we supported a husband and a wife, a married couple raising kids together, more, and we started to reduce this 28% of kids in fatherless homes, in single parent households, how would that directly correlate to kids entering the foster care system? If 50 to 70% of the kids entering the foster care system come from those homes, you know what I mean. So like that is a root cause. But of that 400,000 kids in the foster care system, there are 16,000 in Ohio.
Speaker 1:I looked this up too. I didn't have this written down, but I remember this there are only 7,200 families licensed in Ohio for those 16,000 kids. And then, just getting close to home, if you live in our area in Stark County, there are 500 kids in the foster care system and there's only 125 families licensed. So we saw the need and we've talked about this before, and just being a Christian and how the church used to do more, the church used to take care of the orphans and the widows, and we've let the government step in to do more. The church used to take care of the orphans and the widows, and we've let the government step in to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and why is that? I think that a lot of it is that right now, this secular culture and just American culture in general, it's all about just this encouragement to be happy and focus on your happiness and do, like, whatever you need to do to be comfortable, and buy all these trinkets to have ease and and like keeping up with the Joneses. I mean these are all things that we've talked about from the beginning, from when we were a force to be reckoned with, like when we were the Adkins highlight reel. And the thing is the Bible doesn't tell us to do any of that. The bible doesn't tell us to be that you're supposed to be happy. The bible actually says very different things. Bible says in this world you will have trouble, or in this world you'll have trials. Take heart, I've overcome the world. The bible tells us that we're going to be persecuted. And the thing is like marriage does not equate to happiness. Always raising kids and having a family doesn't always equate to happiness.
Speaker 1:It's really really really hard work and it's the Bible tells us to rejoice in all things, talks about joy. That's a whole different thing. But there's a huge difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is a feeling, it's fleeting. Joy is a choice and you can choose to have joy and to be grateful no matter what is going on. Because in this world, the Bible says, in this world you will have trouble. But Jesus says says take heart of overcome the world. You just said that and um that we live in a broken world.
Speaker 2:So that's gonna be ups and downs, hard and rough, but if we put our hope in jesus then we will have joy and gratitude even in the hard things yeah, and it's like we need to figure out, because even me, like in the last couple of weeks, like the things that we're walking through for many different reasons and many families, it's just hard and it's so easy to get down on yourself and just like feel like hopeless and despair. But we are supposed to have confidence and have faith and lean on Jesus and that's the point of being in community with other believers. And when we do that, we're teaching our kids. When we do that and we're living our trials out loud and we're letting our kids see us navigate those hard things, but navigate them not always perfectly but for the most part with grace, and when we don't meet with grace to repent, and like you know what I mean we're living these things out loud. We're also teaching our kids that this is what real life looks like, this is what the Christian life looks like, because that, I think, is what's so much wrong with our culture. We want to make our kids live in. We want our kids to be so comfortable and live in this comfortable bubble and give them everything that we want. They want because we don't want them to feel pain and we want to protect them.
Speaker 2:But that is actually making a very, very, very weak culture to follow and it's like any time, a little like a breeze could blow their way. They're down on the ground and they don't even know how to get back up. They're not given the tools. And that again when the family unit is built with a firm foundation. Like Matthew 7.25 says, the rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock when Christ is the center and not only do we say that Christ is the center, we live like Christ is the center and we're giving, we're continuously trying to strengthen these muscles and have these tools to live that Christ is the center and we have friends that remind us of that when we're going through hard times and we can remind them of that when they're going through hard times. Same thing for our kids. That's the ticket.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, and just one other thing. I want to say that this is not in our notes, but I was thinking about this recently just with like from the news and the government perspective that we've had to like with all this stuff, with Doge coming out and about all of this. I mean, think about all the money that we pay in taxes. Right, and I was. I think it's the average. I forget what it is. It's like 20%. People pay like 20% in taxes or something, but then you pay money for sales tax and property tax and all these things. You end up paying somewhere close to like 50% of your money in taxes because it's going to the government and what. What this do stuff's uncovering is not even you, it's going to the government. And what this Doge stuff's uncovering is not even you know, going into the weeds of like corruption or anything, but just from the wasteful spending that we put in all these government programs.
Speaker 1:And sometimes I'll see people like use Bible verses to talk about how we're supposed to give to the needy and do all these things. But that was a choice, but the government's taking our like. Let's just say the government's taking half of our money. So now we don't have those resources to maybe even necessarily be as charitable as we used to be. Like when we talk about how the church used to be more involved, our taxes weren't as high, so even from a money standpoint, it's like our money's being taken, it's been given to these programs.
Speaker 1:Now it's somebody's job to do these things and it used to be more of a and I'm not saying that people can't enjoy doing their jobs and be passionate about it, but the charity aspect of things used to be came from a posture of the heart and out of charitable giving and being obedient to God and so, like it was run more efficiently, there was more passion behind it, more heart behind it, there's more accountability behind it because we had more funds and so even like when you look at the foster care system and how things are like from our county, it's all run by the government and it's money being taken from people's tax dollars, where it was just run so much more authentically and efficiently when it was communities helping people and you had more community impact. Because think about even think about from a charitable perspective, like how, and a lot of charities need money, right, but when you sometimes people give money and then they just shirk from the responsibility of also getting their hands dirty and getting involved and it's kind of like that.
Speaker 1:Like if the government's just taking our money, it's oh well, the government will take care of the foster kids, the government will take care of the single moms.
Speaker 2:The government will do this and you shirk the responsibility and I can tell you right now that is not working.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:It's not working.
Speaker 1:So even just going to that aspect of it, it's like we're so broken and God gives us free will to choose him. He doesn't force us to choose him. So I look at it like that when the government forces you to give your money and then they spend it and do all this stuff in all these different programs where it should be our choice. So if we had what? If we only paid 10% in taxes and we had an, everybody had an extra 40% in their income to then be charitable in their communities. They would have more discretionary money to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also it's still a heart posture, because would that 40 percent? I mean? I agree with you, but we also have to work on the heart too, right? You need to check your heart because realistically, would that 40 percent go to charity or would it go toward mass self-consumption again and keeping up with the Joneses more? And buying all of these things for comfort and it's like multifaceted. There's so many issues, the heart is off basis. The government has taken over way more than it should have and yeah like.
Speaker 1:I think and people's heart.
Speaker 2:Then it can get overwhelming and feel like well, what do we do? What do we do? Well, we just take one step at a time. First, you focus on what your purpose is, what God has put you here for. You focus on being your best self. You focus on pouring into your kids and the family unit and making sure your family unit is solid and built on the rock.
Speaker 1:And is desirable to other people.
Speaker 2:Yes, because that is a huge thing too, like we're getting off track here. None of this is on our notes. But because what good is it when you are a believing family and your kids believe? And, yeah, you might be doing a hard thing here and there, you're volunteering at the soup kitchens and you're doing that, and then the rest of the time you're just in your own little bubble and you're really not that attractive to non-believers.
Speaker 2:Like you don't really want to be around people who are different than you. You don't really want, like you're kind of just in this bubble. You want to be around people that are like you. You have your clique and then that's it Nobody, nobody. What impact is that?
Speaker 1:So it's like and it's okay to have a community of friends and people that you're doing life with and to and that you can lean on, but you also need to be out in other other places with, in other community, with people that are approachable and fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like that's. One of the biggest convictions for me is like christians need to be fun. We need to be loosen up, loosen up. Yeah, what is Greg Laurie call it? He writes about it.
Speaker 1:Shoot Debbie, something Ned. Wasn't there a Ned?
Speaker 2:Negative Ned and, like Debbie, I forget I can't remember.
Speaker 2:We'll have to think of it, but anyway, we've read it on the podcast before. So all of this to say how does this even tie into foster care before? So all of this to say how does this even tie into foster care? We talked about the foster care crisis, we shared those stats and how so many of those kids come from single parent homes. And again, that's not even the focus here, but clearly, just from all these stats, you can see the family's under attack and we cannot count on the government to step in and do what we as the church should be doing the, not just the. The church building like the church body.
Speaker 2:That's what we should be doing and our eyes were personally reopened to that when we came back to ohio and we saw these wonderful families acting as the church body and living life together and communing together. And we were invited in and we're even though we weren't foster family.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And because of that we became licensed, because we saw these like these beautiful and hard kids, yeah, and we knew that, that like we could step into this and it would be hard. And has it been hard. It's been so hard, it's been so hard, it's still so hard.
Speaker 1:But once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Speaker 2:We couldn't simply sit back and not help anymore. And so, yeah, over the last two years you guys have heard about our case we had the kiddos from our first case. Their mom came on. We had a sibling set of five. Crazy's journey for two years. They've been reunified with their mom. We had another little guy he's been with another family now and then we have these two babies. So we've had a total of eight kids. And then we did one respite for another family who they're adopting him, and it's just been a really crazy, really refining, really hard journey. Like I think it's aged us each probably five to 10 years, like it's been really hard but we've grown and we've grown closer to God through it and we're stronger because of it and I truly believe that, like not because of us, but because we've chosen to step into the call that God has put on our lives that some of these little souls will be impacted for eternity, and that's the goal.
Speaker 1:That's the goal. That's the goal. Wait a minute, are you saying that? I look 47?.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bruh, yeah, dude, I still get carded. They just do that because they feel bad for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, look at this guy. I think it would make his day if I carded him.
Speaker 2:No, but one other point that I want to say that I didn't have in my notes is on the point of like we couldn't sit back and not help anymore.
Speaker 2:And I was just having this conversation with a friend earlier today who they're also their family is also a licensed foster family and we're in the trenches of it.
Speaker 2:There are so many days where and I'm not doing this because we need sympathy or help, because we do have good community and people who are willing to step up, but also this goes for adoptive families too we have families who are adoptive families and they say yes to forever, to a lifetime of saying yes to some kids who have really hard stories and trauma, and it's a lifelong commitment and it's hard, but this we're doing what God has called us to, and this is a lifelong thing. And this is a lifelong thing. And so my point in this is saying like it can, it's like we not everybody is called to be a foster family, but it is. It has been in some ways, really encouraging to see people step up and also, in other ways, really disappointing to see people, members of the church, people who just want to sit back and say I love that for you and good for you, but sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm not willing to be a foster family, and I'm also not even willing to step in and help you, even though you're barely keeping your head above water, and I know how hard this is for you. Sorry, this is no comfy Christians yeah. And I don't like sad to be mean, but it's true and it's really sad.
Speaker 1:No, but I would say too, I completely agree with you. But there I mean, there were times even before we were like even more exposed to it, that you sometimes see stuff and you just don't understand it. See stuff and you just don't understand it. You know, but I think for anybody out there, if you're not a foster family, even if you don't know anybody that's a foster family. If you do come in contact with people that are foster families, just try to have a little more empathy and understanding and see if there's any ways that that you can include and help help people that are, that are foster families. But I don't want sometimes, when we say not everybody is called to be a foster family, I feel like there are people out there that also use that as a cop-out, and so I want to take that from you because look at the statistics. Let me go back to Ohio. 16,000 kids in Ohio are in the foster care system. There are only 7,200 families licensed.
Speaker 2:And honestly I wonder how many of those 7,000 are kinship families who became licensed for just a specific kid.
Speaker 1:Right and then 500 in our county 125 families licensed. There are more people that are called to be foster families than 125 families in our county.
Speaker 2:How many people are in Stark County. I know this stat because somebody just looked it up the other day in a meeting I was in.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, yeah Well, you're looking that up. There are more than 7,200 families that are called to step up and be foster families. When there's 16,000 kids, I mean 7,000 kids. Out of what? How many? What's the population?
Speaker 2:There's 155,000 families in Stark County.
Speaker 1:We only have 125 families.
Speaker 2:That's shameful.
Speaker 1:So, when you hear us say that some people aren't called, that is true, but there are way more called than are stepping up right now and listening and being obedient to what God has called them to do. And I'll just tell you we have these stats specifically for foster care, because that's where the space that we're in. But, guys, this is true for so many other areas of life what are you being called to do that you're not being obedient to God calling you to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's the thing it's like. We're not all called to foster, and I will take that. I agree with you. There are absolutely people out there who should be stepping in and are called to do this and maybe haven't because of whatever reason. But even if foster care isn't your ministry and it's not what God is calling to you, if you are a believer and you're simply going through the week working your job and spending your weekends at home, just relaxing at home, I want to challenge you and say there is something else out there for you, more than likely, that God has for you that you're not doing, and it's not just foster care. There's so many different. We, as Christians, have sat back complacent in just about every area that is hurting and let the government sweep in and take over, and now we have a mess on our hands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean just going, just just think about it, guys. Even if you're not called to be a foster parent, okay If you're. If your thing isn't to help support foster families, okay. Is there a single mom in your community that could use your support that maybe is on the brink of having her kids taken from her? Is there a young couple that their marriage is on the fritz and they could use a family, a married couple, to mentor them and help them and save them from ending up from being divorced and being a single and these kids now living in a single parent home?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because maybe they just need a real married couple to say actually, the troubles that you're having like we've had them too you don't need to end your marriage over. This Marriage is hard and you can get through this Like that's the other thing. As believers, we need to be real people. We need to be transparent about our struggles so that other people can see. Instead, we just have these people who just want to show up to church and everything's good and perfect, and then we go home and we all hide behind the walls of our home and we don't share. There's no transparency.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so like foster care, honestly, it's an obvious one once you know it and you're hearing the stats. But, at the end of the day, how can you step into someone else's life and come alongside them and help share the burden, help mentor, help speak life into them, help guide them to be more like Christ? That's what we're ultimately called to do. So again, just back to these statistics. Guys, again, foster care might not be for you, but more of you that are listening it is for you. The other thing I just going back to is I looked up Ohio. So there's almost 12 million people in the state of Ohio and we have 7000 foster families.
Speaker 2:It's not enough. Yeah, so just in closing, I'm going to get back to our bullet points because we keep going off.
Speaker 2:We've already said, talking about foster care, not everybody is called to be a foster family and we respect that, but some are. And if you do feel like even an inkling of you has considered this or feels like maybe God is asking you to do this, we would love to connect with you. So, again, my email will be in the show notes or you can find me on Instagram and message me that way. And even if you just want to be involved in the world of foster care, there's so many ways to help. If you're local to where we are, so Stark County, there's an incredible nonprofit that we, that our friends, run and that we are both part of. It's called Hope Ridge and we'll link that website below, but there are many, many opportunities to be involved there no-transcript, like a one-time gift, and if you, if that's you, that's great.
Speaker 1:But to support monthly cause, it's more consistent, um, it's, and it can be more easily relied on when you support support monthly. But there's, there's a lot of ways that you can get involved and I know that a lot of people are busy, right, and if you're our age and you're running kids around to sports and you're juggling mom has a job and dad has a job and everybody's in clubs and sports and different things, I get it. Everybody's in clubs and sports and different things, I get it. But there are so much more. There are important things that also need to fill our time and so give what you have. So if you can volunteer to do something once a month, once a week, once a quarter, whatever it is, then that's great and that's stepping up and helping and you've got to take a step somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so just one more other layer with taking steps and supporting, like so if you know a foster family, reach out and ask them how you can support, and chances are they're going to say the first time, we're good, but reach out again because I'm one of those foster parents. So I'm like no, I don't need help. And then I come home and I'm drowning and I'm you know, I'm not saying to reach out and ask me for help, I'm saying there's other foster families. But I know that people who are stepping into this are thick skinned and they just think that they can do it all. But the reason I say that is because we have to break cycles Again. The heart is family and it's beyond just checking boxes and that's what the county is really good at.
Speaker 2:You know the county checks boxes and they do that because they're also so overloaded. There's like 12 or 13 workers right now at Stark County.
Speaker 1:For those 500 kids.
Speaker 2:They are absolutely drowning and so they have to do, you know, meet rules and regulations. So their job is to box check. It is our job as believers to go deeper and break cycles and check in with people's hearts and do deep work, because this work, it's mission work and we need to step in on a deeper level. So, that's why we're still so heavily involved with our first case.
Speaker 2:They're no longer in our home but we text multiple times a week. We see them as much as we possibly can, Because now we have a mom who's now a single mom of five and working full time and going to school full time and she needs support. So then that's not something the county is going to.
Speaker 1:The county to checking the boxes. I don't have the statistics on this, but I know most kids that are going to foster care one time go into foster care multiple times. The cycle doesn't break unless somebody wraps around them. And that's not going to be our government, that's not the county, it is.
Speaker 1:The things that they do are really kind of surface level, minimum things, and a lot of the foster families that we know step into the lives of the bio parents in a lot of ways and if some of them are more receptive than others and obviously you can't force that relationship but that's not something that most foster families do. That's not something that most foster families do, that's not something that you would even think about. And the only reason that we've done it is because we had seen it modeled and we felt God calling us to do it and it was the right thing to do. And so in a lot of ways, especially the foster families that we know and I can speak of them they're trying to then, after these kids are returned sometimes, or even after, even if they have the kids, are trying to step into the lives of these biological parents to help them break the cycle.
Speaker 2:Because it is. It's all about cycle breaking, and so we try to do that with supporting the biological family, and we try to do that in reunification, we try to do that in foster care, but in also, in some scenarios, adoption is the best case scenario for these kids and cycle breaking can even be done then too, because while they're not part of that biological family legally anymore, this is something we've recently had to consider as where it seems like in the case that we have, we may be moving closer to adoption and we're taking and it's like reawakening that thought of like okay, we now need to. It's an extra conviction, Like we already feel this conviction of like we want to be a foundationally firm, like biblically sound family for our kids.
Speaker 2:But now we have this extra weight of we could potentially be adopting another child who biologically is not ours, who has already come from damaged brokenness and we're we have the heavy responsibility of taking care of that child for as long as we live, as long as they live, and so it's like has reconvicted us to look inward and say, ok, what are we doing now? Like, how are we being a firm, like a biblically sound family, how are we having a strong, firm foundation so that we can be part of this cycle breaking, can be part of this cycle breaking Ideally, yes, it's reunification and it's within the biological family, but sometimes that's not what God has planned for these kids, and that can be just as beautiful and that responsibility still happens and involves we can still break cycles that way too. So yeah, so yeah. The question of asking ourselves what are we doing to be intentional in a foundationally sound family and we kind of want to leave that question with you guys to close out the episode what are you doing to live out your call as a family?
Speaker 2:If you have a family, that's part of your purpose. Are you stewarding your family? Well, Are you stewarding just your individual self? Well, some may hear this and say, yeah, we're doing great and we're trying to be intentional. We're doing the best we can and we fall short. Great, you're right there with us, like we fall short too every day, but we're trying our best. Some of you might hear this and say, like actually maybe we are called the foster, and others may hear it and say we're not in a place, but we do need to be more intentional and so that we're just trying to reiterate our heart and our mission for and some people might be out there saying well, I don't really know what God's calling me to do.
Speaker 1:Well, to those people I would say ask because, if you ask him, he will show you. He'll point you in the right direction. So if, if somebody is out there just saying like I don't even know what I'm supposed to do, what do I do next? Ask God, he'll point you in the right direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's really it.
Speaker 1:Do you have anything to close?
Speaker 2:with? I don't think so.
Speaker 1:Ran out of air. That's all and no.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, and like we say all the time, we don't do this perfectly, and that's the whole point of this podcast, don't yeah?
Speaker 1:When we're talking, when we're speaking and if we say things kind of boldly and confrontationally, don't, please don't, mistake that for us acting, we're doing everything right, because we're not. Yeah, we're just figuring it out along the way, I didn't do everything right today.
Speaker 2:No, you didn't Excuse me Excuse me?
Speaker 2:No, but we're just trying to reiterate our heart and our mission and the types of things that we are going to be talking about in the coming months. So that is one thing I did forget to say. So, as far as the Bible verse, what we're going to be memorizing with our kids this month is Matthew 7, 25. And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And just talking about the meaning behind that, because it goes really well into parenting of like, when kids are like why, well, why do we have to do this? Well, the little things are the big things and this is the stuff that matters. Why are you smiling?
Speaker 1:Can you hear that? No, I feel like for the first time I can actually hear somebody on the other side listening to the podcast right now. What Listen do you hear? All right, on the other side listening to the podcast right now. What listen do you?
Speaker 2:hear all right? Well, dolores, we're just gonna go and be foster parents now. Did you hear that? All right, let's give a hand for for billy bob and dolores.
Speaker 1:You just got licensed.
Speaker 2:All right, well, we'll be back. We're going to just keep plugging along, sharing our heart and our mission, our failures and successes along the way, as we try our best to be intentional parents and help to raise up the next generation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was just joking, guys, you don't have to become a hillbilly, you don't have to drive a Yoder toter, you don't have to wear Crocs and turtlenecks to be a foster parent we love you guys stay classy, bye.