Big Changes

Dustin and I have always had a different relationship than most.  We march to the beat of our own drum, if you will.  11 ish years ago, Dustin moved to St. Louis for a change of pace from rural Arkansas.  He was in college, and moved on kind of a whim.  We met at work (Cracker Barrel), dated for 10 months in St. Louis, and then did about 3+ years of long distance while  I went to school in Chicago and he in Russellville AR.  From the beginning we have made different and or/ difficult circumstances a positive thing that we work through together.

We are still doing our own thing, as 30 year olds in the south with no children yet.  We are taking a different path right now.  While baby fever comes, it tends to go pretty quickly, for us.    I truly believe God has put a special place in my heart to be a mom.  BUT… maybe to be a mom I might not give birth to my child.  Maybe I will.  However, Dustin and I have always believed that our family would not only be blood.

We have been very open to adoption, and have talked about it from the early stages of our relationship.  We have always wanted a blended family.  This year, as we have communicated with this blog; has been a year of exploring, saying yes, and being obedient.

So… with that being said, there are big changes coming to the Davis Family.

We are working towards becoming foster parents.

God directly put an organization in our path, this year.  (It is crazy since we had heard random comments about it before, but this year it seemed God wanted us to finally pay attention!) We are working with an organization that is named The Call to open our home for foster children.  We participated in the Walk for the Waiting this past spring, and conversations started happening almost daily about if this was for us.

The Call is an organization that works to bridge the gap between the church and the foster care/ adoption system.

It is the churches job to take care of the orphans and the people who need us the most.  Who needs us more than children in the foster care system, and those waiting to be adopted?  With this question impressed on us in the summer, Dustin and I set out on a journey to be foster parents.  The Call is truly an amazing organization that works side by side with the State of Arkansas Department Family Services to get the word out about the need for adoptive and foster parents.  They equip and train foster/ adoptive families, and the work to support DFS in the way that the church is supposed to.  The Call also provides the church with tangible ways to help, even if fostering is not for you.

The Call provides community, support, and an easy/ organized way to get started with the foster adoptive process.  Dustin and I went to an informational meeting in July.  There was no pressure in the meeting from the people who were communicating, but we both felt that this was something we were supposed to start.

For us the eye opening moment was that there are only around 1,100 foster homes in the state of Arkansas, and close to 5,000 children in care.  There are over 5,000 churches in the sate of Arkansas.  If only 1 family per church opened their home to foster care, there would be enough homes for ALL children in care.  (How amazing would it be if there were more open homes than kids in care??)

No matter how you do this process, there will be challenges.  (Working with an underfunded, overworked, understaffed Department of Family Services will always have challenges.)  Going through The Call has made it so much easier.  For example, The Call completes the mandatory training for families, in 2 weekends.  If going through the state it is 10, 3 hour sessions!  Though the weekends were VERY long, we learned a lot and completed something in 1 month that could have taken so much longer.

Now, mid December, we are working to finalize the process to open our home.  We still have some things to do, but we are so close.  Right now we are working towards being a respite care family for the many full time foster parents in Pulaski County.  In addition, we are also working towards emergency care for those in care who need temporary, emergency placement.

We hope someday to be full time foster parents, and even parents (however that looks.)  Being a foster or adoptive parent is not for everyone.  But we can all do something!  There are so many opportunities to serve in this area:  transporting, donating clothing/ furniture, giving your time to watch children and be a break for foster parents, work a couple hours a week in the DFS office, and more.  As we have blogged about before, there are opportunities to get involved with small businesses that are doing something such as in Austin Texas: Pour & Press.

If adoption is on your heart, please check out the Project Zero website, as there are 600 plus waiting children in the state of Arkansas.  There is need all over our country so do some research and decide that these children are not just a number.

Dustin and I cannot wait to start this chapter of our journey, and as we can, we will share more.  All we know is that while we are in for a new adventure.  It will be outside of our comfort zone, but this is the path we are supposed to take.  We cannot wait to see where this adventure leads us.

Cat and Dustin