A Decade of Fostering: Closing One Chapter, Embracing Another

This month, I’ve been reflecting on our fostering journey. It’s hard to believe it has been 10 years since we first said yes. What started as a calling to open our home to children in need became a life-changing chapter for our whole family. I’d love to share some of that story with you.

We took our training to become foster parents in the summer of 2015, and by October our license arrived in the mail. Just a few months later, on January 7, 2016, our first two little girls were placed with us.

Now, after 10 years of being licensed foster parents, seven children we’ve had the honor of fostering, and two we’ve adopted as our own, we’ve done something I never thought I’d say out loud: we closed our foster care license. I get tears just typing this out.

To say it has been a wild ride would be an understatement. Those of you who have fostered know exactly what I mean. This journey has stretched me in ways I never imagined and grown me in ways I never thought possible. My heart has burst with love for the children who walked through our doors. Before becoming a foster mom, I never could have imagined feeling this depth of love for someone else’s biological child. But when those first two little girls were placed with us, everything changed.

It was hard, really hard. It challenged my birth children, my two step-sons, and my stepdaughter in ways I know they still carry even 10 years later. The emotions of being foster siblings are complicated, and they still have mixed feelings about it. Yet Garon and I both knew God was calling us to this and they too were a part of that calling.

After dating for four years, we married in 2012. Both of us had walked through divorce and were already raising children, so together we blended a full and beautiful family of five kids. But we kept feeling the tug to open our home to more children. After the traumatic premature birth of my first son in 2000, and the C-section delivery of my second 2003, I knew I would not carry any more children myself. I was grateful for the two boys I was blessed to give birth to, and I trusted that if God wanted me to have more children, He would show me the way. Foster care became that way.

I really didn’t know any foster parents in real life. Up until then, my only understanding came from what I’d heard or read in books. Then I met Kate, and she especially stood out to me. Kate was a single young woman who bravely stepped into fostering and eventually adopted the little girl in her care. Her story opened my eyes. Garon and I prayed about whether fostering was truly our path, and God kept giving us glimpses of a little girl in our family of boys.

For a time, we thought that girl we saw might be my stepdaughter, she came to live with us full time her senior year in high school. We put our foster application on hold so we could fully welcome her and thought it would be too much to start fostering at that time. But after she moved out, we picked up where we left off, finished our classes, and received our license. A few months later, Marie and Laya were placed with us—two little girls who were sweet, spunky, and a handful in the very best way. They turned us into foster parents!

Eight months later, we transitioned these sweet girls to their sibling’s foster family. At the time, we were told that family intended to adopt them, though we later learned they did not. Ultimately, the girls were adopted by a kind single mom, whom we had the joy of meeting at a Christmas foster event.

You can read more about them here: Our First Foster Placement: A Tale of Two Sisters

About a year later, I saw a caseworker’s post about a sibling set of three needing placement. I reached out, though in my heart I thought it was more than we could handle on top of our four boys. But Garon reminded me that this was what God had called us to. So we said yes.

You can read more about them here: Our Second Foster Placement: Three’s Company

Eight months later, those siblings transitioned to a pre-adoptive home, and we prepared to wait for the next call. Only two weeks later, a tiny 6-day-old baby girl was placed with us. She was small and fragile when we took her home from the hospital, but absolutely perfect in every way. From the very start, we gave her our entire hearts, not knowing that one day she would be ours.

At first, the plan was to transition her back to her birth mom. But over time, her path shifted, and we were blessed to adopt her instead. We officially welcomed Chloe into our family on September 3, 2020, right in the midst of Covid. A few weeks later, we celebrated with a big party to mark the occasion. At that moment, I thought maybe our journey was complete—that Chloe was the daughter God had shown us all along.

But I was wrong.

On June 30, 2022, Kate reached out to me, we would text periodically about our foster care lives. She asked if we could take in a baby girl for just a weekend and that’s how 7-month-old H arrived in our home. Fair skinned, blue-eyed, blonde-haired, and sweet as can be. I’ll never forget realizing her birthday was the same day as Garon’s. We were told she likely wouldn’t stay beyond the July 4th weekend. But by Tuesday, we found out she would be staying longer. Over the course of the year, her case shifted to adoption, and on July 1, 2025, we officially adopted our sweet little weekend visitor as our second foster-to-adopt child.

We have since moved to South Carolina from Illinois and felt pretty sure that we were done fostering. But, let me be clear: we didn’t hear God say “you’re done.” But we also haven’t felt Him calling us to continue fostering. Maybe someday He will, and if He does, I pray we’ll be ready to say yes again. For now, though, our focus is on our two young daughters who are now at the time of writing this 3 and 7. We know there will be lots of challenges ahead, as well as so much joy and blessings they are in our lives, and we want to give them as much of ourselves as possible in this busy season of life.

So what does this mean for Hope to Home? I’ll share more about that next week. But for now, I can say this: without the fear that holds some of us licensed foster parents from speaking freely about the system, I can shed a little more light on that piece. My hope is that this honesty will encourage you, help you in your own decision to foster or adopt, or remind you that you are not walking this journey alone.

With Love,
Tracey

Do you know someone that is thinking of fostering? We would love it if you would forward this email to them so they can sign up!