How do you justify

[Rtcrmine]

Having more children when there are so many children in the foster system in need of a home? I need help with this argument.

 

[katautumn]

Having more children when there are so many children in the foster system in need of a home? I need help with this argument.

If you have ever tried getting into foster parenting and/or adoption, you know it is a highly costly process that takes a financial, physical and emotional toll on people. I have known people who were less well-off financially who went the foster to adopt route. This is much less expensive than a closed adoption and more permanent than simply fostering until adoptive parents are found for a child. These people have fostered crack addicted babies, born to addicted mothers with criminal histories, who due to the open nature of the program the birth mother knows where her child lives in many cases (so you deal with the fear of them just showing up at your home or retaliating out of anger) and after bonding with the child, caring for them, falling in love with them the birth mother is awarded full custody of the child after all and the adoption falls through. It's hut wrenching to watch people invest so much time, money and emotion only to have the child go back into a bad situation and there's nothing they can do about it.

Also, many people who have multiple birth children also adopt and foster. Quiverfull doesn't necessarily mean you will have many children biologically or otherwise. My husband prayerfully decided to have his vasectomy reversed. We prayerfully decided that once the surgery is complete and he is healed we will leave our fertility in God's hands. Whether we have no children or ten children we know we will be acting in obedience to Christ. So, we have the quiverfull heart, but that doesn't mean God wills for us to have ten children. Realistically speaking, me being in my thirties, my husband pushing fifty, having a v-reversal on a seven year old vasectomy we will be blessed to have one child. Just because someone has placed their fertility in God's hands doesn't mean they will have numerous children. Some may only have one or two. Some may have none. Rarely are two people combined fertile to the point of having more than four.

 

[JoeyArnold]

Life is about making the best choices that we can without allowing things that are beyond our control to effect us from doing the very things that we would be doing if things were a little different & because the right decisions conquers the conflict of even the adoption world. In other words, it is less about justifying having children & more about "Why do we have children to begin with?" because we can't just rid the world of having our own children for several different reasons.........

 

[Sabertooth]

Life is about making the best choices that we can...

In other words,
it is less about justifying having children
& more about "Why do we have children to begin with...?"

Hear, hear!

 

[sarah_egan]

Not everyone can be a foster parent, would be a good foster parent, should ever consider being a foster parent, just as I believe not every couple is called to be quiverfull, not everyone is called to be a missionary, etc. Those are specific callings for families.

It seems (in your mind) that you're trying to place everyone in the same mold.

Being a foster parent is hard! I am a foster parent and have been for 4.5 years now and it's tough stuff and it's not for everyone, and we're not all that great at it, but we are following a specific calling that we feel God has given us. We also recently felt convicted to stop using protection. After being extremely fertile over the last few years, I haven't gotten pregnant. We're leaving that in God's perfect hands.

Just because one doesn't use protection doesn't mean one gets to bring children home from the hospital. I'm living proof of that.

And just because one is a foster parent doesn't mean they've got foster kids coming out their ears. We hardly ever have kids and it isn't because we're saying no to them.

Justify yourself in prayer with Christ and do what you're told to do joyfully. That's all you can do, and let the others worry about their own lives and their own callings from God.

 

[Rtcrmine]

I am a foster parent!
My husband believes we shouldn't bring more children into the world when there are so many in need. I'm just looking for a good point why we should leave it up to God.

 

[JoeyArnold]

I am a foster parent!
My husband believes we shouldn't bring more children into the world when there are so many in need. I'm just looking for a good point why we should leave it up to God.

Because your children will be able to do things that your adopted children will never be able to do ever & no offence to the adopted.

 

[Rtcrmine]

Because your children will be able to do things that your adopted children will never be able to do ever & no offence to the adopted.

What do you mean exactly?

 

[JoeyArnold]

What do you mean exactly?

Having your own children brings both the parents & the children closer to each other in this ancient process & it also means passing on your DNA genes. Maybe there's a secret gene inside your DNA that will cure cancer or something & maybe your child will discover that. But won't if you don't birth them. Maybe your kids will love you more if they're blood. Maybe something in their DNA will cause them to do things that your adopted can't in brain cells or in speed or height or skills or something. Of course, natural & adopted children are both important. & we should adopt children. But why not do both?

 

[sarah_egan]

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one Joey. I think you're underestimating the love that God puts in our hearts for all children and God can and does draw people close together through their adopted children. Unless you've adopted a child, I think you can comment on that. I've not adopted, not been so blessed, but I've taken in kids that weren't mine and you care for them as much as your own after just a short amount of time.

OP- God may not be calling you to throw out the condoms. Your calling might be to be the foster parents who take in all the unwanted kids. He may call you to do both. Your calling is yours, and you and your husband need to pray on that and figure out what it is He wants you two to do.

 

[katautumn]

I am a foster parent!
My husband believes we shouldn't bring more children into the world when there are so many in need. I'm just looking for a good point why we should leave it up to God.

Ah, I get where you're going with this, I think. Please, correct me if I am making poor assumptions here. You feel lead to leave your fertility in God's hands and your husband feels strongly against bringing biological children into the world when so many need adopting and you're looking for an argument to convince him the quiverfull position is valid?

Sister, you can't present an argument good enough to convince him. We are called to submit to our husbands. With that said, I know from personal experience that God can, and does, change hearts and minds when it's His will. I tried everything to get my husband to change his mind about his vasectomy. I cried, I pleaded, I downright begged, I cried some more, I yelled, I made threats. Suffice it to say these approaches never worked and always lead to huge fights that made me feel even worse about the situation.

I finally decided to leave it in God's hands. One day my husband asked me, out of the blue, how I saw our future. I broke down as I laid out the image in my head of teaching little girls how to bake bread and little boys playing in the yard and fingerpaintings stuck to the fridge with those plastic letter magnets. I envisioned the two of us being old and surrounded by lots of grandbabies. Honestly, I didn't know if I could take the emotional toll of there never being a possibility of me having any more children, but I had faith that if God wasn't going to change my husband's heart, He would change mine.

God saw fit to change my husband's and he's having his reversal this summer. It's been seven years since he had it done initially. We will celebrate our sixth year of marriage on June 2nd and God has just now placed the desire for children on my husband's heart. Not only that, but God gave my husband the desire to let Him be in control of how many children we will have. It was nothing I ever expected and it was a decision I was utterly powerless to make for my husband. There was not a single argument persuasive enough to make him see things my way. God had to make him see things His way and in His perfect timing.

Be encouraged that no matter what, God is in control and He hears your prayers. Just ask that His will be done.

 

[SiyoNqoba]

My husband and I are foster parents and are trusting God with our fertility.

We are foster parents because we believe that it's what God wants us to do. We're not doing it because we see all these children needing help and think we can fix them, we're doing it because we genuinely believe that God created us and put us together in marriage specifically for the purpose of parenting children who don't have good homes, whether for a weekend, or for a lifetime.

We trust God with our fertility because we see that if He planned for us to have children, then we would have children regardless. I was using hormonal contraception, but then skipped a period and, while I turned out not to be pregnant, we realised that God could over-ride the contraception anyway, if that was part of His plan. I felt like preventing pregnancy was exactly like saying "No, thanks" to a blessing God wanted to give me, and who was I to do that?

With regards to convincing your husband of that, I'd suggest simply to tell him once how you feel, then pray about it and let God work on his heart. I started wanting to let God decide our family size months before my husband did. I got really stressed out, feeling like if we weren't trusting God with this one aspect of our lives, then we didn't really trust Him at all. I used to get so upset. Then I read a blog from a woman in a similar position, and I realised that by leaving my husband's decision in God's hands, I was trusting Him with my fertility. I was trusting Him to change my husband's heart. And He did