{"id":40835,"date":"2025-02-26T13:18:04","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T21:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=40835"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:18:04","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T21:18:04","slug":"struggling-through-the-swamp-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/struggling-through-the-swamp-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Struggling Through The Swamp…Together"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Skyler Rose Thorson-our daughter<\/p><\/div>\n

“I’m not sure I can do this anymore…”<\/p>\n

That was my wife and I in 2018, 8 months into our journey as foster parents. We had been trained and called to foster kids in our community as a way to serve Jesus, but had no idea the complexities of caring for young children who had experienced trauma and separation from their birth parents. We had said yes to a placement of a 3 year old girl and a 8 month old boy that we were told would last the weekend. Four months later we were drowing in the swamp. Tired, exhausted, overwhelmed, confused and hurt, we realized we could no longer care for these two kids in our care and still care well for our 3 biological kids and each other. We made the painful decision to end the placement and trust that God would care for these kids with another foster placement. Thankfully, God did and we got to see these kids reunite with their birth mom and even ran into them a few years later. They are thriving and would have been blissfully unaware, I guess, that they were ever in our home to begin with. Except for the picture book. During those intense four months of foster parenting, we still took photos and did things together, and my wife made them into a photobook that the kids took with them when they went to their next placement. When we ran them and their birth mom at the park, she told us that they still had the book and she thanked us for caring for her kids when she was unable to do so herself.<\/p>\n

Being a resource parent is a wicked problem. Our reading this week has reminded me of that. Wicked problems are categorized by being, “ill-defined, ambiguous, and often interconnected, making them resistant to definitive solutions.” We had started foster parenting with what we thought was a tame problem: We’ll take care of kids in our community while their parents get better. What we realized was that we stumbled upon a wicked problem filled with interconnected issues that in themselves are also wicked problems; poverty, drug abuse, childhood trauma, homelessness, the criminal justice system and childhood development. Any foster parent comes into orbit with all of these things any time they step into this world and receive a child into their home.<\/p>\n

Wounded and burned out we licked our wounds for a year, trying to stop sinking and learn how to thrive again. After a year, we sensed God calling us back into the swamp and said yes to a placement of a newborn baby girl. We weren’t sure how long the placement would be and what it would all involve, but we said yes with open arms and hearts. While also a wicked problem placement, we knew that we were not alone on the journey in the swamp. We accessed resources better, took time for ourselves and our bio kids, relied on the support of our church community and held openly our role in this little girl’s life. This past weekend, we celebrated Skyler’s 4th birthday. She became a part of our family permanently and has brought incredible joy to us and to so many. She is an incredible reminder of the hope and healing that can come in families and communities when people engage with wicked problems.<\/p>\n

This afternoon I was able to be on a call for a training to become a foster parent mentor. An organization called Every Child has realized that people new to being foster parents need support and encouragement from others who have been through the journey. Every Child is engaging a wicked problem; recruit and retention of foster parents. Our text this week stated that, “Solving wicked problems requires ongoing dialogue, adaptability, and collaboration among diverse stakeholders.” Every Child is modeling this by listening to the expressed needs of their stakeholders and developing and refining programs that engage this particular wicked problem in an effort to make a difference in the lives of vulnerable kids and their families. Its a privilege to give back now, 8 years after beginning our foster parent journey, with the hurt and heartache we still carry, alone with the wisdom and joy that we’ve experienced as well. Its a reminder that we might be in the swamp, but we’re not alone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I’m not sure I can do this anymore…” That was my wife and I in 2018, 8 months into our journey as foster parents. We had been trained and called to foster kids in our community as a way to serve Jesus, but had no idea the complexities of caring for young children who had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3438],"class_list":["post-40835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lgp3-bentley-toth","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40835"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40840,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40835\/revisions\/40840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}