From Foster to Adoption

This post should have been written a month ago, but life has been a bit crazy.  Please forgive the delay.

A year and a half ago I wrote a post about our decision to become foster parents.  While some of you know what came of that, others may not yet know.  So, here is the rest of the story up to this point.

Dawson, 5 months old

As I mentioned in my previous post, 5 month old baby “D” was placed in our home a couple days after we were licensed as foster parents.  Baby “D”, whose real name is Dawson, was an amazing baby.  He “fit” into our family immediately.  The only thing that was a struggle was he woke up every 2 hours or so crying and needing a bottle.  Or, so we thought at the time.  Later we discovered he had a digestion issue.

Dawson was in our home for 2 months before he was placed with some local family members.  His uncle and aunt lived at the time in Lolo and were willing to care for him.  Saying goodbye to the little guy was incredibly hard – Miriam and I were a wreck all day.  The only solace we had was that Dawson’ family had asked Miriam to babysit him a couple of days a week, so we still had some contact.

Dawson, Easter 2018

In the meantime, 2 other foster children, a sister and brother, were placed with us.  We cared for them for a couple of months until they were placed with some family.  At that time, we were notified that Dawson’s placement was not working out and that he would be put back into the foster system.  Would we be willing to take him again?  There was no hesitation – we said yes.  And so, at the end of March, 2018, Dawson was returned to live with us.

At the time when we applied for foster care, we were asked numerous times whether we were interested in adoption.  Each time we said no.  We had raised our children.  The last one was getting ready to leave the nest.  We were looking forward to having time for just the two of us.  And so adoption was not at all on our minds.  That is, until Dawson was returned to us.

Within days of his return and his folding back into our family as if he had never been gone, Miriam and I were quickly agreed that if Dawson was eligible to be adopted, we were willing to do that.  It was not what we had planned originally, but we are both still convinced it was and still is the right thing to do.  And so began 15 months of waiting.  Mom quickly terminated her parental rights.  Dad was sporadic in his visitation until he finally voluntarily terminated his rights in the spring of 2019.  That opened the door for us to apply to be Dawson’s adoptive parents.

Dawson, 26 months

And so, on July 17, 2019, we stood in front of a judge and formally welcomed Dawson David Boschmann into our family.  It is a bit of a terrifying responsibility, in that Miriam and I are no longer young parents, but we are trusting God that He is in charge and He has a good plan for this young man.  We love him dearly and are so glad that God brought him into our home that October a year and a half ago.  We thank you for all of you who have supported and prayer for this situation, and we pray that together we will be able to watch Dawson grow up to be a godly man of God.

An Encouraging and Challenging Journey

In the interest of full disclosure, the author of this book, Tara Barndt, is a personal friend of mine.  She asked me to provide a review for her book for Amazon, and I thought I would post it on my blog as well.  I have no problem writing a review for her because Tara has written a very personal yet insightful devotional on the Pauline epistle of Philippians.

Journey through Philippians is a 33 day daily devotional that takes the reader through Paul’s letter to the Christian believers in the Greek city of Philippi.  Each day’s reading concerns itself with only a handful of verses, allowing the reader to easily read, re-read and meditate on the day’s passage.  The daily reading is short – typically 2-4 pages – but not so short that it is lacking in content.  Tara does not shy away from digging into the text itself, at times tackling the original Greek meanings behind our English text, but she does so in a manner that is not at all overwhelming or intimidating to the average reader.

Tara’s writing is very honest.  As Tara’s friend and her pastor, I have seen her struggle with some of the very things she has put down on paper in this book.  She is not preaching at the reader from an ivory tower, convinced that she has it all together.  Rather, she is a fellow struggler, someone seeking to put Paul’s inspired words into practice in her life as well.  She uses an abundance of personal examples to help the reader understand and apply the day’s text and ends each day with a reflection section in which she invites each of us to ponder the text and its practical meaning for our lives.

Some of you may be concerned because Journey through Philippians is self-published.  While an increasing number of people are self-publishing today, many, including myself, regularly wonder about the quality of the typical self-published book.  Don’t worry about that with this book.  The author actually had offers from publishing houses, but her desire is to translate the book into Spanish and use it in ministry contexts in Central America.  Only by self-publishing does she retain the rights to the text to allow that to happen.

Journey through Philippians is an excellent study of Paul’s wonderful book.  I recommend it highly to anyone who is looking for a devotional that is both faithful to God’s word and seeks to challenge them in their walk with Jesus.