Week 226: Marriages and Foster Parenting
Please join us this week in praying for marriages in
which couples are involved in foster care. Couples who choose to be
foster parents are choosing an honorable endeavor, but, like any worthwhile
endeavor, foster parenting can bring significant challenges to a marriage.
One
of those challenges is the demand on time. Most foster parenting situations
require meetings with counselors, agencies, teachers, birth-parents etc.
These requirements take time and necessarily cut into the time a couple may be
accustomed to spending with each other. Making the most of this decreased
couple-time is a challenge requiring creativity and commitment.
Another
challenge is the emotional investment required to parent a child who likely
will be experiencing some level of dysfunction because of his/her previous home
situation. Dealing with the child’s biological parents, who likely will
not be satisfied with their child being removed from their care, may also
require a couple to dig deep into their emotional reservoirs. This
investment can stress the foster parents’ marriage as the emotional highs and
lows upset the relational balance of a marriage. This stress can even be
greater if the spouses deal with emotional situations in significantly
different ways.
A
third challenge can be coming to terms with different expectations of the
fostering experience. If one spouse is expecting a fostering relationship
to turn into an adoption and the other only sees foster care as a short-term
commitment, marital friction is almost inevitable. This lack of common expectations
can cause the couple to disagree over family planning, financial management and
even housing. It can also mean totally different reactions when the time
comes to relinquish the care of a foster child to his/her biological parents.
Please
pray with us that these couples will
- Be patient with one another as they deal with the time demands of foster parenting
- Bear each other’s burdens lovingly and without begrudging the sacrifice
- Be creative and wise in the use of decreased couple-time
- Understand each other’s emotional differences
- Resist the temptation of blaming the foster child or the child’s biological parents for creating marital difficulties
- Take advantage of foster-parent support groups
- Know that their God will honor their efforts to benefit the life of a child
- Be the beneficiaries of the presence of the Spirit in their lives
- Be borne up by continual support and prayers of their friends, family and church
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