Foster care, shmoster care

      To say Jonah and I were pleased when we were told we could become foster parents is an understatement; we were beyond ecstatic. Yup, we're strange. Our future life's plan included fostering children after retirement and I've often told people that we don't plan on having an empty nest for many, many years until our health fails and we are too old. Foster care is our calling. It is a part of who we are as a couple. It's the reason we added on to our house. Being told we could begin 4 years shy of when we had planned(when Isaiah turns 18) was exciting. When the resource family approval social worker(the new term for foster parents is resource family) called to tell me that we couldn't foster because of our family size, we were crushed. Like, seriously and honestly crushed. We had spent hours upon hours in classes and gathering paperwork and spent lots of money on fingerprints, cribs and guns safes to make our home ready because we had initially been told by a social worker that the law had changed and that the supervisor had given the ok. The RFA worker told us no and she was not sure why we were told that. So, I rallied myself, asked her to please contact the state liaison to get things cleared up for sure because I believed the written directives gave clear ways we could be certified and then Jonah and I(and some family and friends) fell to our knees in prayer.
     We know that our fight is not against the RFA workers(cause they REALLY need foster families!). This is spiritual and we were not going to give up without fighting in prayer about this! We were called 2 hours later with the answer. Apparently, we CAN become a certified resource family but can only be placed with sibling sets since they are difficult to place. Cause, ya know, we have "too" many kids to foster just one child at a time but a whole sibling set(the number is irrelevant to them) is just fine. How THAT makes sense is not a concern to me, obviously, but its just a bit comical.
    Our whole home study is ready to go, paperwork done and filled and cribs set up and "placement ready". We await the last step; a social worker to do family interviews to determine whether we are capable to care for more children and determine how many more. This is the last determining factor of whether or not we will be certified. We could end up with a social worker that is encouraging and OK with the fact that we have 6 kids under 18 or we could be connected with one who thinks large families(especially home schooled ones) are weird and hiding something horrible and detrimental. If you care to pray with us for this last step, we would LOVE it and so would the kids who we are looking forward to caring for and loving;) May God get all the glory.