Trusting God in the Unknown
Some seasons of life ask for faith before they offer answers.
Not the kind of faith that feels neat or easy. Not the kind that comes with a clear timeline, a clean plan, or a promise that everything will make sense by Friday. I mean the kind of faith that stands in the dark and says, “God, I cannot see what You are doing, but I believe You are still good.”
Foster care has taught us that kind of faith.
When we first said yes to fostering children, we had plans. Of course we did. We had ideas about what our home would look like, what our role would be, and how we would help. We wanted to love children who needed safety. We wanted to be part of something good. We knew it would be hard, but we did not know the depth of what God would ask of us.
All these years later, our yes has grown into something much bigger than we imagined. We have adopted three children from the foster care system. We have opened our home to a handful of others. We have cried, prayed, waited, grieved, celebrated, and learned to release our grip again and again.
Most of all, we have learned this: trusting God in the unknown is not a lesson you learn once. It is a daily surrender.
When our plans met God’s calling
At the beginning, we thought fostering would be more straightforward than it was.
We imagined being a safe place. We imagined bedtime prayers, meals around the table, backpacks by the door, and children slowly learning they were loved. Those things did happen, and they mattered deeply.
But we did not fully understand that foster care would ask us to trust God with stories we could not fix.
We could not fix every wound. We could not answer every question. We could not speed up court timelines. We could not promise children what tomorrow would bring. We could not make pain disappear just because they were finally sleeping under our roof.
That was hard. It still is.
There is a kind of helplessness that comes when you love a child and realize love does not give you control. Love gives you a place to stand. It gives you a reason to keep showing up. But it does not hand you all the answers.
That is where faith became more than a word we used at church. Faith became the prayer whispered in the hallway after a hard phone call. Faith became the strength to sit with a child in their fear without pretending everything was fine. Faith became the decision to obey God even when obedience did not come with a map.
If we could see the other side of every situation, we would not need to trust Him. If we knew how every case would end, how every relationship would heal, how every child’s story would unfold, we would not need faith in the same way.
The unknown is uncomfortable because it reminds us we are not in charge. But sometimes that reminder is grace.
Hard days can make us rely on Him more
Some days in foster care feel holy and beautiful.
A child laughs freely for the first time. A sibling visit goes better than expected. A bedtime routine becomes safe instead of scary. A child who once flinched at affection begins to lean in. You look around and think, “God is here.”
Other days feel heavy.
There are behaviors rooted in trauma. There are appointments, meetings, and decisions that carry weight. There are goodbyes that hurt, even when reunification is the goal. There are moments when your heart is pulled in more than one direction. There are prayers that seem to go unanswered.
Hard days can expose what we have been relying on.
For me, they have revealed how often I want God to give me control instead of comfort! I want clarity instead of closeness. I want assurance that my plan will work instead of surrendering to His plan.
But God has met us in the middle of the days we would not have chosen.
He has not always removed the difficulty. Many times, He has strengthened us inside it. He has given us patience we did not have the day before. He has given us compassion when frustration was easier. He has reminded us that children are not projects, biological parents are not enemies, and our home is not ours to hold with closed fists.
The hard days have made us rely on Him more because they have shown us the limits of relying on ourselves.
That can sound spiritual in a pretty way, but living it is not always pretty. It looks like apologizing when stress made you sharp. It looks like praying over a sleeping child because you do not know what else to do. It looks like crying in the car, then walking back inside to make dinner. It looks like choosing faithfulness when feelings are tired.
And slowly, God grows something in that place.
Not always answers. Sometimes endurance. Sometimes humility. Sometimes a deeper love than we thought we had room to carry.
Loving children also meant honoring their first families
One of the most surprising parts of our journey has been what God did in our hearts toward biological parents.
When we first began fostering, we knew children came from families with pain, loss, and complicated histories. We knew reunification was often the goal. We understood it in theory.
Living it was different.
It is one thing to love a child in your home. It is another thing to also choose compassion for the parents connected to that child’s story. That compassion did not always come naturally. Fear came more easily. Judgment came more easily. Protection came very easily.
But over time, God began to show us that supporting and loving biological parents was not separate from loving the child. In many cases, it was one of the most meaningful ways to love the child.
A child’s heart is not divided the way adults sometimes expect it to be. Children can love their foster family and still long for their first family. They can feel safe in one home and still miss another. They can be angry, loyal, confused, hopeful, and grieving all at once.
When we made room for that complexity, God softened us.
We began to see parents not only through the lens of what had gone wrong, but through the lens of God’s mercy. That does not mean ignoring harm. It does not mean pretending every situation is safe or simple. It means remembering that every person involved carries a story. Every parent is made in the image of God. Every family needs truth and grace.
Supporting biological parents has been one of the most rewarding challenges God has asked us to accept.
Sometimes support looked like kindness during visits. Sometimes it looked like sending pictures or updates when it wasn't required. Sometimes it looked like praying for a parent’s healing, stability, and courage. Sometimes it looked like speaking respectfully about them in front of their child, even when the situation was painful.
That kind of love stretches you.
It asks you to lay down the need to be seen as the hero. It asks you to trust that God can work in places you cannot enter. It asks you to believe that redemption is His work, not yours.
Adoption was part of our story, but not the whole story
Adopting three children from the foster care system changed our family forever.
Adoption brought joy, belonging, and permanence. It gave us the gift of calling children our own in a legal and lifelong way. It brought celebration after long seasons of uncertainty. It gave us moments we will never forget.
But adoption did not erase the unknown. It did not erase grief. It did not make every hard part of the story disappear.
That is something many people misunderstand.
Adoption can be beautiful and born from loss at the same time. A child can be deeply loved in their adoptive family and still carry questions about their beginning. A family can celebrate permanency while still honoring the pain that made permanency necessary.
We have had to learn how to hold both.
Our children are not defined by foster care, but foster care is part of their story. Their stories deserve tenderness. They deserve honesty that is age-appropriate and respectful. They deserve space to process as they grow.
And we, as parents, need God’s wisdom for all of it.
We need wisdom for conversations we cannot script. We need wisdom for big feelings that surface years later. We need wisdom to parent each child as a whole person, not just through the lens of what they have experienced.
Adoption has taught us that God’s calling does not end when paperwork is signed. In many ways, that is where another kind of faith begins.
Faith to keep learning. Faith to keep healing. Faith to keep listening. Faith to believe that God is writing a story longer than the chapter we are in right now.
God used foster care to open our eyes wider
When we said yes to foster care, we thought we were stepping into one calling.
Over time, God used that yes to open our eyes to another need, the support of young people who age out of the foster care system. Especially young women.
Aging out can be an incredibly vulnerable transition. Many young adults leave care without the same family safety net others may take for granted. They may need housing support, life skills, mentoring, help with transportation, guidance with school or work, and, maybe most of all, steady relationships.
That need is not abstract once you have loved children in the system.
You begin to think about what happens when a child is no longer small enough for people to rally around. You wonder who will answer the phone when they are scared. Who will help them understand a lease, fill out forms, cook a meal, budget money, schedule an appointment, or process heartbreak? Who will remind them they are not alone?
For young women aging out, the challenges can carry added weight. Many face pressure, instability, and decisions that come quickly. Support can make a real difference, not because it fixes everything, but because consistent love matters.
God has used our foster care journey to stretch our view of ministry.
It is not only bringing a child into our home. Sometimes it is walking beside a parent. Sometimes it is encouraging a young adult. Sometimes it is using what we have learned to speak up for those who are easy to overlook.
The call keeps growing.
And honestly, that can feel overwhelming. There is so much need. So many stories. So many places where the world feels broken.
But God has never asked us to carry the whole world. He asks us to obey with what He puts in front of us.
One yes at a time.
One meal. One bed. One ride. One prayer. One conversation. One young woman reminded that her life has value and her future still matters.
Faith grows when we stop demanding the full picture
I still like plans.
I like knowing what is coming. I like feeling prepared. I like being able to tell my heart, “This is how it will work out.”
But foster care has taught me that some of the most sacred work happens when we cannot see the outcome.
God does not ask us to trust Him because the path is obvious. He asks us to trust Him because He is faithful. There is a difference.
If the answers were visible from the beginning, faith would feel more like strategy. But when the answers are hidden, faith becomes surrender. It becomes a relationship. It becomes daily dependence on the One who sees the child, the parent, the judge, the caseworker, the future, and the parts of the story no one else knows.
We do not trust God because foster care is easy.
We trust Him because He is present in the hard.
We trust Him because He loves these children more than we do. We trust Him because He sees biological parents with both truth and mercy. We trust Him because He does not waste pain. We trust Him because He can bring beauty from places we would have never chosen.
That does not mean every story ends the way we hoped. Faith is not pretending heartbreak does not hurt. It is bringing the heartbreak to God and believing He can hold what we cannot.
Some days, trust sounds bold.
Other days, it sounds like, “Lord, help me make it through this hour.”
Both are faith.
The unknown is not empty when God is there
Looking back, I can see how much our first yes changed us.
We thought we were opening our home to help children, and by God’s grace, we did. But He was also opening our hearts. He was teaching us to love more widely, pray more honestly, and trust more deeply.
He gave us children we now call our own. He allowed us to care for others for a season. He challenged us to support biological parents with compassion. He opened our eyes to young people aging out of care, especially women who need steady support and hope.
None of that was in our original plan.
God’s plan was bigger, harder, and more beautiful than ours.
That is often how faith works. We see one step. God sees the road. We see the risk. God sees the fruit. We see the unknown. God sees every hidden detail.
If you are in a season where you cannot see the answers at all, maybe the lack of answers does not mean God is absent. Maybe it is the place where trust is being formed.
The other side may not be visible yet. The outcome may still be unclear. The prayer may still feel unanswered.
But God is not waiting on the other side of the unknown. He is walking with us through it all so we can continue Loving On Borrowed Time.
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