by Mike Peercy, Executive Director of Fostering Grace

If you know a foster mom, then you know a person who is determined to make a difference. Here are just six suggestions for how you can pray for her today:

1 – Pray that she will LEARN TO LEAN on others.

Let’s be real. Most of the women who sign up to be foster moms do so out of sheer determination to make a difference by leveraging her own instincts for mom life on behalf of kids who desperately need that. But with that determination there often comes a tendency to think she can handle it all on her own. And she may be right. But that’s really not best for her or for the kiddos she serves. There should be a team around her and she needs to LEARN TO LEAN on them. (If there is NOT a team around her, contact us at Fostering Grace so we can help you build that team!)

2 – Pray that she has the ENERGY TO ENGAGE.

Who has the energy to be fully engaged in the often heavy & emotional work of foster parenting ALL day and EVERY day? It’s a lot to ask on our best day. Pray for the foster moms you know to have that energy to be emotionally present and engaged with the kids in her care. She needs to be able to see the needs they don’t even know they have. She needs to be able to constantly monitor their level of regulation and see them losing their cool before it happens. It’s so much to ask of any person, so please pray that she will have the ENERGY TO ENGAGE today.

3 – Pray that she will have the PATIENCE TO PAUSE.

This may seem a little odd at first glance, but it might just be the biggest and most explosive trap in the foster parenting work to simply react to the words or actions of a kid—particularly a kid with a lot of hard stuff in their story. It takes a great deal of patience to pause long enough to consider what lies behind the behavior or words that we have just observed. And let’s remember that this is not new wisdom. Pastor James urged us all to “be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.” It’s important that we pray that foster moms will have the PATIENCE TO PAUSE.

4 – Pray she recognizes the WISDOM TO WAIT.

One of the most common realities of kids with trauma in their stories is that it is very easy to become dysregulated—to kind of lose their mind, flip their lid, or go kind of crazy. We know now that it’s because their logical brain shuts off when their danger-sensing brain sees something that looks like danger to them. And when their danger systems are activated they are utterly incapable to listening to instructions or coaching on how to do something better or different. For fostering parents, the WISDOM TO WAIT until they are regulated enough to learn before we try to reason with them or teach them better ways is simply crucial.

5 – Pray that she has the CONFIDENCE TO BE CALM.

It’s easy, especially in public situations, to be really worried or even embarrassed about the way a kid is losing their cool.  That can trigger an anxiety spike in a parent just as big as the kid is experiencing (though we grown ups are much more tolerant of our kind of dysregulation than the kids’). But it is crucial that the parent be able to remain calm in order to help the kid find their regulation. We must be confident in our tools and skills in order to help the kiddo. It’s so crucial that she has the CONFIDENCE TO BE CALM.

6 – Pray for renewed STRENGTH TO SERVE.

There are few forces I have witnessed in this world that are as strong as a foster mom. But some days take it out of us in ways we just can’t explain. Entering into the heartache of a child with horrific things in their little lives means taking some of that hurt on ourselves so that they might have less. That’s why foster parents cringe when someone says yet again that they just couldn’t do this work because they would get too attached—we do get too attached, so much that it hurts like mad. It’s excruciating. That’s why it’s so important to pray for a foster mom to continue to have the STRENGTH TO SERVE these precious kids from hard places.