“But just because you didn’t cause a problem doesn’t mean you aren’t the answer to the problem”

I remember when Rich Wilkerson Jr. came to Grace City 3+ years ago. He had just released a new book called “friend of sinners,” and he read that quote from his book.

I immediately had goosebumps. At this point, I was looking into foster care, praying, and also praying for my husband (at the time fiancé) to feel the same way about foster care and children in the system.

I left that day, read the entire book he wrote, and cried almost every chapter. God was peeling back layers of my heart and softening it for sinners just as myself.

To this day, I have that book, I have book tabs and highlighted paragraphs throughout the entire thing. I look back on that season and remember what it was like to allow ourselves to become uncomfortable, to step into the unknown, and to give God control.

It was one of the hardest things we’ve ever done as individuals and as a couple. We stepped into our “foster parents” role before having biological kids. We didn’t know what we were doing. I remember asking God, “Why us? We are the most unqualified people EVER”. But God equipped us.

We never let the negative things, the horror stories of foster care, scare us away. We let them drive us.
Those very reasons became WHY we chose foster care.

My husband and I are not superheroes. We are regular people who have allowed ourselves to become uncomfortable to further the kingdom of God.

Friend, you may be the only one who tells the mom that just had her child removed from her home that she is worth something. You may be the only comfort a child ever knows. You may be the one support system a family has, and you may be the only person to tell them who Jesus is.

Because if not you and I, then who?

– Ashlynn Hotchkiss