Duffle Bag What?

Duffle Bag Children - noun – Children involved in the Foster care system.  Term applies to the bag that carries all of their worldly possessions from placement to placement.

Alright, I made the term up.  But this description seemed so fitting when we met our first foster child.

Flash back to April of 2011.  We had finished our DCF (Department of Children and Families; aka DSS) training and were anxiously awaiting our first placement.  I received the call while on a women’s retreat in Maryland.  I was told they had a three month old boy who needed a new foster care home.  As our social worker described the situation I was so excited at the prospect of being able to care for this child that I am sure the worker thought there was something wrong with me.  For the next two days all I could think and pray about was this child.  I prayed that God would equip me to be a foster mom and that I would be able to adjust to having a three month old again (at this time my youngest was seven and it had been a while since I had been awakened in the night by a crying baby).

Two days later my two oldest daughters and I went to meet him.  When I peered into that car seat at that sleeping boy my heart melted, taking him home with all his possessions stuffed into a red duffle bag, my heart broke.  My world had just changed.  Duffle Bag Children was the way I described this crazy world that I had just entered and the children in it.  Seeing this beautiful child, displaced, with all of his belongings in a bag, being moved from foster home to foster home, I began to weep.  I wept over the sin that had caused this child to become a ward of the state, I wept for his future, I wept because I had been so privileged with my own family, and I wept with thankfulness that my own Heavenly Father would never leave me nor forsake me (Hebrews 13:5).  It was at that moment that I realized that my family and I were truly fulfilling Matthew 25:31-40

  “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. ³² Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. ³⁴ Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶ I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ ³⁷ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? ³⁸ And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? ³⁹ And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ ⁴⁰ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

My life has never been the same since becoming a foster mom; however, I now realize that is exactly what God intended.