I looked in the rearview mirror at my kids, their cheeks wet and blotchy, their expressions contorted by grief. But I didn’t need to look to know how they were feeling; I could hear how they were feeling, as loud sobs echoed through the minivan. Two and a half years is a long time for anyone, but when you’re six or seven, it’s most of what you remember of your short life. We were driving their (foster) sister home, for the final time, to be reunified with her (biological) mother. They were saying goodbye to their sister forever, and they were feeling their loss deeply.

They weren’t the only ones. My husband cried — wept — in a way I hadn’t seen in our nearly twenty years together. And me? I wasn’t just sad. I was “done.” That’s it. We are done with foster care. I will not do this to myself or to them again. The heartbreak is too much to bear. The uncertainty is too much to carry. The brokenness is too much to wade through. This is not worth it.

“Worth it.” With those two words, I had backed myself into a corner where my emotions and beliefs would be forced to battle it out. Is foster care worth it? I was overwhelmed by what I was feeling: sad, weary, angry, fearful. But what did I believe? What had called me into foster parenting and kept me through the most painful and broken parts before? Simply put, the belief in those simple words — that foster care is worth it.

Children Are Worth It

I love the places in Scripture where we get to see the heart of God walking around with skin on in Jesus Christ. We all know the story. Jesus was with the people, teaching and healing, when they began “bringing children to him that he might touch them” (Mark 10:13), “even infants” as Luke recounts (Luke 18:15). Children? With their lack of status and rights, their snotty noses and silly questions? They don’t deserve to be in the presence of the Rabbi. “The disciples saw it [and] they rebuked them” (Luke 18:15).

But Jesus was “indignant” and turned upside down the view of the children that the disciples — and the society surrounding them — held. “Let the children come to me,” he said (Mark 10:14). “And he took them in his arms and blessed them” (Mark 10:16).

The foundation of foster care begins with this Christlike belief: children are created by God, deeply loved by him, and inherently precious. “God created [children] in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). They are a blessing, heritage, and reward (Psalm 127:3–5). They are the ones of whom Jesus said, “To such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14). Every child on this earth — every child in foster care — was “made in the likeness of God” (James 3:9), pointing to his beauty and worth.

It’s not just that my kids are precious; it’s that all kids — even “those” kids — are precious. The infant screaming and quaking from withdrawal is precious. The toddler finger-painting with poop is precious. The little girl hiding rotting food under her bed is precious. The little boy flipping his desk after being triggered is precious. The teenager withdrawing in fear from the presence of a man is precious.

The effects of abuse and neglect on children are destructive and pervasive. But there is no past abuse, current struggle, or future prognosis — no medical diagnosis, mental illness, physical handicap, behavioral issue, or learning disability — that can steal the divine image from a child.

“Any day — or life — spent loving and serving precious children is one well spent.”

In fact, Scripture reveals God’s especially tender heart toward the vulnerable (Deuteronomy 10:18), the oppressed (Psalm 9:9), the one “who [has] no one to help” (Psalm 72:12 NIV), the orphan (Hosea 14:3), the fatherless (Psalm 68:5) — the foster kid. Seeing children as God sees them informs the worth it-ness of foster care. Any day — or life — spent loving and serving precious children is one well spent.

Families Are Worth It

I became a foster parent for the wrong reasons. No, not any of the wrong reasons seen in the made-for-TV-movie portrayals of foster parents. But still, the wrong reasons. I became a foster parent to “save” kids from their “bad” parents. I became a foster parent believing reunification to be the unfortunate by-product of the system. I became a foster parent forgetting that, as precious to the heart of God as children may be, families are just as precious.

The family is precious for the same reason children are precious — it was created by God to display his glory. The family is a rich theological image, created to reflect the perfect love of God for his bride (Ephesians 5:25–27; Isaiah 54:5) and the relationship between the Father and the Son (Matthew 12:18; John 3:35). In the story of human history, the family is introduced at the very beginning. After God creates all things, he immediately acknowledges that aloneness is not good. So, he creates woman, forms the very first family, and commands husband and wife to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). This is the first of many commands God gives to parents and family members throughout his word, all of which demonstrate his good design for the family.

In his perfect plan for the perfect world he created, families would live together in love and unity, with parents tenderly caring for their children and children growing up safe and cherished. But just a few chapters into human history, before the first child is born, sin enters the world, and from that day forward, the curse touches every family ever to be formed. Sin has marred God’s good plan for the family.

But the gospel is great news for broken families. Jesus came to forgive the sinner (1 John 1:9), make new what is old (Revelation 21:5), heal the sick (Matthew 9:35), give life to the dead (Isaiah 25:8). He came so lost people — stuck in the bondage of sin, trauma, addiction, mental illness — could come to know him as Savior. He came so families may be healed and brought back together in wholeness.

Through the gospel, God is restoring all things that sin has corrupted. God created the family unit, and it is sacred to him. Playing a part in foster care — in families being healed and reunited — means getting to be on the front lines of God’s work of restoring families.

Living for Jesus Is Worth It

The life of a foster parent is complicated, full of contradictory emotions and experiences — beauty and brokenness, trauma and healing, gratitude and grief. But if I had to boil it all down to a single defining word, the most articulate one I can come up with is this: hard. Foster care is just plain hard.

I felt it that day in the car, driving my (foster) daughter home, as I’ve felt it many times before and since. Foster care is hard. It’s the hard of peeling a child’s arms from your neck as you send him on a visit with a parent he’s afraid of. The hard of watching a mom you’ve supported relapse and return to an abusive relationship. The hard of daily calls from the principal after a triggering incident.

So, what ultimately makes a life marked by the hard of foster care worth it? The question demands an answer of me, an answer that is steady and sturdy enough to sustain me through every trial, transcend every trouble. And my conclusion falls short if it culminates with the people I’m serving. Ultimately, it’s not the kids or the parents, but someone else completely.

In the end, I’m not a foster parent because I know children need homes or because I believe families should be reunited. I’m a foster parent because I love Jesus. I want to live in surrender to him; I want my days to be spent in the worship of him. I was “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that [I] should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Part of being his means joining him in his mission.

As I take up my cross and follow my Jesus (Matthew 16:24), he leads me to the people he came for, the people he loves. And loving them is one of the ways I love him. It is the miracle of doing for the least of these, and actually having done for him (Matthew 25:40).

Sometimes foster care feels like the warm embrace of a child, and sometimes it feels like offering my body as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). It is hard, but it is worth it. The kids are worth it. The families are worth it. But before and beyond the people, the reason foster care is worth it? Because living for Jesus is always, always worth it.