Today’s guest is familiar with saying goodbyes. Jamie Finn, host of the Real Mom Podcast, co-founder of Goods & Better, and the director of Foster the Family, has fostered many children over the years. In this episode, she shares her heart for foster care, how to renew and reorient your mind to do this work well, one of the most difficult decisions she’s ever made, and how she has coped with the fleetingness of fostering as well as the emotions that come along with it. If you are new to fostering or if you’ve been in this world a while, I know you will be encouraged and blessed by Jamie’s perspective!
(Want to catch the video version of this episode? Just click here!)
Just imagine what we could accomplish together.
We are so excited for what could be accomplished in the next 10 years of helping people support the foster care community!
PARTNER TODAYHERE ARE 3 TAKEAWAYS FROM TODAY’S CONVERSATION:
1. We are the saved, not the Savior.
If we’re honest, it’s easy to go into this work thinking we are going to rescue kids from their circumstances. But the more you do this work, the more you realize how much we are just like the kids and families we are trying to support – we are in need of someone to support us, too. Our role is not to be the Savior; instead, we get to enter into our kid’s situations and become an agent for healing.
“I am the rescued, not the rescuer. I am the saved and not the Savior, and identify with my kids and their parents, not the Savior and his coming and rescuing.”
2. Your mindset has the power to create change!
The attitude we have toward a biological parent will have an impact on their chances of reunification. If we think well and view biological parents as a partner with us, our attitude and actions will change for the better. It comes out through the way we speak to them and how we treat them.
“Our beliefs are so powerful because they shape our speech and our actions and what other people receive from us.”
3. Root for reunification.
Foster care, by its nature, is temporary. In some cases, it leads to adoption, but the majority of the time the goal of foster care is reunification with the biological parents. When we root for reunification from day one, we are able to hope for that in our own hearts, work with the biological parents toward that goal, but also prepare our kids to get their family back.
“When we see the family first as something that God created, we can really get on board with it being healed and whole again.”
RESOURCES FROM TODAY’S SHOW
Meet Our Guest
Jamie Finn is the biological, adoptive, and foster mother of 4-6 children. When she’s not homeschooling, changing diapers, playing Pokemon, making slime, and singing “Let it Go,” she spends her time encouraging, equipping, and serving foster and adoptive parents. She is the host of the Real Mom Podcast, co-founder of Goods & Better, and the director of Foster the Family, a nonprofit which encourages and supports foster and adoptive families, mobilizes the church and community, and advocates for vulnerable children. Jamie and her middle-school sweetheart and husband of 16 years, Alan, live in New Jersey with their children.
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