I am so excited to share this episode with you today! Britanie Ramirez and her family have said “yes” to opening their home 26 times. Like all of us, Britanie started out with some preconceived ideas about the goal of fostering but, through her journey, God has taught her about the meaningful and challenging realities of stepping into a family’s brokenness. In this conversation, she shares about seeing collateral beauty in brokenness, recognizing what we’re actually rooting for as foster parents, why it’s 100% worth it to step into foster care, and reminders to celebrate the small wins. I know you’ll be encouraged by this one!
HERE ARE 3 TAKEAWAYS FROM TODAY’S CONVERSATION:
1. What are you honestly rooting for?
Britanie shared how she had the desire to foster a child with the intention that the outcome would be adoption. But what she realized along the way was that they were actually rooting for this child’s biological family to fail by fixing their focus on adoption. Do you relate? What are you rooting for as you look ahead at the future?
“We were willing and hoping for that biological family to fail. We were looking for them to mess up enough times, or to not succeed, or to not be able to reunite their family the way that God intended because our goal was to keep that kid with us.”
2. It’s okay to be broken by brokenness.
If you have stepped into foster care, you’ve been around really hard stuff. It’s impossible to step up to support a family without feeling broken by the circumstances of the situation. It’s okay for you to feel the weight of that and communicate those feelings.
“When you bring foster care into your home, when you bring brokenness into your home, you can’t help but be broken by that.”
3. Enduring the hard allows us to see the beauty.
We can feel defeated and discouraged along this journey. It can seem like our Enemy has already won as he creates broken families and perpetuates the need for foster care to exist. But God isn’t finished yet. He has called people like you to dive into the middle of these situations to offer reprieve. When we get to see these children blossom, and grow, and have small victories that we know are huge hurdles for them, that is when we get to witness “collateral beauty.”
“It’s never easy, but 100% of the time it is worth it.”
RESOURCES FROM TODAY’S SHOW
- Follow @becomingfosters on Instagram
- Follow Becoming Fosters on Facebook
- Becoming Fosters’ Website
- YouVersion Bible Plans: Becoming Fosters: Brokenness And Belonging and Start with Yes- A 5 Day Foster Care and Adoption Reading Plan
- Becoming Fosters Podcast
- [Article] New to Becoming a Foster Parent or Thinking About It? You’re Not Crazy – Finds.Life.Church
- [Article] What Is It Like to Be a Foster Parent? Here’s What We’ve Learned – Finds.Life.Church
Meet Our Guest
Britanie Ramirez is a family therapist, Executive Director of a non-profit servicing marginalized populations, and a mom to seven children at the moment. Her husband of 16 years, Adrian, is a pastor. Britanie and her family have said “yes” to opening their home 26 times. She is committed to being part of a movement to connect, equip, and mobilize foster families. Britanie believes that everyone has an inherent need to genuinely connect with others and that each person, child, or adult has an innate capacity for healing, growth, and learning when given the opportunity.
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