here is a crisis in our nation that involves children who have no one to love them. Have you ever wondered what you might be able to do to help these kids? Let me tell you a story about a couple who decided to get involved.

Picture this. You are having a quiet Friday evening with your spouse. The two children you are fostering are playing around the house when the phone rings. When you answer, the voice on the other end identifies himself as an officer with Child Protective Services. Still rather new to the foster care system, you are not sure what to expect.

"We have some children in need of a home. Do you have room for four more in your house?" the officer asks. Because of your heart for helping kids, you readily agree. "Bring them on," you reply. "How soon will you be here?" The officer tells you that they are pulling up in front of your house at that very moment.

When two of our best friends received that phone call and walked to the door that night, they were totally unaware that their life was about to take a dramatic turn.

She is one who likes to make things. Her craft room is filled with the supplies necessary to fulfill her creative urges. She was a successful career woman whose two sons were grown. Having been single for several years, her life was neatly arranged and comfortable — until he came along. They were introduced through a friend of a friend, and both of them say that their first meeting was all it took. They each knew that God had sent them the person they wanted to live out their lives with. It was a real-life "love at first sight" encounter.

They married and began looking for a house, both wanting something in a quiet neighborhood where they could just enjoy each other. One house caught their eye, but it was across the street from a school, so they decided against it. The search continued, but they always seemed to come back to the same house. "Maybe living across the street from a school won't be all bad," they decided as they were finalizing the purchase of their new home.

Things were good for the newlyweds. They had their respective careers, a new home, and most of all a companion for life. Not long after this, they began to attend a church in the area and their circle of friends started to expand. He played bass guitar in the church praise band and she cooked for the new member orientation classes that the church offered.

Children delivered

One day, she heard someone talking about children who were the victims of physical, verbal, and psychological abuse in the home. Having been through the trauma of growing up in a family that was abandoned by her father and living in an environment of verbal abuse her whole life, her heart was broken at the plight of these children. "I couldn't get these images out of my mind," she says. "Someone had to do something to help these kids."

Here were two people, one whose kids were grown and the other who had never been around kids for any length of time; and they were talking about inviting children to live in their home. "We got to thinking about the location of our house. It wasn’t what we thought we wanted, but it was perfect for school-age kids," he explains. "God had a reason for putting us here.”

After considerable prayer and discussion between themselves, the couple decided to become foster parents. They knew that there would be changes in the way they did things, but never did they dream that it would change their lives forever.

"Once the decision was made, we jumped into the process with both feet," she recalls. According to her, every time there was an opening in one of the orientation classes, they went. Their backgrounds were scrutinized, their employment was verified and their home was inspected by multiple local, county, and state agencies. "It was kind of like being a specimen under a microscope. Everything was examined by someone, but we finally received our certification. We could have as many as six kids in our home."

Theirs was not just a normal foster home certification. They were approved to take in at-risk children. "We were certified as a therapeutic home," she says. "That meant that we might foster kids who had to be taken from their biological parents because of situations in the home. As a result of the environment they come from, these kids have deep-seated emotional scars."

He went on to describe the fact that children from these situations do not trust anyone. "They have been hurt so many times that they put up a barrier to protect themselves," he states.

Over the course of the five years that they were a foster home, this couple took care of 14 children — along with frequent visits from their siblings. As you can imagine, being responsible for up to six kids who may not even understand why they are no longer with their parents is a daunting task.

The couple (whose names are not revealed in this article, to protect their and the children’s privacy) readily acknowledges that they had support from neighbors and friends. "There have been times when we just didn't know how we were going to cope with the stress."

Friends to the rescue

When they opened their door to the four children that night, all the children had with them was a paper sack with a few items of filthy clothing. The kids had obviously not bathed in some time, and two of them did not even have underwear. The CPS officer who brought them handed the foster father a paper with the kids’ names and ages, went back to the car and drove off.

"That was the worst night we have ever had," they state. "The kids were screaming and swearing, kicking the walls and hitting both of us." They had to stay awake all night to make sure the kids didn't run away.

The next morning, some friends came over and helped get the children cleaned up and into some decent clothes. On Sunday, our Bible study class prayed for the couple then put feet to our prayers. My wife organized a shopping trip to take place right after the service. My daughter and two other ladies from church joined her at a local Wal-Mart. Each woman took a shopping cart and a piece of paper with one of the kids' name, age and size; and off they went. They filled each cart with clothes, toiletries, toys and whatever they thought might be needed. Since our friends already had two foster children before the four arrived, they also bought things for them.

When my wife got home, she told me about a mother and small child at Wal-Mart who kept watching them as they discussed what to buy and went about filling up the shopping carts. The little boy finally asked what they were doing. "We are buying some things for four little kids who barely have anything right now," my wife explained to him.

When they finally took the line of carts to the checkout stand, one of the employees brought a toy and put it on the end of the counter. He simply said, "A little boy bought this and asked me to make sure it got to you for the kids."

When I talk with my friends about what they have been through over the years during which they were foster parents, they talk about the progress that some of the children made while they were in their home.

"When Colin came here with his three siblings, he could barely read. A few months later, when the judge decided to put the kids back with their unemployed biological mother, he was doing very well in school. Kent's adopted parents brought him and his brother to see us the other day. He has grown into a very handsome young man," she explains.

My wife and I have seen these changes in the children. Along with several other families, we have been there for most of the kids' birthday parties and have gone to their schools on Grandparents' Day to eat lunch with them.

Addressing a crisis

Some of the couple’s foster kids were adopted and keep in contact with them; some were rotated to other foster homes. Others were returned to the same environment from which they were taken in the first place. A few were so emotionally scarred that they were a risk to themselves and others; they were placed in environments where they can get full-time psychological and psychiatric treatment. A loving environment sometimes cannot overcome years of abuse and negative influences.

Our friends are no longer foster parents. They adopted three of the kids and are focused on raising them in the kind of environment the children would have never had before.

The task facing the agencies responsible for protecting children at risk is monumental, and their resources are totally inadequate for the task. That does not change the fact that there is a crisis in America today that we must address in some manner. The nuclear family is melting down. Our microwave/drive-thru society does not encourage the relationships that the Bible clearly outlines for families. While the trend in divorces seems to be making a turn for the better, there are still thousands of children who are victims of the collateral damage inflicted when parents are not doing their job raising their children.

Our friends had an impact on all 14 of the kids they took into their home. However, everyone is not called or suited to being foster parents to at-risk kids. But all Christians should be interested and should be involved in the recovery of throw-away children in our nation. The Bible tells us in James 1:27, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." As Christ-followers, we have a responsibility to help children who do not have families to protect them.

There are opportunities to foster kids who are not "at risk" without having them live in your home. Here are some ideas:

• Organizations like Big Brothers and Big Sisters pair adults with kids who need a positive influence in their lives.
  
• Agencies like Child Protective Services need volunteers to help case workers so they can spend their time helping the kids and the families who take them in.
  
• Find someone who has foster children and ask them what you can do to help.
  
• Our mobile society has taken away a valuable resource in the process of raising children — grandparents. Opportunities abound for senior citizens to be surrogate grandparents to these kids and others who do not have grandparents.
  

We measure success and failure too often in how far, how fast and how many. The growth of our children into adults who understand how important they are to God and to the rest of society takes time and love. The results are not necessarily immediate. Self-esteem and values are built layer upon layer. When there is a crack in one of the layers, it may never be repaired. However, with people like the couple in this article and all the others who pour themselves into mending broken lives, these kids can learn to use the experiences they have been through to make them stronger. It is all about relationships with loving, godly people. That is the way God designed us.