The answer is simple: everything. Love has everything to do with it. In our line of work—working with children and families who are navigating difficulties—love has everything to do with it. At its core, every act within this space is an extension of love. It’s not about filling our own needs but about pouring out care, compassion, and refuge for those who need it most.
Love Is a Refuge
Becoming a foster parent is not about fulfilling a desire for personal purpose—though many find immense joy and purpose in the journey. It’s about opening our hearts and homes to provide a temporary safe haven for a child in need. For children who have endured instability or trauma, love offers protection, hope, and a sense of belonging. It’s a bridge back to a safe and healthy family when reunification is possible. Love is the act of standing in the gap, offering stability and comfort until the day a child can return to a safe home. It's the tough stuff of knowing it will hurt when they go, knowing there will be hard days, but doing it anyway, because of love.
Love Creates Forever
Adoption is not about filling empty rooms in a house—though it often leads to a full home and an overflowing heart. It’s about providing lifelong security, family, and unconditional love to a child who is without. It says, “You belong here,” creating permanence and a place where a child can feel safe, valued, and loved for who they are. It looks a lot like sacrifice. A lot like generosity. A lot like love.
Love in Action
As we celebrate Black History Month, we’re reminded that love also means honoring others. When we pay homage to the stories of those who have endured hardship and triumph, we show love. For those who have experienced the foster care system, or for communities or individuals who have faced historical challenges or are facing current struggles, love is expressed in the simple but profound act of listening, empathizing, and remembering.
To sit with someone who has a different history, culture, or experience and honor their story is a gift of love. It costs us nothing, yet it’s priceless to the recipient. It’s truly seeing someone and valuing them. This kind of love builds bridges of compassion and understanding.
Love Changes Us
When we offer love, whether to a child in need or to someone with a story to share, it doesn’t just change them—it changes us. Love grows our empathy, deepens our compassion, and fills us with a greater sense of purpose and joy.
Extending love means truly seeing others and understanding the profound impact of how we choose to live, speak, and act. We can show love without uttering a word. When we walk through the day, we can keep our heads down and view others as an inconvenience, or we can meet their eyes, extend a smile, and offer grace when faced with a challenge. We can brighten a day or contribute to the noise and negativity of the world around us. It costs us nothing. Perhaps a stranger in our path just received devastating news, suffered a tragedy, or uttered a desperate prayer moments earlier. What can a simple smile do? It can lift, encourage, and build up. The Bible reminds us, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” When we use words and actions to demonstrate love to those in our homes, workplaces, and communities, we creating positive ripples of kindness and compassion, while being transformed into a more joyful, less self-focused version of ourselves.
Love Has Everything to Do with It
Foster care, adoption, and behavioral health are not just systems or services—they are acts of love in motion. They are opportunities to give of ourselves for the good of a child, a family, and a community. The way we live our lives, every interaction and every decision, can reflect love. Whether it’s in our work, our relationships, or extending kindness to a stranger, we have countless opportunities to demonstrate love daily, making the world around us a little brighter. And in doing so, we find that love truly has everything to do with it.
