A Guest Post by Heather Margiotta

This post was originally featured on Loving the Wounded Child 

It’s an honor to welcome and introduce writer and adoptive mother, Heather Margiotta to our community!  I invite you to let her beautifully motivating message and the statistics she shares sink into your heart. As you read, prayerfully consider the questions she asks us to ponder. Be blessed, motivated, and inspired. Welcome, Heather:

James 1:27 says, “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.”

Adoption wasn’t always on my radar. But when I heard there was an orphan epidemic in our country, I couldn’t sit and do nothing. I was youth pastoring and spending all my free time pouring into teenagers when my husband told me about a job posting he saw. It was a position with a foster care agency that took care of eight to ten children at a time through the state’s foster care system. This is when I learned how great of a need there was to not only take care but also protect these children. Five days later we were in our car moving across the country to try and help end this epidemic.

It would only take seven percent of all the Christians to end a world epidemic. Seven percent to prevent an entire generation from experiencing PTSD, abuse, neglect, pain, suffering, hunger, etc. Seven percent to change not only an entire generation but also future generations. The Foster Care/Adoption epidemic would end if only seven out of every one hundred Christians opened their home.

Is this really an epidemic? Well, you tell me.

There are 18 million “double orphans,” those who’ve lost both parents, in need of a home. That’s enough to fill a Super Bowl stadium—not just once, but 180 times. Twenty-one percent of foster care alumni suffer from PTSD– that is a higher rate than war veterans. Eighty percent of all children in the foster care system have serious emotional issues. There are millions of children who are experiencing such high levels of all forms of abuse and neglect that it affects them their entire lives. It affects how they hold a job and daily living habits, how they treat others they’re in a relationship with, and how they parent. They live their life on repeat and more than likely their own children will enter the foster care system creating a whole new generation of orphans. There are millions of children who are forced to stay in an abusive home because there’s nowhere else for them to go. There are millions who will wake up tomorrow bruised and battered, physically and emotionally because the church decided to wake up and continue on with their day turning a blind eye.

If the seven percent of Christians opened their home to these orphans and shared the gospel with them- that’s an entire generation that could and should be healed from all their pain and suffering.

That’s an entire generation of people coming to know Christ who will have children raised in the Lord, not the system.

My husband and I spent years fostering over forty children. We had some extremely high highs and equally low lows. We struggled to feel supported and understood when facing difficulties because not many within the church understood what we were doing. It became more and more obvious how neglected this need is by the church.

As a church, we have the teachings of Jesus which include eternal life and healing. We can be a tool that provides healing to a whole people group. The amount of pain and suffering these children go through doesn’t end when they’re adults, it only continues. The only way someone can properly heal from what they’ve suffered is learning who their healer is and how are they to learn this if the church isn’t there to teach them?

Through this experience, we’ve seen children healed from their trauma and give their life to Jesus. We’ve seen children’s lives forever changed and when we’ve seen that, I’ve always looked at the other children. The ones who are still hurting, confused, and broken. The ones who don’t know Jesus because they’ve never been told about Him. The children who have no parents and a church to lean on.

I was recently in a conversation with a foster mom who has also adopted. We were sharing our experiences and found comfort in how similar our thoughts and frustrations were. We talked about how hard it is to be a foster parent and not feel support from the state or the church. She then went on to say that they do intend to take a year break but they can never quite completely. She said that someone needs to keep pushing and fighting for these children and if that’s her and her husband, then she will do it no matter how tired she is.

I admired her passion and strength to keep fighting when it feels like everyone is fighting against you. I admired her determination to help as many children as she possibly could. But, I can’t help but think, it’s not supposed to be this hard. The system is broken, once you become a foster parent you will see how corrupt it is. But, I can’t be mad at that. I can’t be mad that the state isn’t perfect in their structure because at least they’re doing something about it.

It’s not the state’s job to care for the orphans- it’s the believer’s job.

If we created our own system to care for these kids then there would be no need for a foster care system. It wouldn’t be perfect because no one is perfect, but I would hope it would be better.

Not everyone can be a foster parent but there are plenty of other ways to support foster parents and help the children. One of the biggest bits of help for foster parents is being certified to babysit foster children. Many foster families want to spend time away from home but are required to leave their foster child with someone who is legally allowed to watch them. Another way is to provide material items the family may need to help raise another person. Depending on the age they may need diapers, school supplies, or clothes. There are countless ways to help a family so you can decide what avenue fits best for your life.

Ask yourself today- now that you know this information, what are you going to do with it? Will you store the info to later repeat in a future conversation? Will you look into the different ways you could help? Or will you forget that you even read this and continue on with your day?

Heather Margiotta is a Christian Writer and Speaker from northeast Ohio. She is a wife to a loving husband and a mother to two handsome sons. She received a bachelor’s degree in Theology and writes about her faith, adoption, relationships, and grief on her blog, HeatherMargiotta.com. Besides loving Jesus and her family, Heather is obsessed with coffee, local pizza joints, and nail polish. Find her on Instagram and Facebook.