Doors

A couple of years ago I started dabbling with some whittling/woodcarving. Just small stuff, usually 6 inches or less tall. I’ve carved a number of things: gnomes, Santas, an owl, bear, and others.

While I was recovering from surgery, I watched A LOT of YouTube videos and some of those were carving tutorials. I especially like the ones by a guy named Doug Linker.

One particular video, a tutorial for carving fairy doors, struck a chord with me. It’s here if you’re interested. So I ordered some appropriate basswood from a local sawmill and did a couple of carvings. My wife does the painting, so these wouldn’t look nearly as good without her skills.

While I was carving, I realized the foster parents I work with are, in some sense, doors. So I wrote a few paragraphs explaining how that could be true. I include those here.

Doors are amazing things. They are openings that take us from where we are to where we are not. A door can take you from inside your home to outside. It can take you from the bedroom to the larger part of your home. Through a door you enter work, visit relatives, or go shopping. Doors are indispensable parts of our lives.

As a foster parent, you and your home are a door… a door to a new life for foster kids and potentially for their entire family.  As you love these kids newly placed in your home, their parents have the opportunity to work on their lives, get any help they need, and hopefully become a healthier and more stable version of themselves. If that happens, the child(ren) you have cared for return(s) to a safer, healthier environment that will allow them to grow into healthy adults. If the parents choose not to do the work they need to do, the children will either continue to stay with you or move to an adoptive family where they will live healthier, safer, more stable lives.
Whichever path of events unfold, you and your home are still the door for children to walk through into a new, healthier, safer life with healthy, stable adults.

My hope is we can give new foster parents a carved fairy door with a copy of this text. I hope it could serve as encouragement for them when they have rough days.

 If you have ever thought about becoming a foster parent, please give it serious consideration. There is a shortage of safe foster homes where kids can be placed. If you’ve never considered it, would you at least pray for more families to step up to be foster families, and maybe even encourage people who you believe would be good foster parents.
If you live in the Omaha area, Release (the people I work for) does training for foster parents to become licensed 4 times a year. You can find information here.