During the 1980s, Polly and I took in foster children from Licking and Perry counties in Ohio. We saw fostering children as an opportunity to not only help children psychologically and materially, but to also lead them to saving faith in Jesus. Most of the children placed with us were teenagers, though we did care for a two-year-old boy and a pair of sisters. We also took in a Black girl, making her the only non-white student in the local school district. Some of the children were court referrals, teenagers who had been in trouble with the law. I suppose, if I am honest, I naïvely thought I could turn them around just by changing their home environment. We also had a teen church girl live with us for a year. She had been living with her grandparents, and they were unable to control her. I don’t remember what the exact issues were.
One girl was from Buckeye Lake. She was a delightful child who had the bad luck of growing up in a dysfunctional home. She lived with us several times over the years. On occasion, she would spend the weekend with her parents and siblings. Their home was quite unkempt, to say the least. Without fail, she would return from these visits infested with head lice. We would treat her with RID, only to find reinfestations after she came back from seeing mom and dad. This, of course, led to our children also getting head lice.
One time, another child went home for a visit, only to pick up scabies while she was there. By the time we figured out she had scabies, so did Polly and I and our two sons. At the time, I was the assistant pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Buckeye, Lake, Ohio. The church was holding a revival service with John Babcock — a pastor and friend of Polly’s parents. John stayed with Polly’s parents that week. One day, he mentioned to them that he had this funny rash on his belly. It was quite itchy and all he wanted to do was scratch. Of course, when Polly’s parents let us know that John had some sort of “mystery” rash, we knew what it was right away: scabies.
In the mid-1980s, we took in two teen boys who had been referred to us by the Perry County Juvenile Court. One boy lived us for quite some time, whereas the other boy was with us for only a short while. He would later attempt to rob someone at knifepoint. He spent time in prison for his crime. While living with us, he was quite a handful, constantly pushing the rules. The other boy was quite friendly and likable. He loved our boys and we got along quite well with him. Years later, he and his wife would live for us for a short time.
One day, Polly and I awoke to an epic nightmare. In the night, the boys had gotten up, stolen our money, checkbook, and car, and run off. The one boy picked up his girlfriend, and off the three went to infinity and beyond. Their joyride was brought to an abrupt end by a New Jersey police officer who had stopped them for running a red light. The officer discovered they were driving a stolen automobile and promptly arrested them. Local law enforcement went to New Jersey to retrieve them, charging the boys with felony grand theft auto. The girl was not charged with a crime.
The boys were released to the custody of their parents to await prosecution. What complicated matters was the car they stole did not belong to us. Our car was at the Chrysler dealership getting the engine replaced. The car they took was a loaner car. New Jersey law enforcement informed the dealership it was up to them to retrieve the car. They did, and then tried to bill me for their costs. I knew they had insurance for such things, so I refused to pay — end of story.
One day, the Common Pleas Court judge’s office called and asked me to come to the judge’s chambers so he could talk to me. After arriving at his chambers, I could tell that he had already had a few too many. He asked me, Reverend, what do you think I should do with these boys? I pondered his question for a moment, and then replied, I think they need to be punished, but I don’t want them sent to prison. The judge decided to sentence them to one year at the youth detention facility in Columbus. Unbeknownst to the boys, he planned to set them free after thirty days — a sentence I totally agreed with. I knew these two White boys were in for a rude awakening when they found themselves locked up in a facility where being White made them a minority. As I mentioned above, the one boy went on to commit other crimes, but the boy who had lived with us the longest was scared straight and did not offend again.
Polly and I like to think that we made a difference in the lives of the foster children who spent time in our home. We did what we could to give them a stable place to live, along with a little — okay a lot — of Jesus, too. We hope our small acts of love and kindness made a mark on their lives. Several years ago, someone whom knew us let us know that one of our foster children had told them we had made a positive difference in her life. Hearing this made our day. I do wonder from time to time what has become of them. I think of our first foster child, a two-year-old boy. After a year in our home, he was returned to his drug-addicted mom. The boy’s father had gotten out of prison and they were attempting to make a new start in life. I wonder if the new start lasted. What kind of man did this little blond-haired boy become?
Have you ever taken in foster children? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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A Facebook friend of mine is disabled and though an adult, lives with her parents. She is helping them raise a foster child who is, um, maybe 7 or so now, and is very close to his big sister, my friend. For her part, she is parenting with lots of love, affection, and enthusiasm.
The giant thorn in the youngster’s life is his relationship with his drug-addicted mother, his siblings who have different foster families, and the unkindness and pettiness of those families. My friend and her parents do what they can to shield him from the worst misbehavior of the adults, but one can only do so much. Navigating that situation with only seven years under your belt is really, really difficult.
We never took in foster children because my mom was an R.N. and always had to work to support dad’s ministry in small churches who could barely give enough to Jesus’ missionary work to have any left over for dad. Mom worked in a psychiatric hospital and picked out a couple of chronic folks who she felt were high enough functioning to be babysitters for us when she had to be absent and dad was serving the Lord somewhere in the community.
Children have such a burden to carry sometimes and one thing I believe from extended observation is that children loved and accepted in secualar environments are far better off than in religious IFB gulags. Jesus judges little children, all the children of the world… red or yellow, black or white, all under judgement in his sight…
Every time I read one if your posts about your past, I think that you should be thanking Polly every single day.
You took on foster kids when things were so difficult for you and Polly? I can barely imagine your struggles.
Re: taking in kids to save their souls. The rescue adoption craze of the 2000s was just that. X-tians, especially in the USA, though not exclusively, rushed to raise funds to go to rescue heathen babies. Some wanted to raise x-tian warriors to fight in the war against satan, (or islam) which they were sure was gonna happen one day. At first, reading their triumphant blogs about how a few weeks of prayer had wonderfully healed their new adoptee from their traumas and had made the child fit smoothly into their family, cracks began to appear. Bloggers began to admit that their traumatised child had severe behaviour problems, understandably – that a few weeks of church prayer meetings and personal prayer hadn’t resolved. Some adoptees suddenly disappeared from blogs and then some bloggers finally admitted the adoptions had failed, (god’s mysterious ways, some said,) their adoptee had been the victim of abuse and now, in turn, was violent or tried to sexually abuse their new siblings. How confused these x-tian siblings must have been – they’d spent months praying for their new wonderful little bro or sis, and now this child in their midst was a monster! Sorry, bit of a hobby horse of mine….and the first time I realised how much my fellow x-tians lied and tried to turn god’s failures to answer prayer into some sort of triumph….which it certainly wasn’t for many abandoned adoptees. I saw that not one blogger-adopter questioned god for getting it all wrong about his wonderful plan for them to adopt an orphan – who came with a mountain of health and behaviour problems that almost destroyed that family. God was now conspicuous only by his absence in the nightmare situation he’d created for some families…..this became part of my deconversion process.