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Blessed By Chance
ents and eventually started having conversations about the process. There were always children that needed homes.
Pat and Andi never set out to adopt. They were enjoying life as a married couple with no plans for kids other than Pat’s son from what she refers to humorously as the “previous administration.” In addition to working a full-time job, Pat also cared for her mother who lived with them. When her mother passed away, she felt she had too much time on her hands, but she was a person that liked to stay busy and found herself with nothing to do with her spare time. She was bored. An ad for a Sunday night nursery attendant at a local church piqued her interest. It wasn’t the money. It was something to do to fill time. She got the job and continued to work in the nursery over the next four years.
After learning more about how it worked and knowing there was such a need, she approached Andi with the idea of becoming foster parents. He was receptive and about a year later they received a call that two of four siblings were in desperate need of placement. After much discussion, they decided they would give it a go. As educated as they tried to be on the front end, it was not possible to be fully prepared for what they would experience.
The nursery job was a perfect fit. She was able to stay busy and she was great with the kids. The church had a strong support system for foster families which meant several of the kids that spent time in the nursery were in foster care. This was Pat’s first experience with foster care. She and Andi both were raised by their biological parents. On top of that, both of their parents had been married for fifty or more years to each other. As time went on and Pat continued her work in the nursery, she got to know some of the foster par6 | MAY 2022 | ENID MONTHLY
While they had an overall understanding of what being foster parents entailed, it was an eye-opening experience to learn the history behind the situations and conditions the children had been exposed to. The environment they came from made them challenging to parent. They had been in a total of twelve different foster homes in between attempts to reunite them with their biological mother. One advantage to Pat and Andi’s home was familiarity. When the children arrived to live with them an excited “Miss Pat” in a small child’s voice could be heard. It was one of the little girls that had been in her care in the nursery. This helped with the transition and provided a layer of trust. Often foster children do not have a gauge for trust due to the many difficult situations they have been exposed to.
