The Importance of Love as the Foundation of Fostering Kids with Disabilities
There will be times in your life when you are faced with problems for which you seemingly have no solution. Sometimes it is a friend who recently lost a loved one or a family member who is going through a stressful period in their life.
Words can fail you and although you literally feel their pain, you just don’t know what you can do to ease their burden if only just a little. Actually, this shows that you already possess the best gift you can share with them, and that is love.
Love Is at the Heart of Compassion
What you are feeling is compassion which literally means that you are suffering with them. The word entered the English language via the one-time universal language of Latin. The literal translation would be the Latin “passio” meaning “to suffer” and the Latin “com” which translates as together.
Out of love, you are suffering together with another. You have compassion for them in their moments of need.
If seen in that context, love is the driving force of compassion which enables us to immerse ourselves into the needs of another. Consider for just a moment those who reach out to share in the suffering of children who, for one reason or another, have been placed in foster care.
There really is no answer other than to just be there for, and with, them. It is especially challenging for children with disabilities and if you have nothing else to give but a loving home, maybe that’s all it takes to begin the healing process.
When Motivated by Love
Compassion driven by love is something that motivates workers such as those from Fostering People. It only takes seeing what some of these kids are suffering, especially those with disabilities, to realize that we really do have the best foundation for what we do. Sadly, these kids have enough to bear with a disability that may make them feel different from other kids their age.
The current separation from parents doesn’t help matters any, albeit temporary at best. However, our love deeply seated in our hearts can be the one cure above and beyond what modern medicine can do for them.
We don’t have control over what their birth family does or can do, but we have that something living within us that will help us weather this storm in their lives. There will probably be many more to come as they grow into adulthood, but this love that we have to give teaches them that they, too, have what it takes to face each new day with hope.
Many of these children are already dealing with complex health or emotional disabilities for which we have no answers. We don’t have a magic elixir to heal their physical pain but we do have a love that is like a tonic to their souls, like an aspirin that can’t heal a wound but it can ease the pain until healing begins.
With Suffering All Around You
Fostering is just one example of what it means to view love as the best there is to offer. Any time you can sit with someone who is suffering and suffering with them, you are expressing compassion rooted in love. You are quite literally, suffering together. They are not alone and that’s because you have that special gift they need: plain and simple, love.
