In today's episode Leslie interviews Joe and Meghan Tucker about homeschooling and foster care. You'll be encouraged as they share their story in their heart to show Christ's love to those who so desperately need to see it. This is a great follow up to last week's episode, Hospitable Homeschooling, which is linked down below!
Leslie (00:00):
Hey there everybody. Welcome to the Homeschooling Family Podcast. Here we discuss just about everything that comes into play when you're a Christian homeschooling family. I'm Leslie nunnery, and on today's podcast, I'll be talking to Joe and Megan Tucker about homeschooling and foster care. You'll be encouraged as they share their story in their heart to show Christ's love to those who so desperately need to see it. This is really a great followup to "Hospitable Homeschooling", which we talked about last week. For God can use your willingness to open your home this way in such incredible ways. I guarantee you'll be encouraged as the Lord opens your eyes to the needs of others and how you can be part of meeting those needs and pointing them to Jesus. So let's dive right into our conversation with Joe and Megan.
Leslie (00:52):
Hey there everybody. And welcome back. This weekend, we are going to be looking at another [inaudible] that I think a lot of us have probably considered and prayed about that. But I'm not sure that enough of us have gotten over the hump of fear. So we're going to be talking to Joe and Megan who are foster parents, and I'm going to just let them introduce themselves to you here for a second. And then we're going to talk to them about their experience as foster parents and how that has affected their family life, their parenting, their homeschool, and I'm sure even more fingers that they see from this. So, Joe and Megan, thank you so much for joining us.
Joe (01:36):
Yeah, absolutely. It's our pleasure. Thanks for having us.
Leslie (01:39):
Well, you're very welcome. Can you guess just a little bit of insight into your family, you know, where are y'all from? How many children you have, how long have you homeschooled? That would be very interesting in this.
Megan (01:51):
Yeah, I am Megan Tucker and we live in the Nashville area. Um we have three boys, sixth grade, third grade and kindergarten. And we've been homeschooling for seven years now. Six or seven years. Yeah. And um,
Joe (02:05):
Yeah, I'm Joe and, uh, I also live in the Nashville area.
Leslie (02:10):
[laughs] That's so nice you live together! That's a beautiful thing.
Joe (02:14):
Yeah, we, um, we, uh, been married since 2004 and um, yeah, we, uh, homeschooling has been an incredible blessing to our family and um, and to our children,
Leslie (02:29):
How did the Lord first lay on your hearts or put in your minds the idea of fostering and then, you know, kind of where did that, that little spark of thought take you?
Joe (02:41):
We, like so many ways in my life. You know, you, you think that, uh, you know, your plan for things is one way and, uh, and then the Lord shows you otherwise. And that, that has been the case with us for, for foster care. We, we always thought that adoption was going to be part of our story. And adoption has a big place in our family. Meg's sister, she and her husband have four biological children and then five children that they have either adopted or fostering themselves. And because our children have, uh, have been around that. And we've been around that, that's kind of the road that we thought we were going to go down. And, um, we went through three or four different adoption scenarios through, uh, agencies internationally through private adoptions, internationally,
Megan (03:38):
Even were placed with children. We had a couple of placements. The doors kept closing.
Joe (03:44):
Yeah, the Lord just kept closing those doors. And, and we were heartbroken. We, we didn't understand what was happening and, um, because our hearts were set on that. And then, um, a movie actually acted as a, as a catalyst. Um, there was a Christian movie that came out a few years ago, called the Drop Box in our small group. Um, we went to go see it together. We've hosted a small group in our home for a number of years and it was on the, we all decided we wanted to do. And if you hadn't seen the movie, it's a story about a gentleman in Taiwan who started a ministry where the mothers of unwanted children can, can literally drop those. non-AP not actually drop them, can drop them in a drop box at his homes and know that they will be loved and taken care of.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
And that prompted something in us to say, why are we focusing on the needs of people in far away places? Not that that isn't important, but there are children that are in our community that, that need love. And, uh, and that need families that can provide stability and structure and, and, and all of those things that we take for granted. But there are people in our own communities or small children who are doing without that. So there's a ministry at our church. It started our church, it's now its own organization that cares for the children of women who were incarcerated. And we had some friends who were part of that ministry. In fact, our middle son's best friend was a child who was, uh, cared for through that ministry. And, um, and so that's, that's where we wound up.
Leslie (05:37):
Having this conversation is actually affecting me more deeply than I thought. So I'm like over here, choking back tears, hoping my voice doesn't crack because the needs are so great. And God has given us all so much. Now I'm sure that even though you were familiar and already kind of hardwired towards adding to your family through adoption or through another way like that, I would still think that that looking at foster care, looking at, at caring for these children, there had to be some fears, some concerns, some things that you really had to talk about as a family, what were some of those that you had to address and, and how did the Lord overcome them? And what have you seen of them now that you're actually walking this road?
Megan (06:24):
Some fears of mine personally were how do you have this baby in your home? And then eventually have to give it back. And, you know, it could be here for three months. It could be here or there's different placement times. Ours is a longer placement with three or four years. How do we love this baby? But yet remember, Hey, it's not our baby. We have to give it back to its mom. You know, when she's better and doing well. Another fear was, Oh, what's this gonna do to our boys? How is this going to affect them? Is it going to be positive? It's going to be negative?
Joe (06:55):
Yeah. Yeah. Um, but it's interesting. I don't know that it would be fair to say mainly to the first thing that Megan mentioned that we have got, had some epiphany that resolves that, but rather we feel like we are called to love Lily, the little girl, and we've had other children. We've had seven children in our home over the last two years. Willie's the longest term placement that we've had, but we are called to love Lily in spite of what it may cost us, um, and the pain or, or whatever difficulty we run into. Now, it just so happens that whatever pain there has been has been exponentially outweighed by blessing, but like, like so many other things in life that the Lord calls us to, he doesn't answer all of our questions before He expects us to step out and take action. And, uh, and so that's what we are choosing to do.
Joe (07:58):
But as far as our boys go, you know, and please chime in chime in of course, what we hope for our children is, is of course, for them to leave our home loving Lord and, and for them to be able to take care of themselves and be self sufficient and have strong character. But, but I think, right, right in that list, we hope that our children leave here understanding that a life centered around themselves is an incredibly shallow life. And that if all you ever do is what's comfortable and what you can pretty much guarantee is going to feel good and you don't give of yourself to others, then you are missing out on the most incredible blessings of this life. Not just those that the Lord gives, but the blessing of relationships with other people. Yeah.
Megan (08:57):
Preach it!
Leslie (09:01):
I want to just a few more practical questions. How does participating in a fostering ministry bringing children into your home? How does it affect how you parent your boys? How does it affect how your homeschool? Just kind of give us a look at practically, how has this affected your family?
Joe (09:21):
I think that, I mean, you are, are, I'm gone most of the time during the days. And so she's the one in the trenches. So
Megan (09:29):
This particular placement that we've had, I was just telling him, I don't know if it has affected us any differently than it would have biological or biological child. Um, she's the easiest baby we've ever had. She's much better baby than my own boys, where it has been easy now, knock on wood, you know, whatever the next one is that might be totally different. But this particular thing has been easy. It's been relatively easy.
Joe (10:00):
I think it's just a matter of how you approach things. We had a placement early on with a little boy who, um, older use a tool. I say older he's two, but was raised in an environment with no structure, who came to us with some pretty severe, well that's relative, but he had some behavioral issues. He was, uh, you know, calling Meg names. He was hitting our children the first week, but all he needed was structure and some discipline, um, not in a negative way, but just like we all crave structure and discipline. And so I think like so many other things in life, it's just a matter of how you approach it. If you want it to be a problem, chances are it's going to be a problem if that's what you're expecting
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