Court hearings in the child welfare and foster care system are wild. Heavy. Intense, a time-and-matter condensing event. So how do you pray for that?
I sat outside the second-floor courtroom in the Larimer County Justice Center unsure, exactly, what I was doing there. But uncertainty was the name of the game in the 48 hours following the county’s invitation to being a long-term placement for our girls’ half-brother. By the time I arrived outside that courtroom, I was mostly sure that he wasn’t going to be placed with us that week. After my conversation with the senior case worker, a definitive uncertainty would remain. The county was placing the boy with kin, and if things went south, they’d call us.
Nearly four months later, we haven’t heard anything from the county. Our assumption is that the boy’s current placement is stable enough. We don’t know how the mom is doing. Only the Lord knows what will happen here.
But being back in the courtroom brought back a tidal wave of memories and emotions from our adoption adventures with our three kids. Our first year with James, especially, felt like one unending court hearing. So I was a little surprised (to say the least) to find myself outside yet another courtroom all these years later, at a hearing for a little boy whom we had never met but wanted to.
Child welfare / foster care court hearings are wild, dude. Even when they’re not, they are. Even if the hearing is the standard check-in type of hearing and not the major decision-making ones. All the parties (formal or informal) are there. You’re interacting with the biological parents in a particularly vulnerable moment when they (and sometimes even yourself) have to give an account of how they’re doing. Time and matter get slow and heavy, like that one planet Matthew McConaughey and Ann Hathaway found themselves on in Interstellar. So, a 15-minute hearing can feel like an hour; the sobriety of the moment compresses all other events on the space-time continuum. You can come out of a hearing wondering how many months or years it took off your life.
And I attribute most of this wild weightiness to being in the presence of a judge. It can be a terrifying thing to stand before a judge. All of the everything of this situation rests in the judgment of one person. There’s a lot I could say here but won’t for now. Though I will say this: I have never been more nervous than when I’ve addressed a judge on my child’s behalf.
So you take all that, throw in all of the emotional and spiritual dynamics of being a foster parent, and court hearings transmogrify into this bizarre ordeal. A court hearing duplicates all of your emotions, all of your hopes, all of the stresses that come with this calling. And sometimes all you hear as the button of justice gets pushed is “boink.”
What do you do with that boink? Well, you can pray. But sometimes the words don’t do so good in these moments. How do you pray for all of that?
As I sat outside that courtroom back in June, I started writing a prayer before the doors opened. I continued to work on the prayer over the summer. I needed to process. I needed to get down some helpful and hopefully useful words. And I’m sharing it now as a request for your prayers this week: Some friends of ours, who have been fostering a little girl for most of her young life, are headed to the courtroom for the termination of parental rights (TPR) hearing for the girl’s biological mother. A TPR hearing is like the Day of the Lord spoken of in the Bible. This is the hearing; this is the judgment; this is the multi-day event that will definitely take years off your life.
So pray for our friends. And you can use the prayer below as a starting point for your prayers. Please feel free to share with this others who are walking this same foster-adoption road and regularly finding themselves standing before a judge.
O God of justice and righteousness,
calm my heart and mind as I prepare
to step into this courtroom.
Let my presence here as an ambassador
of your kingdom bring truth, love,
and a faithful representation of the life
you desire for all your image bearers.
Help me to show grace to all I interact with—
case workers and attorneys,
parents and other parties in this case
that I now find myself a part of.We are here because something
in the fabric of our existence
is broken,
marred,
ruptured,
not as it should be.Lives are in the balance, Father; souls and stories
have converged here, longing and sorrow
but also the hope of possibility and restoration.Lord, let me now, even as this hearing begins,
regardless of its outcome, give you thanks
for being a God who sees all the details,
who understands all the desires of those present,
and for promising to work all things together
for good for those who love you.
You are the father of the fatherless
and you promise to set the solitary in a home.
You work through the magistrates and the system,
however imperfect, to bring about your will
in the lives of these little ones whose flourishing
and well-being we now imperfectly yet sincerely seek.The decisions made today will shape the course of many lives.
May wisdom and truth prevail.
May the judges and lawyers and advocates
clearly see what is best for these precious children
whose hearts long for safe lodging
and a holy rest in a forever home.
God, you are a judge—the judge. And you judge justly.
Have mercy on us, and give us the grace
to entrust ourselves wholly to you—
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—now and in the days to come.Amen.
