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For over 25 years Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission has been to intersect God's Word in the real, hard places we all struggle with. That's why we started this podcast. Every episode will feature a variety of teachings from president Lysa TerKeurst, staff members or friends of the ministry who can teach you something valuable from their vantage point. We hope that regardless of your age, background or stage of life, it's something you look forward to listening to each month!
Meredith Brock:
Hi, friends. Thanks for tuning in to The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast where we share biblical Truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Meredith Brock, and I am here today with a new friend. Her name is Cailah Garcia. Cailah just joined our staff here at Proverbs 31 as a copywriter, and today, the two of us are going to talk a little bit about something we have in common, which is, we are both foster moms but both with a little different spin on it. Cailah, tell our podcast friends a little bit about yourself.
Cailah Garcia:
Well, Meredith, I am so excited to be here with you today. This is such an important conversation, and I'm so glad we're having it together. I've had a passion for foster care and adoption since a young age, and my husband and I actually stepped into foster[ing] just a few years ago and got our license. We're connected to an amazing organization, and that same weekend that we got our license, we actually received the first call for a placement —
Meredith Brock:
Oh, boy.
Cailah Garcia:
— which was insane, but just a few years later, we're so grateful we're now the legal guardians of our first placement, which is so cool to say, but it's just an amazing journey that God's been taking us on, and it hasn't been easy, but I'm so grateful that God has equipped us every step of the way.
Meredith Brock:
I love it, Cailah. I'm telling you, guys, today's episode is really special. One reason is we're doing it a little bit different, and I am actually going to tell our listeners a little bit about myself more than I usually do. I'm going to get vulnerable, which I don't usually do very often; it's hard for me, but this was for a good reason, and that's because today's episode is brought to you by our partner Chosen. Chosen's mission is to help children, youth and families prevent and heal trauma through healthy relational connections, and their vision is to see trauma-responsive care and relational connection as the standard in the child and family well-being system.
As a child myself from significant trauma and as a foster mom and now adoptive mom, I can wholeheartedly say that this support is desperately needed for families, and we want our listeners to know about it, to get involved, and to be a part of the solution. So we'll tell you more about how you can get involved in the episode, but for now, I want to encourage our listeners go check out Chosen Care. You can go to chosen.care/100K to learn more, or visit the link in our show notes.
Cailah Garcia:
Well, Meredith, this is a special one, so I think we're ready to dive into today's episode. Let's do it. We're excited today to welcome our friend Jenni Lord to the show. Welcome, Jenni. Jenni is the CEO of Chosen, an organization that helps children heal from their past by creating strong connections. They support parents and caregivers with the knowledge and help they need to make a real difference in their families, seeing them move from desperation to hope, from chaos to calm. Jenni, we're so glad you're here today.
Jenni Lord:
Good morning. I'm just delighted to be here and share this conversation with you all. Thank you so much for having me.
Cailah Garcia:
It is such a privilege, isn't it, Meredith?
Jenni Lord:
I love it. Guys, I've been looking forward to this episode for a really long time.
Cailah Garcia:
Yes, this is such an exciting episode for us to record because, first, as a ministry, we're partnering with Chosen to support the work they're doing to help families heal through coaching, counseling and therapeutic services. And as a foster mom myself, I know how important it is to have access to quality help throughout all the stages of parenting a child who isn't yours, who isn't biologically yours. And we'll talk more about that with Jenni at the end of the show. But first, I want to toss it over to Meredith, who is going to be sharing a bit of her personal story with us today.
Meredith Brock:
Well, guys, we know I don't share this story often, not because I am scared to or because, I don't know, I'm trying to hide it or anything, but to be honest, it's hard for me to be vulnerable sometimes. And so I am just going to read to you a little something that I wrote a few months back that the Lord put on my heart to share that I hope that our listeners can connect with and just see themselves in my story in some way. And so I'm going to read this to you, so here we go.
It said, I had never really told anyone my full story. No one had ever asked about the events of my life or seemed to even care about the heartbreak I carried inside. At 17 years old, I was stumbling into adulthood with no parental support. I was painfully alone, carrying 17 years of horrors, abuse, neglect, going without meals, without shelter until a wonderful lady came into my life. Tracy was a youth leader at a summer camp. She was gentle and unassuming and patient with my very slow and awkward answers to questions I had never ever been asked. She was curious about my family and who I was, and to be honest, I had never had the bravery to share those things with anyone. I was just too ashamed.
She listened and absorbed my heart and always, somehow between my tears, pointed me back to the Truth found in the Scriptures that she loved so much. I had never ever known someone like Tracy before, someone who didn't want something from me, who didn't need something from me or see me as an inconvenience or wish that I wasn't around. She actually cared about who I was. And so at 17 years old, I ended up living in and out of Tracy's house for six years before I felt brave enough and healed enough to launch out into adulthood on my own.
Through those years, I opened up a lot more about the fractured parts of my story, sharing my pain in hopes that somehow there was more than hurt to be had in the world because that is all I had ever experienced. I breathed in the grace and mercy that God had been waiting to lavish upon me, and there were tears, lots and lots of tears that I had never let myself shed, but there was also laughter, great adventures with Tracy and late nights laughing together, alongside the why did God let that happen to me and how come the adults who were supposed to step in, who were supposed to protect me, never protected me and turned the other way knowing the abuse was happening.
But through this woman who started out as a stranger and is now one of my dearest friends, God met me in my darkness. With her love and His Word, God used Tracy to start a brand-new thing in me. And now over 20 years later, here I sit at 43 years old; God has remarkably, amazingly positioned me as the CEO of Proverbs 31 Ministries.
Y'all, I never in a million years at 17 years old could have even imagined that I would be where I am right now. One, I didn't even know what Proverbs 31 was in the Bible. I didn't know what a women's ministry was. I didn't know what it meant to study the Bible. I didn't know what it meant to be loved or seen or cared about. And I just wish that I could somehow take 17-year-old Meredith's face in my hands, who was so scared and so alone and in so much despair because all I saw was darkness, and I wish I could say to her, "Meredith, God will send rescue, but it's not who you're expecting. It won't be a mom or a dad. It won't be a college degree or a man that will rescue you. It'll be a woman who loves Jesus and loves His Word and will share it with you. So just be patient. He's doing something new."
And, friend, if you’ve found yourself in one of those dark seasons right now, wishing that someone could take your face in their hands and remind you that rescue is coming, let me be that person today. I want you to take a deep breath right now, and I want you to hear these words, OK? I promise you, based on the words of Scripture, that you are not alone. God promises that He will never leave you nor forsake you, and can I just tell you that if God breaks one of His promises, He can't be God anymore? And so you can [take] Him at His word and say, "I am not alone."
Whatever you are facing, please hold on. Don't give up. Even if you can't see it, God is starting a new thing in your life. It may not be what you are expecting or when you are expecting it. I thought some man was going to come save me, but that was not what I needed. It may not be when you're expecting, but I promise you, God is coming. Hold on to the hope.
In Isaiah 43:19, it says, "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." He promises to make a way in the wilderness, whatever that wilderness may be. You may not be a 17-year-old girl not knowing what her future holds. You may be just a mom with a wayward child, and you're scared, and you don't know what to do next. God is making a way in the wilderness; just don't give up. So no matter what season you are in, I want you right now, as hard as it might be, to take some time to trace the small moments of faithfulness that God has done in your life.
I look back at my 17 years when I didn't know Jesus. He was not part of my life, and I can genuinely see moments of, wow, honestly, I probably should have not be on this planet because of things that happened, but I can see small moments of God's faithfulness. I can see moments when ... the way that I met Tracy, it was nothing short of a miracle. I was at a summer camp that honestly I shouldn't have even been at, but God was pursuing me all along.
And so I want you to pause today at some point if you are in that dark season and search for the hand of God's faithfulness in your life. And then I want to give you permission to cry. Cry those tears of sadness. Cry and then let them ... let that go and look at the faithfulness of God, those small moments, and I pray that those tears of sadness would turn to tears of rescue, of gratitude, because you can see God's hand. He is reaching down to rescue you. He always has been. And then hopefully as you begin to see His small movement toward rescue for you, your heart will start to lighten, and you will be able to rejoice even just a little bit in seeing that God is being faithful to you.
Friend, I am rejoicing with you even in those small moments of recognizing His little bit of faithfulness right now because I want to remind you our God is good. I promise you He is good, and He is so very generous, not just financially, guys. Sometimes I lump that into a category of like, is He generous because He's going to provide financially for me? He is generous in bringing people, resources, opportunities into your life, love into your life. And so I want to challenge us, both me and you, all of us on this podcast today just like Tracy did for me to cling to the comfort God has provided for us in our troubles so we can also comfort others in their brokenness just like it says in 2 Corinthians 1:4.
Guys, there's no getting around it. We live in a broken world. All of us, every single one of us has dealt with heartbreak in the past in some way or is sitting in heartbreak right now. Don't let that heartbreak happen in vain. God is inviting us to be carriers of His grace, not just receivers. It is good to receive. Receive His grace in those moments of brokenness. Allow yourself to cry those tears of loss and turn them toward tears of gratitude. But then we must move forward and be the carriers of His grace and His Word and His love.
Since living with Tracy, I have gone on to get married and have two children of my own. And then just a few years ago, and many of our listeners know this, my family ventured out into becoming a foster family. And so for a lot of our friends it was like, "What are you guys doing? You had the perfect little family: a boy [and] a girl." We were financially stable, and everything looked just all unicorns and roses, and then we decided to do foster care, and there was a lot of like, "Why would you do that?" And here is why.
I believe wholeheartedly, because the story I just told you, I was healed. God has healed me from so much, and now I can and I want to bring the broken to the healer. It is a messy job bringing the broken to the healer. I can't heal the children in my home. We have gone on from being just a foster family who've actually adopted our now son who is 4 years old, and he is wonderful, but walking with him in the trenches of the trauma that he has been through has been a lot. Working out my own trauma from my childhood has required a lot of help, not just from ... Scripture is wonderful and is the best and the most important, most true resource that we have, but sometimes you need more than that. And so I have been through therapy; I have been through all kinds of different stuff, but we have also needed help along the way.
And so I'm here with my friends, Cailah and Jenni, and I want us to just talk for a few minutes about what it has looked like for each one of us. Cailah, I know you have walked your own road of foster care, but maybe some[thing] in your past too, a little bit of working through some trauma. So why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your family?
Cailah Garcia:
Guys, I just want to start off and say thank you to Meredith just for your bravery in sharing your story. I know that's not always an easy thing to do, but there's so much power in sharing how God has spoken and moved, and I think I can see so clearly the [fingerprints] of His presence on your life and the way that you lead here at Proverbs, and it's just so evident. I just love being able to have such a close seat to that today and get to share a little bit of my story.
But similarly, when I was 15 years old, I got a diagnosis that basically told me that I would never become a mom biologically, physically, and it was one of the most devastating things that had ever happened to me. And I know growing up from a young age, I just desired so deeply to be a mom, and I was like, Lord, why are You doing this? Why are You taking this from me? I didn't understand. And I grew up and continued to have that desire, met my husband, and we got married, and after seven years of just very painful infertility, miscarriages, and just asking the Lord “why,” a friend, a very good friend of ours, actually approached Gabe and was like, "Have you guys ever thought about fostering?" And of course at first, I was very apprehensive because I was like, Lord, this is not the story that I wrote for myself. This is not what I saw happening for Gabe and I as a family, but I think it was just so beautiful to see the Lord take something that was so raw and so vulnerable in my heart and use foster care to really do a lot of healing in my heart. He rewrote our story.
We ended up deciding to become foster parents and pursued our license just a few years ago, and within a day of getting our license, this is crazy, y'all, but we got the call to have our first placement: two kiddos, a brother and a sister, from El Salvador.
Meredith Brock:
Wow.
Cailah Garcia:
And little did we know what we were saying yes to, but it was so beautiful to see the Lord bring two children into our lives who had walked through unspeakable things, who had experienced so much pain, so much trauma, so much heartache, and we were able to bring our raw broken hearts to the table and heal together. And it was just so beautiful to see the Lord do a new thing in all of our lives when we came together.
Like you mentioned earlier, Meredith, now, just a year ago, my husband and I became our two kiddos' legal guardians, and that was just such a God story. But we've seen both of our kids actually come to know the Lord as their Savior while being in our home. And we have seen such a transition and such a huge move of the Spirit in our home. And the Lord has just really reawoken my desire for motherhood, has reawoken our desire for rewriting what a family is. I think the beauty of it is that it happened because of a hard yes, because of a yes that we did not expect and because of a yes that the Lord already had preordained us to take.
Meredith Brock:
That's right.
Cailah Garcia:
When He thought of little me sitting in a doctor's office at 15 years old and asking Him why, He knew that I would have a young man sitting in front of me at 15 and wondering if there was ever anyone that would love him, and I was able to step into that story and to love him and to grow together. So that was just such an impactful thing that we're still walking through. And it definitely has not been an easy journey to learn how to mother and to parent through such hard situations and through such heartbreak and through so much trauma that my kiddos have experienced, but what I love is that there's resources out there for parents just like us, Meredith —
Meredith Brock:
That's right.
Cailah Garcia:
— that we don't have to have all of the answers, that we can go to incredible organizations to really learn how to stay rooted and to show up in every season of life as a family.
Meredith Brock:
Wow, Cailah. It's incredible. Jenni, what do you think over there?
Jenni Lord:
Well, ladies, I'm just blown away. I love hearing your stories, and I'm reminded listening to both of you, God is in the redemption business, and He writes really long stories, but you see His faithfulness through both of your stories. Thank you for sharing. Just amazing.
Just a little bit about Chosen and the work that we do. We serve families that are just like yours, that are parenting children with hard histories, parenting children who've experienced trauma. The root word of trauma is “wound.” And just like the two of you, I've experienced my own wounds in life, and sometimes we need help to get past that. But what we do is come alongside families like yours and empower them with the tools, strategies and resources that they need to respond to their children who are hurting in a connected way. We teach them how to pursue their hearts, to pursue that connection with their hearts, just like God is always pursuing connection with our hearts.
Meredith, He was pursuing you, and it was so evident in Tracy. He put somebody in your path to help bring the broken to the healer, and that's what we're teaching parents to do: to pursue their hearts even when they don't feel like it. Parenting children with traumatic backgrounds is not for the faint of heart. Let's just be honest. Can I get an amen?
Meredith Brock:
Amen, Jenni.
Cailah Garcia:
Amen. We hear you.
Jenni Lord:
And the reality is that when you say yes to kids with hard histories, just like Cailah was saying, you don't know what is on the other side of that. Yes, you're not even sure what you're saying yes to, and then this child shows up in your home, and what you thought it was going to look like may be very, very different.
Cailah Garcia:
100%.
Jenni Lord:
And chaos ensues, and what trauma looks like for a kid who has been hurting and lived in that part of their brain of fight, flight or freeze because of their past, it shows up as big behaviors in the home that can be very challenging to parent, particularly for parents who have parented other children in their home a certain way that just is not effective with a child who's experienced that trauma.
So we serve families who often are in crisis, who are feeling ready to give up, who are saying, "I'm not sure we can keep going. We didn't know it was going to be this hard. It looks different than we thought. This is affecting our marriage. This is affecting other children in our homes." And what we want to do is empower them with the tools that are necessary to keep going and to help their children heal from that trauma, and we do it every single day.
Meredith Brock:
Jenni, I can't say enough. I mean, I look back on our foster care journey, and I'll give a little. I'm going to be a little transparent with our listeners today. I have a master's degree in counseling, and I would just say I had sat ... I've been in therapy so much. As you can imagine from my childhood, there was just a lot that I needed to work through in order to really become a functioning adult. And so I'm going to be honest, I went into this foster care thing like, "I got this in the bag." I really did. I thought I can handle, I can totally handle this. And we were licensed for infant through 5 years old. And when we got our little guy, he was an infant. And so in my mind I was like, "Oh, sweet. Kind of blank slate here, right?" Joke's on me. There's so much, and I'll try not to get on my soap box here, but there's so much that happens in those first quite literally hours, days, weeks and months of an infant's life, of a human being's life.
And I have come to learn that over the years, Jenni, there was this big boom, and you can probably speak to this better than I can because [you’re] really entrenched in this, there was this big boom in the '90s of really the church itself was really encouraged to step into this adoption space, which was beautiful, so beautiful. I have nephews that are adopted from Ethiopia. We are a very colorful family. I love that the church did that, but for a really long time ... we have multiple staff members here at Proverbs 31 who are a little bit older than I am and they adopted internationally or domestically, primarily infants, and really were not prepared nor given the resources to process and deal with ...
Adoption period is traumatic, guys, no matter what, the fact that you have a child in your home, whether it's through foster care or international adoption [or] domestic adoption. We also, my husband and I, did kinship care for my younger sister. She moved into our house when she was 16, and we raised her until ... She still lives not too far from us, but even that process of severing ties from your biological parents leaves an impact on a human being no matter what. There's no getting around it.
And I really have come to find, Jenni, and I'm curious if you're seeing this at Chosen, that there are a lot of people that come to you thinking like we've kind of said, "Wow, this is not what I thought it was going to be," but also, are you seeing some of those folks who maybe in the '90s they were a part of that really big adoption movement that the church moved toward that are saying, "Man, I wish I would've had these resources," because I feel like I'm talking to folks like that all the time, so I'm wondering what you're seeing on your side.
Jenni Lord:
100%, Meredith, and you don't even know this about my story, I don't think, but what you described was my family.
Meredith Brock:
Oh, wow.
Jenni Lord:
We adopted my brother in the '90s, and I was a teenager. And he came in as a toddler, and we thought love was enough, and we didn't understand the impact of the first 18 months on his life and how that had impacted his brain. I'm going to come back to that, the brain part, in just a minute.
Meredith Brock:
So true, so true.
Jenni Lord:
But yes, we're seeing that, and the reality is what we're seeing every day with the families we serve, they come to us very much disillusioned. They felt like maybe God called them into this; they heard from the Lord, they sought it through prayer, and then it's so hard and the wheels are falling off that they're not sure they can keep going. And the reality of what you're talking about, Meredith, is there's loss.
Meredith Brock:
100%.
Jenni Lord:
Separation from the first family, there is loss and grief that comes with that, and it's not ... when you put a child in a new home where they are physically safe, that doesn't necessarily mean their psychological safety.
Meredith Brock:
That's right.
Jenni Lord:
There's self-safety for that child, and quite frankly, they usually can't articulate that, and so how it manifests is in behaviors. When a child has been impacted by trauma, like my brother in the first 18 months of his life, not only did it impact his brain and how it was wired, but it would come to impact the way that he related to the world and to people and to caregivers. And we didn't know, and we didn't have the understanding of the impact on the brain in the '90s and even in the 2000s; most of what we've learned about the impact on brain development has really happened over the past 15 years based on what they call the decade of the brain, the research that happened in the '90s, but it didn't become mainstream until the last 15 years or so.
So while the church was saying, "Yes, these children are our responsibility"; we're called to care for the vulnerable and to visit the orphans and to love them, bring them into our homes. We, I think, even as a church, didn't know what we were saying yes to.
Meredith Brock:
That's right.
Jenni Lord:
And I like to share with people, particularly the church, that orphanhood doesn't change with an address.
Meredith Brock:
That's right.
Jenni Lord:
Orphanhood is a condition of the heart. That's why it goes back to pursuing that feeling [of] connection. Because what science shows us, and this is evident through Scripture as well, science shows us is that through healthy connection, we can actually rewire the brain and build new neurological pathways, and that child has the chance to build resilient pathways in his brain to intersect and interact with the world in a completely different way than how it may [have] started.
So when you know that as a parent and you're in it for the long game because you want to extend that grace that has been given to you through Christ, then it's a game changer. When parents understand, "Oh, this child is not doing this to me. He's not doing this to wreck our lives. He's doing this in response to what has been done to him and the only way that's going to heal is through relational connection.”
Meredith Brock:
Oh, Jenni, that is so good, girl. I'm just over here “amening” you up and down because I think, I mean, I have just seen it time and time again, one in my own life with our little guy and how I had to get to, and I just want to say to our listeners right now, if there is anybody listening to this right now who is in that moment of like, "I want to give up. I can't keep doing this. I don't know what to do," I just want to give you permission. Get help. Go to the Chosen website. We're going to give you some information here in just a minute, because just like Jenni said, this is ... when you are caring for people who have been through trauma, it is a long-haul game, guys. It is a long-haul game of rewiring their brains.
Can I just tell you? Tracy, who I met when I was 17 years old, no kidding, you guys ... last weekend, I was on the phone with her for two and a half hours untangling once again some of the trauma triggers that I have in my life that consistently try to come back and honestly make me irrational. I do ... I make irrational choices, I think irrational thoughts, and I need someone in my life who draws me close through connection, allows me to get vulnerable with them; I feel safe enough to get vulnerable with them, and they gently point me toward Truth.
So it really is. If you're listening to this today and you're like, "Holy moly, that's me," whether you're doing some kind of care, even in just youth ministry ... My husband and I went on to do youth ministry for a while too. If I would've known this stuff that I've learned now since becoming an adoptive mom, I would've been a so much more effective youth minister because I would've known how to get to those places in the hearts of these kids that they have blocked off, that they have pushed people away, where they're desperate for somebody to care. Just like Tracy cared for me, they're desperate for somebody to see them and be safe, be patient with them as they leave and learn how to really rewire their brain from the trauma that they have been through. Cailah, I can see you over there “amening” too, girl. Lay it on us. What's on your mind?
Cailah Garcia:
Yes. I just have to add to that, Meredith. I think to your point, there's someone that may be listening to this today, and it's just like, "I don't know where to turn. I don't know if I can keep showing up." I want to encourage you. Keep showing up. That consistency for whoever in your life you may be walking through a difficult season with is so important. And of course, we're not saying show up for the people that you need to set boundaries for right now, but we're definitely saying that there is power in consistency. There's power in showing up.
Just this morning, I was driving my kids to school and my son had had a really hard last couple of days and had said some things that didn't settle well with me and maybe got under my skin a little bit, but the Lord just pricked my heart and was like, You need to tell him that you're here for him, that you love him and you're not going anywhere, and it was amazing to see how a simple reminder that I am rooted here, that I've chosen this and I'm not going anywhere can do for someone's life. And I love that the Lord does that for us each and every day. He says, I'm here for you. I'm your foundation, and I'm not going anywhere. And I'm so grateful that we get to just join hands with Chosen to do that in such a beautifully biblical and scripturally based way because I believe that our foundation of faith, the firm foundation that we get to stand on that really heals us of the broken pieces that we all carry, is our relationship with the Lord.
Meredith Brock:
Amen.
Cailah Garcia:
And that as we get to really steward these relationships well and really heal together, it really begins with saying yes to Jesus.
Meredith Brock:
Amen, Cailah. Amen. Jenni, tell me a little bit about some of the resources that you have at Chosen because I'm sitting here thinking like, OK. Every scenario is a little bit different. As you were saying, your parents adopted a child in the '90s, a toddler, so that's one thing. Our family, we got that infant that we ... right? I mean, he was barely 5 months old when we got him. Cailah, your kids were a little bit older. Our home is still open for foster care, so we're still having children come through our home. So tell me, I don't know what else to call this, but tell me the menu, if you will, that Chosen ... What are some of those services that can really help our audience today so they can understand what you have to offer a little bit more?
Jenni Lord:
That's great. We call it the tool belt, but I'm thinking we should rename it “The Arsenal.”
Meredith Brock:
I like it. I like it a lot.
Jenni Lord:
We have an arsenal of resources for everyone from who's parenting little all the way to parents who are trying to launch youth into adulthood who've been impacted by trauma. We work with all different types that have been mentioned here today, birth families who've been reunified, Western adoptive families, as well as kinship or what we call relative caregivers, like when you're raising your sister. We've had situations like that where those trauma dynamics are very strong and families who've experienced those different layers of trauma together and how do you navigate that well.
So when a family comes to us, I'm going to try to make this super brief, when they come to us, we look at the trauma symptoms of the child, as well as the parental stress levels in the home, and we do that with clinical assessments, and that gives us a picture of what's really happening and what are the dynamics in the entire family system, how are other biological children or other children in the home being impacted, how is the marriage being impacted, and so forth. We put together a trauma-responsive action plan that is individualized for each family that's in front of us. So it's not a cookie-cutter approach. If you're parenting a 4-year-old who you've got significant behavioral challenges — dysregulation, throwing fits, getting kicked out of preschool, these are the types of things that we hear from families all the time — we're going to customize our approach and those tools to those specific needs.
We use a variety of things including trust-based relational intervention. Some of your listeners may be familiar with that: TBRI. We also use something called Trauma Cognitive Caregiver, which really helps us look at the whole system of the family and the system of support around the family because we're going to journey alongside a family for about four to six months, but we want to make sure that not only are they empowered to meet the needs of their children in their home, but once they've graduated from us, they've got those resources in place in their life so that they can get that continued support.
What we see is, unfortunately, trauma is developmental, and it tends to rear its ugly head at different developmental milestones of a child's life. And so like you, Meredith, sometimes people who have adopted infants or even from birth, they may not see anything until like 5, 8, 11 years old when the child's entering adolescence, and they may not even be connecting the dots back to that original loss. And so helping families understand the impact of trauma over the lifetime of a child is important.
And so it really varies, but one of the things ... I'll say this about for teenagers because we are seeing such an increase of families in need who are raising teens where trauma is manifesting in not just big ways but dangerous ways or harmful ways to themselves or to others, and we help families understand that we're still going to pursue that connection with our child's heart and give them the resources that they need, and that looks like helping them understand their identity, that their identity isn't based on what happened to them in their past. It's based on what Jesus says they are, right? And so it's going to vary, but it is specific for each family.
Meredith Brock:
Jenni, that is some good stuff. People need this. I'm here to tell you, it's amazing to me how many people in my life really are ... they wouldn't ... It's just not talked about widely, but how many families have adopted, how many families are involved in the foster care system, how many families are raising a sibling or a niece or a nephew and they don't know where to look for help? So I just can't thank you enough for coming on the show today and talking about Chosen. Guys, this is an organization that Proverbs 31 is truly proud to stand beside.
We would really love for you to consider getting involved with Chosen, supporting them in any way that you can because when you do, honestly, you're joining a movement in the child welfare system, family welfare system, that is deeply needed. They're on mission to help 100,000 people heal from trauma, and you can be part of their healing journey with these families. To join the 100,000 movement today, we want to encourage you, just go to chosen.care/100k, and you can get involved, guys. It is a beautiful thing that they're doing. We are coming alongside them cheering them on and grateful to be a part.
Well, that's all for today, friends. At Proverbs 31, we believe when you know the Truth and live the Truth, it changes everything.