I want to thank my fellow foster families for accepting the high calling of becoming a foster family. Many may not realize what exactly it was that you accepted when you began this journey to make a difference in a child’s life.

Thanks for breathing life back into a wounded soul who belongs to someone else, knowing that when this call was done, this same child would be able to move on and be re-established with birth families or another forever family by adoption.

Thanks for sitting up with them night after night because of the night terrors they experience that most of us adults can’t imagine and being available during the day because they can’t make it through the school day.

Thanks for standing in the gap with them as they struggle to re-establish hope. You were not afraid to enter their world as they fought physical, mental and emotional challenges.

Thanks for taking money out of your own budget to change your homes and vehicles to meet the needs of a child who was coming into your care. I know that for many of you 100,000 miles is low mileage.

Thanks for providing a family unit that models what it means to be in a safe and healthy environment. Thanks to your children who meet a child at breakfast who has been dropped off at midnight while they were sleeping.

You entered this calling knowing the following: You would get no health benefits, you would not be putting away money into Social Security, there was no retirement plan to be part of and for a child in therapeutic care you could not have an outside job because you were on call 24 hours a day for them. At the same time saving the state thousands of dollars because without a family like yours more children would be in very expensive residential homes or modernday orphanages. Have I said thanks for that?

Thanks for going on when the repeating phrases you hear from family and friends are, “I don’t know how you do it” and “I could never do what you do.”

Thanks for your endless love when the child is returned home and you support and mentor the birth family or kin family to help re-establish this relationship.

I can speak for myself and all that I know. We will never be able to save for our birth children’s education from the reimbursement we get from the state to care for their children.

We won’t be driving a cute little or even mid-sized car because we’ll have to have a vehicle that seats at least seven. And our family will rearrange and even give up family plans because we have a child in crises.

And you know what… All of that is OK because being a foster family is the hardest calling we will ever love.

To those of you who are already foster parents, thank you for standing in the gap. And to those of you who have ever thought of making a difference, not only in the life of a child but in society as well, I can guarantee you a few things: You won’t make a profit at it (regardless of what you may have read or heard), you won’t become famous, and you will put in more hours, sweat and tears than you ever thought you had. You will fall in love and care for a child whose guardian will be the state and when all is said and done the system will decide the outcome for this child.

And when the child leaves you will cry and your heart will break because you have poured an insurmountable amount of energy into this life. And at the same time an incredible sense of accomplishment will rise within you because what you have really done is work with a team to breathe hope and life back into a tender, hurt and wounded heart. A heart that needed someone to help them pick up the pieces that lie around them and try to arrange these pieces so they could make some sense of how they could go on.

May is foster care month. Thank you for all you and your family invest in the life of every child who comes through your door.

Faint not in the work and mission you do, you are not only valued but necessary in a world where perfection may be the ideal but reaching out to hurting hearts is a realization. Hold your heads up high and carry on!

Natali Plourde is a foster parent and secretary of the board of directors of Adoptive and Foster Families of Maine.