The Forge of Fatherhood

The empty plate next to Ricardo’s looked ready to return to its cupboard. It showed no signs of the six tacos eaten from it by the girl now staring at the stove where more ground beef sat, still warm and steaming.

Ricardo noticed her stiffen when he reached for her empty dish, then relax when he plopped another helping of meat into a taco shell and sprinkled it with cheese. Her seventh taco went down a bit slower. Her eighth was finally left unfinished.

Ten-year-old Brianna first arrived at Ricardo and Carly’s home just in time for dinner. It was Taco Tuesday, a tradition Ricardo made a mental note to keep.

The shirt and sweats she wore hung off of her. The tangled web of hair matted to her head hinted at where and what she’d come from. Full and heavy-eyed, Brianna slumped in her chair as Ricardo collected her plate. It had been a long day.

Ricardo and Carly gave her a tour of their home, finishing with Brianna’s bedroom. The girl’s eyebrows knit together.

“I have a room?” she asked, running a hand over the bedspread. “It’s huge.” She seated herself on the very edge of the old but sturdy queen mattress, doing her best not to wrinkle the comforter.

She jumped up when Carly began pulling the blankets back for her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking over the bed with concern.

“Nothing,” Carly said. “I was just going to tuck you in.”

Brianna looked between Carly and Ricardo, suspicious. “Why?”  

Ricardo met Carly’s eyes as both the weight and beauty of their decision to foster settled over them.

Brianna’s face remained skeptical as he explained the common bedtime routine, but she allowed Carly to smooth the covers over her. Ricardo whispered goodnight before closing her door. Behind it, he heard Brianna let out a long sigh and released the breath he too had been holding.

Ricardo couldn’t explain the pull toward foster care and adoption he’d always felt. Having grown up without a faith or a father of any kind, he didn’t recognize the Voice calling him toward his purpose.

But by the time he and Carly discovered they couldn’t have children of their own, stepping into foster care felt like a natural decision. Natural, but not easy.

The couple’s first foster placement had been a little boy who came to them from a group home. At the time, Carly worked long hours which meant Ricardo bore much of the weight of parenting alone most days. It didn’t take long for the new dad to realize he needed help. Thankfully, he found Child Bridge.

Though skeptical of the organization’s Christian orientation, Ricardo braved the meetings at a church not far from his home. There he found not only training that made sense of his son’s needs and behaviors, but a community.

Soon after, Ricardo took another step of faith — a Wednesday night Bible study at the same church that also offered dinner and childcare. Ricardo wasn’t religious, but he was tired.

After 18 months, their foster son was adopted by his aunt, and the couple looked forward to a season of rest.

It didn’t last long. Barely a month had passed when the pastor of the church Ricardo had been attending reached out. A local family with six children was falling apart.

Unbeknownst to Ricardo, a handful of the children had been attending his Wednesday night Bible study. The elder children would walk the younger ones to the church, drop them off to be cared for and fed for an hour, then come back to walk them home.

Now, all six kids were being removed from their parents due to neglect and split up into whatever homes would take them. The pastor asked if Ricardo and Carly would be willing to take any of them.

Despite their exhaustion, Ricardo felt that familiar tug on his heart. And with a bit of convincing, his wife agreed they could take one, just one, of the six children.

A few days later, 10-year-old Brianna stood on their doorstep.

Now Brianna lay on the other side of the wall from a sleepless Ricardo, who couldn’t imagine saying no to her. It had taken exactly one evening for him to become a dad again. Her dad.

A few months after Brianna moved in, the pastor called again. Apparently, the home that had taken Brianna’s two younger siblings wasn’t working out. If they couldn’t find a family in the next week, they’d have to go to a group home.

Cautiously, Ricardo approached Carly once more.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “We can’t. I mean three? We don’t have room!”

“Honey, I think we have to,” Ricardo said, gently. By now, the nudge he’d always felt sounded more like a loving yet firmly guiding voice.

“Tell you what,” he said, inspired. “Let’s have them over for a weekend and see how it goes.”

That Saturday, the couple watched the most beautiful display of joy unfold around them. Brianna’s little brother and sister were boisterous, goofy and absolutely precious. The boy, though five, could hardly speak but loved impersonating animals.  

The youngest, a tiny 4-year-old girl, giggled every time she made eye contact with her big sister, clearly delighted by the reunion. It was obvious the trio had missed each other. And to their surprise, both Ricardo and Carly discovered they had been missing them too.  

After the case worker had come to fetch the two youngest children and Brianna had said a tearful goodnight, Carly wrapped her arms around Ricardo.

“Honey,” she said, echoing his own words back to him. “We have to.”

For Ricardo, becoming a father meant taking on wounds his children brought with them. The youngest suffered from debilitating night terrors that brought her screaming into half-conscious panic multiple times a night, waking the entire family.

Through trial and error, Ricardo found a treatment for her fear in midnight walks around the lamplit streets of their neighborhood. The night air had a calming effect, as did the steady rhythm of her dad’s footsteps. She was often fast asleep on Ricardo’s shoulder by the time they returned to the house.

The neglect and isolation his son experienced had stunted his speech development at the stage of the average two-year-old. The pitying looks Ricardo often caught from other parents as the boy screamed with frustration in the grocery store struck his heart.  

What did they expect? Of course this child was frustrated. He couldn’t speak, which meant he couldn’t be understood. He'd endured unimaginable neglect and couldn’t tell anyone about it. How did Ricardo deserve pity from strangers?

“I think as human beings, we naturally just want life to be easy. But ease doesn't draw us nearer to Christ,” Ricardo mused. “These kids, they don’t get to choose an easy life. They need us to choose them.”

Foster care not only led Ricardo to Christ — it taught him how to be the man he never had in his own life. Had he held on to his own comfort, he would have done so at the expense of three children who now call him Dad through adoption.

“These kids need men. They need fathers. I know I did, and today I know what it’s like to grow up without one,” Ricardo said. “They don’t have to come from you to be your responsibility."

Based on his study of the example set by Christ, whom Ricardo has now accepted as his own Father and Savior, he’s come to one conclusion. Men were made to foster.