Foster Care Story of Hope Victoria Petersen Ep 263

Don't Mom Alone Podcast

Education, Leisure, Kids & Family, Parenting

4.9 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2019

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On the surface, Victoria (Tori) Petersen’s story doesn’t sound full of hope. Her growing up years were filled with abuse, a mom who struggled with drugs, and more than 10 foster homes with no hope of adoption.

But God’s heart for Tori wasn’t death; it was life. Through a series of relationships and her own study, Tori learned about God. She experienced sacrificial love and community in the church and through her foster parents. It changed her whole future.

“The encouragement, the support, and the ability to see that through their words, through God's speaking through these people and acting through these people in love showed me that I did have a future, that God did have a plan for me and that if I trusted in him, that plan would blossom into something.”

After emancipating from the foster care system, Tori’s life has had more ups and downs. But, she is confident in her identity in Christ and learning more every day. Now as a mom and wife, God is redeeming her story and using it to encourage others who are a part of the foster system.

“I think foster parents remembering that they are image-bearers and in those hard times to be able to humble themselves and say,’ I am weak and I'm going to call on God's strength to love this child.’ Also communicating to the child that they're made in God's image. They are loved despite any kind of behavior or any saddening event that they have been through. Identity in Christ is crucial to the relationship between foster youth and foster parents.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey y'all, welcome back to the Don't Mom Alarm Podcast.
0:10.4	I am your host Heather McFadden, and this is the place where I'm going to come alongside
0:15.2	you and connect you with people and resources so you know that you don't mom alone.
0:22.4	And this episode number 263, I have the privilege of introducing you to Victoria Peterson.
0:29.9	Again, the greatest encouragement to me has been knowing who I am in Christ, knowing that
0:36.0	he created me in his image. And I am supposed to be an image bearer. I am an image bearer,
0:42.4	naturally, because I was made by him. And so I think foster parents remembering that that is
0:48.2	also true for them, that they are image bearers. And in those hard times, to be able to humble
0:53.9	themselves and say, I am weak and I'm going to call on God's strength to love this child,
0:58.7	and also communicating to the child that they are made in God's image. They are loved despite
1:06.4	any kind of behavior or any saddening event that they have been through. I think that identity
1:13.3	in Christ is crucial to the relationship of a foster youth and foster parent on the hard and
1:20.0	easy days. Such a foundational truth for all of us to remember who we are and who's we are.
1:28.0	I know that that is such a buzz conversation that's going around, but often we are operating out of
1:34.4	a place of forgetfulness in our daily interactions. We are forgetting the truth of who we are.
1:40.6	And I'm so thankful for Victoria Hope Peterson, better known as Tori to come on the show today,
1:47.1	share her experience in the foster care system between the ages of 12 and 18, the 12 different
1:54.0	homes she was in, and how God provided hope, how he provided people to point her back to that hope.
2:00.8	And the second half of our conversation focuses in on the second half of her life since emancipating
2:07.6	from the foster care system, her story of pregnancy outside of marriage, then her early marriage,
2:14.2	and the church and how we have the opportunity as a community to come alongside each other and
2:19.4	put each other back to the gospel and to root out the causes behind our choices. I think she
	...

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