Robert Day entered foster care while still in his mother’s womb. His mother, a single, pregnant teen, was placed into care after an alcohol-fueled road rage incident involving her mother and her mother’s boyfriend left a man dead. Robert’s mother was in the car at the time and was taken by social services and placed into a home for unwed mothers. It was there that Robert was born. Given this rough start, Robert Day shouldn’t be where he is today.
A Loving Foster Family
Initially, Robert’s mother planned to place him for adoption, a fact she would remind him of repeatedly throughout his childhood. She was placed in the foster home of George and Joanne Ball, an older couple with no biological children of their own.
The Balls were a sweet, loving, Christian couple. They not only gave Robert’s mother a safe, stable home, but they also loved her as if she were their birth child. Though the system would fail Robert in many ways, he also credits it for keeping him from further harm by taking custody of his mother while she was still pregnant with him.
An Unexpected Turn
The Ball family petitioned the state to place Robert with them as well, which eventually happened, with adoption by the Balls as the intended plan. However, when Robert’s mother turned 18, she decided not to relinquish her parental rights for reasons still unknown to him. Instead, she left the Balls’ home and took him with her. Her decision removed him from the loving, nurturing care of the people he saw as his mom and dad and plunged him into chaos and dysfunction, leaving him with lasting scars.
By the time Robert graduated from high school, he had lived in more than 35 different homes. These included homes where he lived alone with his mother, several homes where they couch surfed with strangers, his maternal grandmother’s home, homes in California, and homes he shared with his mother and her various husbands, including the one who adopted him at age 16.
The Home That Shaped His Soul
His favorite home growing up, though, was that of the Balls, the foster parents he lived with during the first two years of his life, and again at age 10. His mother took him there, and he stayed for six months during a time that he believes was a “fictive kin” placement—based on emotional connections rather than familial—after she’d lost custody of his four half brothers.
The time he was in the Balls’ home helped make him the man he is today. “In my first placement with the Balls, they provided the nurture that fulfilled my developmental need for secure attachment. That’s huge,” Robert says. “The second placement with them was [my] introduction to the Christian faith, a moral underpinning, and their commitment to pray for me every day.” He says they continued to stay involved in his life outside the foster care relationship.
Robert began attending church, a habit that endured after he left the Balls’ home. It was then that he learned more about Jesus and felt His love through the community of believers. “The local church saved my life, more than once. It wasn’t by a program, but through the people in the local churches who committed to having a meaningful relationship with me and often using their social capital to open opportunities for me,” he says.
An Orphan Spirit
Robert is well aware of what God has done in him and through him, but he admits that he occasionally struggles with what he calls an orphan spirit—a feeling that he isn’t worthy or capable of being loved. Sharen Ford, director of Foster Care and Adoption with Focus on the Family, says, “Many children impacted by the foster care system wonder why their birth parents or families aren’t able or willing to care for them—they feel robbed.”
Robert came by his orphan spirit the way many people do. It was the natural result of being raised counter to God’s design and desire for children.
Instead of receiving consistent nurturing from loving parents, Robert endured emotional, physical and sexual abuse, as well as severe neglect at the hands of multiple adults in his formative years. Sharen says, “Children are a gift from God. Gifts are precious and wanted. When you’re the victim of abuse and neglect, you don’t feel precious or wanted. Only God can fill you and support you in feeling whole.”
Purpose from Pain
Though it may be hard to fathom the amount of trauma one child could endure, Robert sees God’s hand at work, using his experiences for good, as His Word says in Romans 8:28. While in college, Robert co-founded Mountain Outreach, a ministry still in operation, meeting the needs of people in Appalachia living in extreme poverty. He’s been a social worker, pastor, teacher and author, and currently is the leader of Five18 Family Services, a Virginia-based ministry.
“God recycled my pain into a purpose once I surrendered to His call on my life,” Robert says. “I think it gives me a perspective and an urgency that I wouldn’t have if not for my childhood trauma.”
Robert sees the importance of Christians opening their homes to vulnerable children. He and his wife raised four children and once served as foster parents. He explains that a home becomes a mission field, and the family becomes missionaries. It’s often the hardest and most rewarding thing a family can do together.
An Encouraging Word to Foster Parents
To those families who have answered God’s call but are struggling, he offers these encouraging words: “I get it. The struggle is real, and the temptation to quit can be strong, but the reconciler always pays a heavy price for the reconciliation. To be a Christian is to be a minister of reconciliation—the price payer. We were bought by a price, and now we purchase healing, wholeness and reconciliation by paying a price.”
Robert Day’s story is truly a story of God’s redemption, goodness and grace. Robert says, “My experience in foster care, the trauma I suffered in childhood, and my work in child welfare have given me a kind of 360-degree view.” He feels it gave him a clearer vision of the goal. In his words, the hope is to place “every child with a thriving family, supported by a faithful community and an engaged church.”
Foster Care/Adoption Resources:
Wait No More: A Focus on the Family program that provides free, biblically based information and resources for foster parents, kinship care, adoptive parents, wrap-around care, and more.
Suitcase Bundle Program: Wait No More collaborates with churches, bridge organizations, and businesses to provide “suitcase bundles” to children/youth involved in the foster care system. Each bundle contains a 30-inch duffle bag on wheels, a teddy bear, a handwritten note, and an age-appropriate Bible.
Further Reading:
10 Ways to Make a Difference for Children in Foster Care
So You Think You Want to Become a Foster Parent
3 Key Ways How To Support Adoptive and Foster Kids
Caring for Kids from Hard Places: How to Help Children and Teens with a Traumatic Past
