May is National Foster Care Awareness Month, a time to recognize the families and volunteers who help children in foster care find permanent homes and connections.

As a foster parent, Sachse resident Cindy Wetherington has played a key role in the lives of more than 10 children.

Wetherington said she feels called to be a foster parent and in turn, she is blessed by the experience.

Her grandparents helped to operate an orphanage in Portugal. When she was 12, she visited Portugal and helped her grandparents and it has stuck with her ever since.

“I fell in love with those kids,” Wetherington said. “It broke my heart that these kids didn’t have families. From that day, it planted that seed that I wanted to some day adopt.”

Wetherington began fostering in 2013 and has fostered off and on since then.

“People always ask me, they say, ‘well I couldn’t do it, I’d get too attached,’” Wetherington said. “I’m like, ‘that’s the point.’ If kids can attach to you and you can fill in and be that bridge while they are in (foster) care, then they can have healthy attachments to other people and other families.”

The point of foster care isn’t adoption, says Wetherington. The point of foster care is being the hands and feet of Jesus and temporarily helping a child while the courts and adults figure out the legal situations.

For the full story, see our May 13 issue or subscribe online.

By Dustin Butler • [email protected]