Loving without guarantees is the tension at the center of Episode 5 of Running Toward. In this conversation, Bethann Jackson shares what it actually costs to step into foster care when you know you may have to let a child go. Her story confronts one of the most common fears families express: I would love them too much. What Bethann learned is that loving deeply is not a liability in foster care. It is the qualification.

Episode 5 follows Bethann from her early desire to adopt, through years of closed doors in international adoption, into the foster care system she once said she would never enter. What unfolds is not a tidy success story. It is a story about surrender, proximity, and discovering that faithfulness often means staying when it hurts.

From “I’ll Never Foster” to Obedience

Bethann always believed adoption would be part of her family’s story. As a teenager, she visited an orphanage in Mexico and remembers holding a baby who did not cry because he had learned no one would come. That moment marked her.

Years later, after multiple failed international adoption attempts and doors that kept closing, she began to sense that the call to adopt had not disappeared. It had simply shifted direction.

Foster care was not her first choice. In fact, she resisted it. Her fear was simple and honest: she did not believe she could give a child back. The thought of loving a baby and then losing them felt unbearable. But after prayer and wrestling, she and her husband said yes.

Their first placement lasted six weeks. They knew from day one the baby would return to family. And yet, when that day came, it still hurt.

But something changed in Bethann during that first case. In an unexpected elevator encounter with the baby’s father, she was confronted with her own assumptions. The father thanked her and shared that he had grown up in foster care and had never experienced kindness like that from a foster parent. In that moment, the narrative shifted. Biological parents were no longer faceless problems. They were people with histories, trauma, and broken systems behind them.

Proximity changed her.

Trauma Does Not Disappear in a Loving Home

Bethann’s third placement eventually became an adoption. That little girl came at three months old with significant drug exposure and developmental delays. Adoption did not erase trauma. It simply changed who would walk with her through it.

Therapies, specialists, psychiatric care, speech intervention. The list was long. And the deeper realization was this: parenting a child impacted by trauma exposes how little control any parent truly has.

Bethann makes an important distinction in the episode. Biological parenting carries no more guarantees than foster or adoptive parenting. The illusion of control just feels stronger when the child shares your DNA.

Foster care stripped that illusion away early.

The Placement That Broke Her

One of Bethann’s placements stayed for over a year. This child had severe physical trauma and complex medical needs. Bethann and her family loved her fiercely. They celebrated milestones. They did the therapies. They built rhythms.

Then extended family stepped forward.

Bethann supported the transition. She coached the grandparents on car seats and daily care. She did what was best for the child. And when that little girl left, it shattered her.

She describes it as a kind of death. Not because the child was gone from the world, but because she was gone from her arms.

What sustained her was not emotional toughness. It was theological clarity. Loving without guarantees mirrors the Gospel. God loves us without forcing outcomes. He invites obedience, not control. Bethann realized that her anger at God for not intervening exposed her own desire to manage the ending.

Foster care revealed something deeper than her capacity to love. It revealed her need to surrender.

Breaking Generational Cycles Through Presence

Later in the episode, Bethann shares about a young man who entered their home at 18 after aging out of instability. He was couch surfing, directionless, and surviving day to day. The Jackson family did not rescue him. They offered structure, accountability, and expectation.

They asked him a question no one had ever asked: Where do you want to be in five years?

That simple shift reframed his future. With consistent support and boundaries, he moved toward stability. Insurance. A steady job. Independence.

Bethann does not frame this as heroism. She frames it as presence. Someone stepped into the gap at a tipping point and refused to look away.

That is the heartbeat of foster care ministry.

What People Get Wrong About Foster Care

Bethann challenges a common misconception: that loving too much disqualifies you from fostering. The opposite is true. If you are unwilling to love deeply, this is not your space.

Yes, it hurts. Yes, grief is real. But grief is not evidence you failed. It is evidence you loved.

She also addresses another misunderstanding: foster parents are not saviors. Biological families are not villains. Most people involved in the system are one crisis away from where the children are. Foster care is not about superiority. It is about obedience.

Faithfulness Means Staying

When asked to finish the sentence “Faithfulness has meant…,” Bethann answers simply: staying the course.

Not perfectly. Not without quitting for seasons. Not without anger or doubt. But returning. Saying yes again. Loving again.

Episode 5 of Running Toward does not glamorize foster care. It does not promise tidy endings. It offers something more honest: the beauty and the brokenness of loving without guarantees.

And in that tension, it reminds us that obedience is rarely comfortable. But it is always formative.

Watch Episode 5 of Running Toward here:
https://alliance4orphans.org/running-toward/

Because loving without guarantees is not weakness. It is Christlike strength.