By Sandra Marroquin –
TV star Jen Lilley proposed that she and her husband Jason become foster parents. He flatly refused – until the child they were mentoring said, “My mom called, and I’m really scared.”
Jason white-knuckled the steering wheel on the way home to LA from Beaumont. “WHEN WE GET BACK HOME, WE ARE TAKING THOSE FOSTER CARE CLASSES,” her normally impassible husband emphatically said. “WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING.”
Jen and Wayne’s journey to foster care and adoption was born of passion and love for Jesus, according to a report by CBN.
They call it the Seven Year Itch, the time when your marriage grinds down to tediousness. “We didn’t cheat on each other or anything,” she says. “There’s this period you go throw that it’s like, Whoa! We are like roommates. We lost our passion, our love for each other. How did we get here?”
To revitalize her marriage, Jen, who has starred in General Hospital and Days of Our Lives, suggested fostering.
Even though her husband initially said no, she decided to become a mentor for ChildHelp, a nationwide nonprofit that has helped millions of children who suffer child abuse.
Jen and Wayne brought their little girl cupcakes for her birthday.
“She blew out her candles,” Jen says. “It was like I could hear her thoughts. I saw tears bubble up in her eyes. I saw her like say to herself, Get it together. She choked back down the tears.
“I realized she’d never had a cake before,” Jen adds.
Later as Jen was on the monkey bars, the girl confided to Wayne, “My mom called, and I’m really scared.”
ChildHelp takes on some of the severest cases of abuse and neglect, kids who have been raised in a cage and think they’re dogs, kids who don’t know what table food is, Jen says.
“If a child lives at ChildHelp Village, in general it’s a very bad idea for them to reunify with their parents,” she says.
Today, they have adopted two kids out of foster care and had two of their own biological children.
At seven-years-old Jen thought of herself as an atheist due to abuse she suffered (she clarifies the abuse was not by her parents).
“I don’t believe in you, God,” she said at the time.
“That’s OK,” God responded. It was something she felt strongly in her heart.
But when she attended a Spirit-filled church at age nine, her eyes were opened. She started her “spiritual journey.” When she read that Elisha had the spirit of God and not just Jesus and Moses, she got excited.
“That pretty much rocked me,” she says.
Jen is a promoter of foster care and adopting. “I have to run toward compassion and toward brokenness, like Jesus did,” Jen says. “When love is your motive, you have to look at these kids. You can’t look away.”
About 400,000 children nationwide are in the foster care system, according to CBN.
To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here.
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About this writer: Sandra Marroquin studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy near South Central Los Angeles.
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