"This is what I'm meant to do with my life"

So said my niece as she explained her foster parent training to me.  She and her fiance are beginning by becoming respite caregivers. If foster parents need a break, for a day or an evening or overnight, they can leave the kid in a safe place, with people who have been checked out by the authorities and are trained in CPR, etc. 

Then, after doing this for a year (and after their wedding and honeymoon) my niece and her new husband will become foster parents themselves.

They want to be parents, but they don't want to have a baby. They want to open their hearts and their home to a child who needs them. 

I am enormously proud of her.