The Plain Values Podcast EP #51 – The Story Is Never Over (The Long View of Foster Care)

Marlin Miller:
This episode is brought to you by our friends at Azure Standard. Lisa and I just recently signed up finally, and we are loving it. Non – GMO, organic, it is all that you can ask for. Go to azurestandard.com and tell them plain values sentia. You can use the code HL15 for a healthy little discount. Thanks guys. The other day, my wife Lisa shared a few thoughts about her experience with rustic strength soap. Listen to this. This is about the dishwasher gel. I love this dishwasher gel. It is exactly what I was looking for. Natural ingredients, biodegradable, and the best part is that it cleans dishes really well. There are no chemical smells or residues left on silverware, glasses or dishes paired with the rinse aid. It is fantastic. Go to Rustic Drength. You can use PV15 for a nice little discount. Guys, thanks a ton.

Kevin Hewitt:
Amazing family. And he goes, “I finally got what you guys are…” I’m like, “No.” I’m like, “Paul, you don’t understand. You are not one of my favorites.” Oh, I know. I know. You told him. Yeah. Yeah. I’m like, “Even one of my favorite girls.” He goes, “I know. I had to be frustrated to you.” He goes, “I just want you to know that I got it and I am going to the Marines in two days.” So the odds of me seeing him, that he finally had started making some right choice. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And two days before he goes to have the opportunity to see him, I was just like.

Marlin Miller:
Wow.

Kevin Hewitt:
Off the charts. Oh, it’s me.

Marlin Miller:
No, it’s not you. Our electricity just tanked down. Look at our soundboard.

Kevin Hewitt:
I’m telling you that happened the last time I was here.

Marlin Miller:
It did, didn’t

Kevin Hewitt:
It? Remember it went all black.

Marlin Miller:
Oh my goodness.

Kevin Hewitt:
That’s why I said it is me.

Marlin Miller:
Okay. Well, we have all the other cameras going. We’re going to keep going. All right. This is uncanny. What in the world? I mean, the lights were flashing. Okay.

Kevin Hewitt:
Anyway,

Marlin Miller:
Keep going.

Kevin Hewitt:
Man. So the last story is actually about the Strewel foster family. And it comes to this Thanksgiving just we just had. Okay. They, again, I don’t want to put anybody on too high of pedestals because we, again, we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But they were one of our first families and they took in some of the toughest kids I’ve ever seen. The kids, the vast majority of us would not. Matter of fact, Danny was one of the first foster children I worked with in their home. He, for the first seven days of his life, seven years, I just made that mistake. Seven years of his life, he had been strapped to a hospital bed. No kidding? No kidding. Strapped because of his behaviors. And there was some fetal alcohol stuff. Again, dad was. He was actually from Butler County, which is way.
They couldn’t find a foster home for him.

Marlin Miller:
Seven years.

Kevin Hewitt:
First seven years. I shouldn’t say he was strapped. That could have been too dramatic. He had spent his first seven years in the hospital, at least the last several years, strapped down because of his behaviors and stuff like that. Wow. They finally got to the point of, and Bob and Kathy literally drove down and would have visits and stuff like that. And his first day of placement that. I shouldn’t tell you. It wasn’ his first day of him. His first day he went to school. Severely autistic, fetal alcohol syndrome, just a lot of disadvantages. He was bad one. His first day of school, they’re in Akron, and he is going to a school for special needs called Barrett Elementary. Well, it’s lunchtime and they can’t find Danny. Well, one of the things that he was infatuated with, which is normal for autistic, was the traffic lights.
Danny is literally walking down Arlington Avenue in Akron looking at pointing at the lights.

Marlin Miller:
That’s a giant street.

Kevin Hewitt:
That’s a giant street. That’s a giant street. And he was pointing at lights. That foster family, they adopted him.

Marlin Miller:
That is awesome.

Kevin Hewitt:
And he lived to age 20. I think his expected expectancy was like 18. So he lived to 29 and they. Wow. But this was some of the wildest things I ever had as a case manager. He had some savant techniques. And one of them was actually, he had the puzzle of the United States, and it was a hundred piece puzzle of the United States. He would have the hundred pieces and Danny would go in another room. You would take out however many number of puzzle pieces. He’d come back in, he’d open that box and tell you how many he took out.

Marlin Miller:
Just by looking at it.

Kevin Hewitt:
I’m telling you – As a rain

Marlin Miller:
Man.

Kevin Hewitt:
Yeah. It actually made the hairs on your. And then he came to me one day and he was really frustrated. I’m like, “Danny, what are you frustrated about?” And he was doing long division. So it was like three, not long division, long multiplication. So like three integers on top, like 939 times 127. In

Marlin Miller:
His head.

Kevin Hewitt:
Well, here’s what he was doing. Sorry. Here’s what he was doing. Here’s what he was doing. Remember how we used to do it the old school that you’d write the numbers down, move it over and then add them up?

Marlin Miller:
Oh yeah.

Kevin Hewitt:
Well, here’s what Danny was doing. He had all the rows totally wrong, but his final answer was right. Yeah, figure that one out, Marlon.

Marlin Miller:
How do you even do that?

Kevin Hewitt:
I looked at it. We were looking at it. It’s like he has figured math out to some point, but he was mad because the rows were not. Yeah. He was such a unique individual. I remember going to their house and he would be playing baseball with himself. And he’d throw the ball up and he’d try to hit it. He wasn’t necessarily coordinating up because he had some, from being strapped down for so long, he had some stuff that didn’t grow as well as they should have. But he loved the Indians back then, the Guardians, and hated the Yankees. So I can still remember coming up behind him one time and he took a swing and hit the ball. He’s like, “Tommy, home run. Cleveland, 1400. Yankees, zero.” I’m like, “Hey, they’re giving a good beating today, huh?” I love it. They cared for him and loved on him.
They found him a job. At one point, he was counting pencils. You talking about a perfect job. And I can’t remember. It was in a pencil factory and he was doing it and they just loved on him. But what I was going back to the picture is this Thanksgiving, there was a picture of their family they sent. And it was their foster kids that have grown up.
They had adopted them. And the spouses, their own son, and they were all just smiling. And that would’ve been 30 years ago. 30 years ago. And they were. And so there’s hope because even the one adopted child had a pretty rough go. He was really, really talented. I think that was part of his issue is he was really skilled, so didn’t necessarily follow the rules. And there was an estrangement for a while, but he’s back with his wife and kids and he gets it. He’s actually going to church with them. What I’m saying that is so many times when it comes to foster parenting, adopted parenting, we get focused on a short time span and God sees it from this big time span and not to give up. Again, back to that, he can redeem anything.

Marlin Miller:
We’ve been publishing Plain Values for almost 13 years now. And about a year ago, the team and I decided to put together a compendium, a best of, if you will, of our favorite stories, the most impactful stories of all those years. And Invited is what we built out of those conversations. It is 194 and four pages, and it is absolutely a thing of beauty. We do a monthly gathering here where we just simply open our doors. It’s called PorchTime. And the story of how PorchTime came to be and how our family was invited into that and how we are inviting you and every Tom, Dick, and Harry, anybody who wants to come can come and hang out at PorchTime here at the office in Weinsburg. So it was such a natural fit to use the home of the founder of PorchTime and to call it Invited.
You can find it on plainvalues.com on the shop page and you can now consider yourself invited. I believe your slogan for the year is the story is not over.

Kevin Hewitt:
Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
Right?

Kevin Hewitt:
Yeah, that is. Yeah, that is really good. Yeah. Our t-shirts are. Yeah, we actually do a slogan for a T-shirt of yours. I’m going to have to get you a T-shirt for that.

Marlin Miller:
That’d be great.

Kevin Hewitt:
You were getting one. So yeah, story’s not over.

Marlin Miller:
Man, how can we pray for you and your team up at CCHO?

Kevin Hewitt:
Man, that’s a great one that we would see every person we walk, we lock eyes with as Jesus does. Because one of the other things we have is we’ll never lock eyes with anyone who wasn’t worth enough for Jesus to die for. So that we would really see that. And it’s hard because we’re human too. And we know that with our foster parents too and with our encouraged foster families. We are blessed. We continue to get more and more families. We have a pre-service training coming up and next weekend we have 18 families coming.

Marlin Miller:
Wow.

Kevin Hewitt:
Yeah. Oh my

Marlin Miller:
Goodness.

Kevin Hewitt:
That’s fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. And you’ve met Katie and some of the work she’s doing and Heather Huebner. Oh man. I was saying that about our Christmas party. When I walked in, the energy in that room of. Of course, they’re going to get to CNO and gifts, but I mean, that’s part of it. But the care they have for each other and for the kids, it was. Again, I feel like just blessed to be part of it in how any way we can. So for the kids that we can have kids, staff, foster families, I 35 years ago, very naively said I would love to work hard enough to not have a job. That has backfired since it continues to get more and more challenging, but that we would continue to be the hands and feet of Christ.

Marlin Miller:
Well, Kevin, you have the ability to encourage, no pun intended, to encourage a ton of amazing foster families.

Kevin Hewitt:
Yeah.

Marlin Miller:
Let me just say, the more I get to know you and the more I get to see the work that you do yourself, you’re in the hero ranks with those families, something awful. Because the things you do, the obstacles that you move so that your team can do what they do. Chalk it up, my friend.

Kevin Hewitt:
Part of it is I’ve been around a long time. But the other part, I said this earlier to somebody is I have been blessed with having people surround me that make me look a lot better than I am. Whether it’s my wife, my kids, the people I work with. I still, even though I preach it, I still struggle at times of even understanding my own identity because of the fact. And I think it could be part of my sports background of thinking there has to be a winner and loser at all times. And to rest in the fact that God loves me is – That

Marlin Miller:
It’s not a zero sum game.

Kevin Hewitt:
Correct. Correct. And I think of, oh man, 317, Malachi of God singing over us. That’s not Malachi. Oh, I’m blanking. Man, one of the listeners will sure say, Kevin, I can’t believe he doesn’t know it. 317 is the chapter, but the fact that God sings over us. And it’s interesting when you look at the Hebrew and that, it’s not like a lice pleasant. It Singing, it is like a forceful, like a mighty warrior singing over us. Wow. And to think of that, that the creator, Zephaniah 3:17.

Marlin Miller:
Zephaniah.

Kevin Hewitt:
Thank you. Sorry about. I was like, Malachi is not right. Zephaniah 3:17, that the creator universe is madly singing over us. Is mighty warrior singing over us because Hmachi loves us.

Marlin Miller:
It’s wild. Kevin, thank you.

Kevin Hewitt:
Marlon.

Marlin Miller:
I love it.

Kevin Hewitt:
I appreciate the connection. I told you earlier, the quality of guests you have. I get a little intimidated singing about you because you’re like, what is that? Dos Aches, the most interesting guy. I mean, people you get to meet and stuff is just –

Marlin Miller:
I’ve never been compared to a beer.

Kevin Hewitt:
Yeah. Well, I didn’t know if that was appropriate here. That’s pretty cool.

Marlin Miller:
I’ll chalk that up in a win cup.

Kevin Hewitt:
There we go. There we go. It was meant to be a company.

Marlin Miller:
Thank you. You’re

Kevin Hewitt:
Welcome.

Marlin Miller:
This