The Golden Gala… from where I stood.

There was a moment at the Golden Gala when I just stood there and looked around.

A room full of 375 people, looking dapper. All packed into one room. All there because somewhere along the way, they decided kids in foster care and the families loving them were worth showing up for. And man… it got me.

See… foster care isn’t glamorous. It’s not fancy, it’s not bright or shiny or gold. Foster care is hard. Supporting foster families is heavy. It’s foster moms texting because they’re at the end of their rope. It’s mental health hospitalizations for the kids… again. It’s violence and fear and unknown and lots of tears. It’s heartbreak and darkness. It’s so much waiting. Like… sooooo much waiting. It’s kids struggling to see the light through the dark that’s collapsed on their lives. It’s figuring out what’s for dinner when you got called out of work early for the 30th time this year to come pick up a kid from school. It's Foster Light showing up with therapy and laundry and groceries and sending someone to clean the bathrooms because this family is just trying to make it to bedtime.

It's a lot of ordinary people doing really ordinary things in the middle of really hard stories. And then, for one night, we got to see all of that love in one room. We got to see the village showing up for our families.

You could literally SENSE the light in the room.

More than $155,000 raised.

There were foster moms at the gala sitting at a table together. When we talked afterwards, they shared about the tears streaming down their faces during the “giving moment” when they saw what people were donating. People committed dollars to a cause. For these moms, it’s a full refrigerator. It’s sitting across from a therapist, getting healthier for the kids who call them mom. It’s a clean house when everything else feels chaotic. It’s a babysitter showing up so two exhausted parents can go eat dinner and remember they actually like each other. It’s their babies getting to stay in the home where they're beginning to feel safe. It’s changing the trajectory of their kids’ lives because it provides stability and preservation in a season that feels impossible.

That's what you gave us that night.

Not just money.

Margin. Stability. Staying power.

You helped us surround families who are doing some of the hardest, holiest work we know.

And standing in that room, looking at 375 of you, I thought:

look how many people care.

There is so much hard in foster care.

But there is so, so much light too.

Thank you for being part of it.