← Them Before Us Podcast
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Foreign.
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Welcome to the Them Before Us podcast. I'm your host, Jen Friesen. And today we are featuring another amazing organization that is kind of doing the pro life pro family work as them before us loves to highlight people who we are locked arm in arm with. Even though we might be focused in different things, there's always a, an accusation that people, maybe Christians are just pro life in this very selective way. Maybe we only care about abortion or pregnancy. And we don't think that's true. There are so many people doing amazing work to care for people at every stage. So today we're joined by Meridell Sandberg, and she's the founder and president of an organization called Together for Good. Meridell, so glad to see you. Thanks for joining us.
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A
Hey, Jen, thanks for being here.
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B
Well, we'd love to start with just hearing a little bit about you. Maybe tell us about your upbringing, your involvement, you know, know, were you raised in a particular faith tradition? And then you can tell us about how you started together for good.
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Wow. I'm a small town girl from northern Minnesota, oldest of four children. We, my husband and I live in Minneapolis. We birthed three kids, then we adopted five different times. And each adoption brought a different story of a woman in crisis. And particularly in our case, we adopted transracial, which meant that our babies were black and birth mothers were from the South. And they themselves chose us to be parents, each birth mom specifically because in three of the five cases, those birth moms had been in foster care themselves and they were worried that they wouldn't be able to do it because they didn't have the kind of family support that was needed to raise a child. And so while I'm grateful that I get to be their adoptive mom, I think there's always the wonder in our child's lives. They're all grown now, but what would life have been like? What could life have been like? And so kind of in honor of them and the choices they made for life, we started together for good with the idea that what if those mothers could have had family? What if they could have had extended like family to come around them, walk with them while they journeyed as a parent? And while one of them, she did not want a parent and made a good choice to make an adoption plan, but the others, I think could have. And so together for Good creates pathways for the local church to come alongside vulnerable children and families in Christ centered ministry. And we're in Iowa, Minnesota and Texas.
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B
That's amazing. I liked what it said on your website. Is that you're focusing on meeting families and people in crisis upstream. And when we think about foster care and adoption and divorce and motherless and fatherlessness for children, and we them before us sees all the negative impacts, we see things way downstre. And so can you tell us a little bit more about why you're trying to focus upstream and what does that mean?
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Yeah, well, as an adoptive Mom, I spent 25 years helping families adopt. And this story just kept going over and over again. Women were making adoption plans because they could not, did not want to, did not feel like they had the capacity or family to do that. And part of that reason, again, was that foster care reason. And we know that once kids are in foster care, the trajectory of their lives can go very, very downhill quickly. And so the idea of what if we were to step in and offer to help before the government was involved, before there was the threat of losing your child? And we know that that's a primary motivation for parents in general. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, I'm going to hurt my child or leave my child with an unsafe person. It happens because they just don't have enough support. And so the idea of coming, let's get upstream, let's offer help while a parent still has the right to make that decision for themselves. And I think that's the power of what we're doing, is that mom still is still in full control. She still has full rights as a parent. She's offering to let our families host her child temporarily while she gets a break. All legally, all done within the power of the local power of attorney in the state of Minnesota, Iowa and Texas. And so that opportunity for a parent to have a choice in the matter changes the way that trajectory goes in terms of her getting the help she needs, Whether it's mental health, simple things like having a baby and no one to watch your 2 year old can all become risk factors for children. And so how do we mobilize people to care for children before the government gets involved, before you have to become a foster parent, but voluntarily. So they ask for help, we volunteer to help. And it provides much better outcomes for children than could have been imagined otherwise?
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B
Yeah, I love that you talked about just now and you mentioned on your website you don't take money from the government, you're not associated with the social workers and the state run thing. So it's a religious nonprofit and you're completely separate. So you're supported by donations. I'm sure a lot of people could kind of come up with what they think some of the examples of the brokenness and the need for families are. And I'd love it if you would. I don't want to put you on the spot, so I want to give you a few seconds to think about it. But if you have some stories that you can tell us of kind of the start to finish. But can you start by describing some of the situations that you're finding families in that you're trying to help, like sort of describe the brokenness before we get to the solution part that you guys offer?
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Well, when we have an intake line and people call for help, many times their. Their first response is, I have no one, I have no one else. I may have friends, I may have family, but I don't have someone I could trust to keep my child overnight without me there. So that becomes the primary social isolation. I'm alone, I'm afraid. And boy, if I tell you that I'm struggling, the only thing I know is that you're going to come. Someone's going to come take my baby from me. And I don't want that to happen. So instead I struggle and hide and struggle and hide. So that's a primary universal story of most of the women that call. Right now we have calls. Our four primary resource calls come from a medical doctor and or social worker at the hospital. There's a crisis at the hospital and no one to take children while mom deals with mental health and or labor and delivery or emergency surgery. And then we have second opportunity for women who want to get help with treatment. Again, I'm struggling with drug addiction, but I don't want to tell anybody because I'm worried someone will take my kids so early on they can say, I'm struggling, I'd like to go to treatment. Would you be able to host my children for the 30, 60, 90 day program? And then also in the pro life world, of course, crisis pregnancy centers will call to say, mom's got two other kids, she needs help. And or one of the other services that we provide is we want every mom to have an advocate which is like a mentor so that she has someone to turn to along the journey of walking with her. And so many of those moms are just becoming mothers. And then they have the opportunity to have a family like advocate and or then hosting for their child should they need it. Kind of like grandma and grandpa we all have, or auntie and uncle that we took advantage of when we were raising children ourselves. All of my children are now grown, by the way. There's eight of them. And we birthed three and adopted five. And I'm so grateful that we made it this far. So that becomes another.
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B
That's amazing.
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Yeah. That becomes another referral source. And then in general, moms just call, because I just need a break. I'm alone, and I don't have enough. And so that mental health thing can go out of control really quickly. And I remember myself many times, we all can relate. Just, I need 24 hours of sleep because I just need a break. And so those kind of respite, ongoing respites also happen where families commit to saying, I'll take your child once a week or once a month or once every six weeks to give that rest, but mostly weekend kind of care.
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I remember hearing a story of a young woman in her 30s that was on the street. So she ended up homeless. And when you learned, it was kind of a graphic video that was showing her story. When you learned about her story, she had been adopted by a great couple, raised by them, went out on her own, was living on her own, but then her parents died, and she was just laid off from her job. And it only took a month or so for her to not have enough money to pay the bills. She couldn't get a new job, and. And then she was living in her car. So we sort of see people again downstream. You see people that are struggling, whether it's choices that they made, struggles that they have, or like you're saying, I've said this so many times. There are so many people whose couches I could sleep on before I would have to live in my car. Right. Just my church community, my. My extended family. But like you're saying, there's so many people, especially those that have been raised in the foster care system or they don't have that family support. They are only one missed paycheck away, or that relationship breaking up, or a mental health crisis or struggling with addiction away from not being able to figure it out and to function. So it's amazing.
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It is really the story of all stories. And they're not. They're very similar to what you say. We end up having a little bit of trouble with a homeless person because it just takes a long time to get that right, you know, that situation taken care of. So we can't host your child for two years while you're waiting to get into an apartment, but we can certainly give you respite so that you can look for an apartment. But typical is I just don't have the kind of Support I need, whether it's from the, you know, the drug induced situation or whether it's just homelessness crisis one paycheck away is very common, or I just lost it all, or someone just stole my everything out of my car. And all of a sudden you're in a very vulnerable situation. And when we say vulnerable, I mean, we're not talking about just little children anymore. We're talking about those parents too, who many times are still children themselves. I think when we think about the overall care and safety of families, that many times young women are parenting children, but they themselves still have childhood trauma. And so it means that they're just not getting the kind of help they need for their own trauma either. So. But story after story, those are the universal calls we get. My mother died, I'm on, you know, I'm severely depressed. I think I'm going to take my life. That's common. We'll have calls from a police officer saying they went to a domestic abuse situation. And then all of a sudden there's two children and they realize, well, actually, let's give this mom 24 hours to figure out what's going to happen next. And so we also serve moms that are in prison. And so if you've committed a crime where you need to be in jail but you're pregnant and, or you have children that there's no grandma or grandpa to go to. And then our volunteers are committed to going to visit mom in prison while with their children so they get a chance to stay with a safe family but be in the opportunity of having time with their parents. We always, if at all possible, children along with their parents, if at all possible. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
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B
Tell us a little bit what it was like when you were starting together for good, trying to get churches involved. Because I think most people, most Christians want to help. We probably don't. Especially if you were kind of raised in a more traditional family and thankfully were separated from a lot of the trauma and the experiences. You kind of can only go off of the news or things you see and hear from far away versus understanding what all goes into it. And then there might be a feeling too that churches don't want one extra thing. Hey, I'm trying to figure out ministry over here. I don't, I don't know how to get my people involved. What was that like when you were first starting out?
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What I found most fascinating is many, many people were dying to have an opportunity. They literally just didn't know how. I mean, classic. You've all had a neighbor who was a drug addict or, you know, excuse a better return, but, you know, failure as a mother, whatever that looks like, couldn't do what they needed to do. And you want to help, but you don't know how. And so the uniqueness of our program is that we want to make sure that every volunteer that serves and every mom that's asking for help, primarily mothers we sometimes serve, fathers have the kind of professional support they need. So every hosting case we do, every advocate case we do, is managed by a professional social worker or advocate type person who we've trained. And so the opportunity for them to then be in a different space of relational connection and offer that. That new kind of opportunity, especially in Minnesota, we're in a more liberal state. The foster care system is a scary thing, and it's really a bigger commitment. And I think people like, I want to help, but I really don't know the best way to do that. And so this seems like a really great opportunity, like an introductory, we would say, all day long. Now, if you're considering adoption, if you're considering foster care, if you're considering being in that space at all, start with us, because then you get to actually know real people who are struggling. Real, you know, this could be my sister and her little boy. This could be my neighbor. And then the other big reason for us was the pro life movement in general. I think that that opportunity is so limited. There's not enough, you know, you can't have 400 people in a room waiting to help a mom who's pregnant, that we could offer that kind of ongoing service. I would say, you know, one of the big stories out on the street is those Christians, they don't care about anything but that baby. And we want to just say, absolutely not. That's not true. We are here because we care about mothers and children and that if you're pro life, then where are you when that baby is 2 and 4 and 7? Because we as pro life people should be standing there waiting to help. And oh, by the way, who's going to pay for college? Because if we're really saying that, that's the kind of language we want to use. And so what we found is that many, many people wanted to step in, especially as a volunteer, compared to the foster care system, where there's a lot of paperwork and, or fear of whatever those outcomes might be, because we know that once a child's in foster care, there's already lots of trauma that's been happening. And so this provides a different kind of level of care as traumatic. Mom knows the people that her child is going to, she has the opportunity to have contact with them regularly. And so all those barriers of not having a choice become really a wonderful opportunity for everybody involved. So we've had no Trouble. Probably about 250 families in the Twin Cities are approved and ready to serve, all in different capacities. Some serve once a month, some serve for three months straight. In a couple cases of moms who are in prison, we've had women who will host children for up to two years while mom's finishing her opportunity in jail. Opportunity. But anyway, and during that time building a wonderful relationship. Right. So over time, those children now have an auntie and uncle. And when mom gets out, there's already been a good connection. Mom gets to parent again. And then when mom's in trouble or feels alone, she can call the auntie and uncle and say, hey, can I just have a break? Or it's Johnny's third birthday, will you please come? Right. So all of a sudden it becomes very real, the power of family in the life of a child.
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B
Yeah, that's so good. You've talked a little bit about the emergency crisis hosting and then supportive respite care. These are the things that you offer on the website. And so now it seems like you're touching on that ongoing relational support and the wraparound care. Can you talk a little bit about, more about practically, what do those things look like?
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Yeah, so we partner with local churches. Each church has a, that's a liaison between Together for Good and their church and they will mobilize their local team. And many of those team might be host families, might be advocates, but then we also want them to recruit wraparound care for the family. So who's going to make sure Johnny gets new shoes at Christmas or who's going to make sure that they're invited to the Easter egg hunt at church, those sorts of things. And that's where we want the opportunity for them to experience a new kind of family in the family of God having that church relationship. Churches, of course, have tons of kids activities where you can, I mean, I tell parents all the time, go to church and let your kids sit in the nursery so you can have a break, just so you could have that peace and quiet. Right. And what we found is that the power of a non judgmental, loving, caring Christian with a person who's never experienced that before is just more powerful than words could ever imagine. None of us, none of us deserve that kind of love. And when we experience it, it changes our lives. I love you, period.
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Right.
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I'm not going to judge you. Yeah, yeah, right?
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Yeah. That's great.
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It's also very exciting. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. It's also very exciting. When you think about the Christians that are serving, it becomes a huge opportunity of growth for them, for their children. I mean, many times those kids are first responders. Another child's coming into their home for the weekend, and they get to learn about sharing their toys or helping a child feel comfortable. So many families say we get to be on mission right in our own house, right at our kitchen table.
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B
That's so good. I was thinking about the Bible verse where the disciples are warned against sort of saying, hey, you know, go. Go ahead and be safe and well fed. And you just, you give them a good wish on their way versus coming and bringing food, coming and bringing clothing, giving someone a drink of water. The Gospel is very practical. Living out our Christian faith is very practical. It's not just what we say and having good doctrine, though, those are important. But that's what leads us to actually live it out and care for people.
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And people are hungry for it. That is a very good word. And they're wanting to express themselves, demonstrate their faith. And, you know, the clarion call is, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. What? You know, we aren't any better than anybody else because, you know, level playing field. I'm no different than you. The only difference is I had a mom who always came over on Saturday night, babysat for me. So I got a mental health break. And many people just don't have that. I'm most surprised by the levels of social isolation. People are literally alone, and to invite them into community is a pretty awesome thing. Yeah, that's amazing.
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B
Some people. I'm just trying to think of the people who more advocate on the government side of the foster care system might say, well, we shouldn't allow, you know, another group to do this because how are you going to have the government oversight and how do we know that your families are being vetted and different things like that. Not that I would. I'm not advocating thinking that the government's doing that great of a job, but you put your volunteers through specific training and there's social workers and different things.
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A
So it mirrors very much the foster care process of becoming a foster parent. Background checks, home assessment, interviews, references and training. And I think that we would never, ever want to say that foster care is not needed. We would never say that we don't need Christian foster parents. It's a true need that will always continue. And at the same time that there's just this niche that's been missing. And what we know now is that child welfare is way overloaded, way overburdened with the really, really hard stuff. Kids getting baseball bats over their head or sexual abuse. And we're grateful that there's a place and a process in our communities that can protect children like that legally. We're just saying because of that high rise in demand for that kind of need, we feel like we can fill the gap of those who fall through the cracks. Many times. It's not that they're, you know, again, parents don't wake up in the morning and say, I'm gonna hurt my child. That's not how it works. Drugs addiction has changed things a lot. There's a lot of stuff going on in terms of really hard things for children and families. But if we can be that extra layer of help in the stream, we talk about getting babies out of the river. We want to be that upstream picture saying, ask for help early. Connect with relational people who want to love you and want to care for you and your children so that you don't ever have to be alone. Because that is the big trigger. I don't dare tell anybody that I'm struggling, because if I do, the only thing I know is that someone's going to call child protection and then that someone's going to come take my baby, and it's going to be horrible for me and my baby. So I'd rather struggle alone. And that's just so unfortunate. But you and I probably know it's hard to tell anybody I need to help. And most of us just, you know, even in the Christian community or not, I've got great neighbors. But, you know, a couple weeks ago I needed to use someone's car. And I'm like, I can't ask my neighbor across the street. I know she loves me, but I can't ask her. So think of that, even to the point of being that desperate that you're going to ask a stranger for help. And so that's where we want to provide safe, trained volunteers who have professional oversight. So our funding comes in. Our funding need comes because we need that professional oversight of trained social workers, urban ministry kind of people who get the bigger issue of trauma and the more issues of urban crises. Although we find this everywhere, it's not just in the urban areas. We find this even outskirts, Minnesota and Iowa as well.
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B
Sure. Well, and for just a final thought, what's the best way for people to find your work and to get involved, especially if we don't live within maybe those three states? Do you have plans to expand across the United States? You have to get all the money in the world, I'm sure.
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We are getting calls from all over the country of churches saying, please come help us love our neighbor. It's really that simple. And mobilizing the church, we like to say it's ministry mobilization with professional oversight, and we want that model to be spread throughout the communities of anyone who wants to do different things in their neighborhood that could help. And we were found@tfgood.org, tfgood, as in togetherforgood.org and all of the information is there. We'd love for help with more volunteers. There's always a need. Right now, summertime has been hard. Families are going on family vacations, so they're not as available. And we're looking for more solid Christian churches that want to partner with us. But also, we're getting calls from across the country, so feel free to reach out on our website. You can actually say, I want to bring this to my community. And we can talk later about that.
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B
That's awesome, Meridell. Thank you so much. This is the kind of organization I only heard about because I think someone sent us your information to have you on the show.
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A
Okay.
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And when you hear that Christians are doing this kind of work, it's so amazing, and I'm so thankful for the work you're doing.
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Amen. One child at a time. For the good of the child, the good of the family, and ultimately the good of our communities. Amen.
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Thanks so much for being with us.
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A
That was fun. Thanks.