Rick Bursey’s phone lit up with an alert. When he opened the text, he recognized a familiar, older face. It was a picture of a man wearing a nursing uniform, with a short message beneath: I wanted to thank you – you’re the only one who believed in my future.
In 2017, Rick Bursey and Lisa Bursey welcomed three children to a Back2Back partner home. They arrived as a voluntary case, and the oldest, Josue* came angry, troubled, and disruptive.
“It was a complicated situation, but we prioritized showing up for the kids, loving them well through the hard moments, and attempting to show them what true care looked and felt like,” shared Lisa. Over the course of the siblings’ time at the home, their biological mom didn’t hide her desire to have her kids back and when they visited their grandma one weekend, they were taken to their mom’s and never returned to Rick and Lisa.
“Since they came on a voluntary basis, there was nothing that could be done when they didn’t return,” shared Rick. “We really went through a time of mourning; we felt the loss of them very deeply, but we prayed, we checked in when we could, and then everything went very…
