"The Day I Met You"

When people think of adoption, they typically think of the child. Albeit this is an appropriate focus, today my heart was on someone else-our birth mother. Today is our anniversary of meeting her. We knew that she was a very private person based on the information that we had received, so that information intensified our already anxious hearts!

Our birth mother’s case worker introduced the birth mother to us and facilitated the initial meeting. Sensitive information such as the birthing process, newborn care, and names were discussed. Praise God that Christian Homes holds such a meeting. Can you imagine discussing these sensitive issues without having a case worker who is trained in working with birth families? I can’t even. This meeting raised my level of respect for Christian Homes as we attempted to convey our thoughts to and with a woman that could have a lasting impact on our family for eternity.

Our birth mother couldn’t have been more humble. During the meeting, her only focus was to ensure that we and the baby {Benjamin} would get everything we needed. My faith had never been challenged like this before. You hear from spiritual leaders and mentors about getting out of your comfort zone and developing relationships with those who aren’t like us. All of those spiritual thoughts were brought about, full circle, in that meeting. I had no idea what to say or how to react. I just prayed over and over again “please don’t let me say something wrong.” God delivered all three of us through and out of that meeting with laughter, tears, and positive messages.

I had been told by others that God was faithful and present in our adoption journey, but I didn’t realize how until we met our birth mother. This meeting is what helped me see the picture that God had started to paint for Benjamin. Our adoption was one of the most beautiful and painful experiences in my life. Our birth mother didn’t “give Benjamin up.” She CHOSE us as the ones to fulfill her dreams for Benjamin. That honor will never be lost on me.  I will forever treasure those moments where she and I laughed, cried, and talked together about how our lives will be forever connected. I reassured her that Benjamin will always know what sort of loving mother she was. I am thankful that I can tell Benjamin about how his mother taught us to swaddle him…how she loved the wubanub that we had picked out for him…how she smiled at his “going home outfit.” Not every adoptive family gets those experiences, and I believe we did because God led us to a humble, selfless birth mother whose focus was loving her child.

I think about her often. I pray that God has put people in her life to encourage her and guide her. I pray that she always knows that the darkness has not overcome the light (John 1:5-one of my favorite verses)! As we approach Benjamin’s birthday, I wish she could see him. I hope that she would be proud. I know we are.

The experience we had with Christian Homes and our birth mother is what has led us to adopt…again! The first year has been more of a struggle than I expected (more on that in a different blog).  That being said, we still believe that adoption is how we should answer God’s command to make disciples, support the broken hearted, and encourage the spiritually weary. We can’t rush through the documentation and procedures like we did at the beginning of Benjamin’s adoption process. After Joel and I discussed how this next adoption could affect our marriage, family, and jobs, we decided that going slower is better. That way, we can hopefully grow our family with a healthy rhythm, allowing us to still do what we are doing now. We can’t wait to see what God has in store for our family! 

Let Go and Let God Work

Let Go and Let God Work

June 16^th was the day we got “the call”-the call that all adoptive families want. We finally heard “a birth mom has picked you.” The next day, we were given information about our birth mother and the situation surrounding the pregnancy. We were asked to come meet her in Texas the next week. 

Nothing can really prepare you for those meetings. All you can do is pray-and ask others to pray with you. Adoption is such an emotionally dynamic experience. You never know what to expect.

Joel and I met our birth mom at our agency’s office in Texas. We were all really nervous and on edge, but God worked on all of our hearts. Our birth mom was constantly focused on our needs and Benjamin’s needs. We were blown away by her compassion and her willingness to include us in all of the “firsts” with Benjamin in the hospital. Tears started to flow, and words of encouragement were spoken by everyone. After we met her, we knew that this was what God wanted. He provided the peace that we needed to move forward.

Our birth mother was having some pre-labor signs, so we made our second trip to TX two weeks later. She was given fluids and sent back home, so we came back! It gave us more time to get our affairs in order. We received another call July 10^th, telling us she had been admitted. The medical personnel confirmed that they would deliver the baby. We drove through the night to get to the hospital. Benjamin was born at 2:24 a.m. on July 11^th. We arrived at the hospital at 5:30 a.m. We couldn’t see Benjamin or our birth mother yet, so we rested until we were asked to come to her room. The moment in which we met Benjamin was so precious. Our birth mother offered him to us, and all of us spent time talking about him…..how long his feet and fingers were, how little his body was, and how he was so beautiful!

The next two days, we co-parented with our birth mother. All three of us shared time loving and caring for Benjamin. She was such a blessing from God; she wanted us to be with him throughout the 48 hour waiting period. That being said, those two days were some of the most beautiful, nerve-wracking, and anxiety-driven days of my life. Nothing was in our hands; everything was in God’s hands. We had a good relationship with our birth mother, but she was still his mother. It was her decision as to who would be his parents. We had to let go of what we wanted and let God work in the lives of all of us.

The day of the signing came. After navigating through some paperwork and working with the hospital, it was final-we could leave the hospital with our son! Joel, Benjamin, our caseworker, and I all gathered in our birth mother’s room to say good-bye. After praying prayers of blessings over each other, we left. There were so many emotions: excitement, anxiety of the unknown, pain, grief/loss over leaving our birth mother behind, and fear-we had a baby!!!

God didn’t have to do this, but He revealed His plan and His timing since the day we received the first phone call. When you are involved with trying to start a family for over 2 ½ years, it is hard to keep the faith. We were surrounded by family, friends, and our Church community who walked with us the whole way. When we were able to come home with Benjamin, it was a celebration for everyone-not just us. This experience has forever changed us. Adoption is not just about growing your family; it’s about engaging others with love, patience, and self-control that only God can provide. We are forever thankful of the lessons that God taught us, and we can’t wait to see what God has in store for Benjamin as we move forward.

We have to follow up with some post-placement commitments. Hopefully we can finalize our adoption in court before the end of the year. Until then, we are diving into parenthood and taking care of a newborn!

Thank you for all of your support!

We Will Be Faithful In the Waiting

“We Will Be Faithful in the Waiting”

Numb.....Angry....Hopeful.....Longing.....Excited.....Thankful....

Sad....Expectant....Distant from God.....Floating....Prayerful to God....Crying.....Isolated....STUCK

This May, we would have been in the adoption process for two and a half years and “waiting” for two of those years. So many people have asked us this question “So have you heard anything?” I love and hate this question. I love it because it lets me know that people really do care about what is going on in our lives. I hate it because I have to continue to tell people “We are stuck.”

Mother’s Day, albeit a great day to recognize moms and all of the other women who have taken us in as their children, is a day that reminds me how I haven’t started my family yet. Originally, when we started the adoption process, I embodied the whole “I am a mom that is planning to have a child.” Now, the way I (and Joel) feel about our adoption process is like this list….and several of these emotions could occur in the same day.

People want to help us, so they try to tell us things that will make us feel better. Don’t get me wrong-I am not angry about this….there are plenty of times in which I have said the wrong thing at the wrong time, so I need grace just like the next person.

These are some of the things we have heard:

1. Don’t lose hope-just be faithful

2. It’s God’s timing.

3. Well it could take a while right?

4. Other people have waited too.

5. Just be patient-God’s going to give you that baby.

This is the problem-we know the truth. We are so keenly aware of it that it makes our reality so much more painful. We know that God is going to design our family in a way that will glorify Him. We know that we will at some point start our family. The reason why those statements are, at times, painful is because we don’t need a reminder about what God can do….we need a healthy space to confess that we are struggling with it. We need people to help us stand in that gap between the truth and the reality because standing in that gap by ourselves is a lonely place. And when we struggle with these statements, we then feel guilty because “hey if our faith and trust in God was stronger, we wouldn’t be struggling.” It makes us question our Christianity, if we are “good” Christians, or if we are just weak and should stop whining and deal with it. We understand that we aren’t the only ones hurting right now about a life situation. 

One of the reasons why we have been able to walk in this journey is because so many people are standing with us. What has meant the most to us have been statements that include the pronoun “we” and the conjunction “with.”

“We are praying with you.”

“We are hurting with you.”

“We can’t wait until you get your baby so we can love it too.”

My friend Kayci sent me a facebook message Saturday night, letting me know that she was thinking about me because of Mother’s Day. Something that she said really stuck with me. “I pray alongside you that you’ll receive a baby, but until that day we will be faithful in the waiting.”

God’s awesome right? Remaining faithful is a weekly struggle for us. What a reminder. Knowing that there are those who will stand alongside us, help us remain faithful, and may possibly even struggle with us is HUGE.  Several people have reached out to me and Joel regarding Mother’s Day, checking in on us, posting on Facebook (gotta love my sister)! We are thankful for the love and support of our family and friends. EVERY positive, supportive, prayerful, “feel free to vent because I love you anyways and won’t judge you” moment is appreciated and welcomed.

For people who are going through this journey alone, I have no idea how you do it. That’s God-sized love for people to step into our mess, help us walk through it, and love our baby with us (possibly even before God has created it). What helps us get through this journey is people sharing this God-sized love with us.

One of the things I have heard from people is “I want to help those who are adopting and fostering but I don’t know what to do.” Here’s the “short and skinny” advice-Engage in their lives, get to know them, and walk life with them. Stand in the gap with them so when people like us are struggling you are there to help them walk down the path. Help them keep the fight, run the race, and be faithful even in the face of emptiness. 

Last Mother’s Day was really hard for us. We had just had a failed opportunity for a match. I couldn’t really look at Facebook for 3 days because I knew everyone would be posting pictures of their families….when I didn’t have one. I had a hard time talking about it because I couldn’t emotionally convey how hurt I was about a child that I had already grown to love. I knew that I would never be able to share that love with that little girl because she had awesome parents who will do that for her.

This Mother’s Day was sad, but it was easier. It’s because God has given us strength through the love of others. It’s because the longer we are in this journey, the more support we get. Our strength grows as our circle of support widens.

Until the day we start our family, “we will be faithful in the waiting.” 

National Orphan Sunday

National Orphan Sunday

It's more than a day. It's a call for compassionate living

I haven’t blogged in a LONG time. Several things have happened to us in the past few months, but that blog is for another day. Today, I wanted to share with everyone what National Orphan Sunday has done for our family.

For those who don’t know, National Orphan Sunday is a day in which churches around the world come together to recognize the need for Christians to be involved with foster care, adoption, and orphan care. A few years ago, we had heard of National Orphan Sunday but never really connected with its importance. Two years ago, on National Orphan Sunday, Joel approached me saying that he wanted to adopt. We had always talked about adoption, but he had been moved by what had been said in our worship service and wanted to act. He said that he believed children needed families, and we could provide that to a child. I was hesitant at first, but God revealed the importance of adoption in our life. By the end of the month, we were informing our families of how we planned to start our family-through adoption.

When we first decided to adopt, I felt like I was a “good” person. We went to church, we were involved with different ministries, we tried to be kind to people, etc. However, I recognized that part of me that was judgmental, critical, and angry. We all have that in us…I just think it is more prevalent in some people than others. The first thing I prayed to God when we decided to adopt was “Please help me not to judge our birth mother.” My initial reaction toward people in hard places was to criticize how they got there and talk about all the things “they should have done to be better people and make better decisions.” I knew that this mindset would be detrimental to our relationship with our birth mother (and our child) so I prayed….and prayed….and prayed….

Slowly, I started to feel a shift in my emotions toward people. When I started to reflect on the adoption process and what it meant for our lives, I started to realize that loving people is the only way to make this work. Loving people for who and where they are in life, not for what “they bring to the table.” Josh, our preacher at church, has always emphasized that everyone is made in the image of God and that everyone has access to His love and grace. If we are supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus, then doesn’t God call me to love people like He does? From all walks of life, race, income level, and religion?

This sort of love is not just about adoption. I read a book called “Orphan Justice” by Johnny Carr. It is a good read but an intense one. In his introduction, he sets the tone for his book by saying this: “We can’t say that we love orphans while failing to address the social ills that directly affect their lives.” In his book, Johnny encourages Christians to step beyond the adoption and address the social injustices that can create and/or affect orphaned and fatherless children: poverty, racial tension, slavery and/or prostitution, hunger.

Fighting social injustice is hard. There are so many dynamics that affect society it is hard to only address one at a time-these injustices interact and plague our society in such a way that it is impossible to do it alone. And I think that’s the point. If we have a “God-like” love to others, where we love people for who they are and not what they do, what would our society look like? If we stopped putting these emotional barriers in our lives…if we stopped giving excuses for why we can’t be involved in people’s lives (especially those who aren’t like us)….if we opened ourselves up to God JUST ENOUGH for us to be able to hear Him into our hearts and say “yes,” what would that look like?

This is what our “yes” has looked like. I think that God was waiting for us to open our hearts just enough to let him in. He used National Orphan Sunday as a catalyst in our lives to not only start our family with adoption, but to answer a calling that God asks all of us to fill-love your neighbor with the kind of love only God can provide. Live a life of compassionate living.

We are all God’s children….we are all made in the image of God…..WE ARE ALL WORTH IT. My prayer is that individuals and families alike open themselves to God, hands up and hearts open, and say “Father, what does your yes look like for me and/or my family?” 

Constantly ready but ever patient....

It has been a crazy summer! Haven't blogged in a really long time. So many things have happened with us over the summer, especially taking care of our house! At the end of July, we were approved and put on the "waiting families" list for Christian Homes and Family Services. You can check out our profile at www.christianhomes.com, go to the unplanned pregnancy tab, then click on waiting families. Scroll down toward the bottom and you will see us!

So what is next? Many people have been asking me "so any baby news?" In regard to the general adoption, we will have one more fundraiser. Details will be forthcoming! After we finish up some projects around the house, we will start working on the nursery. We have the basics-a crib, mattress, couple of sheets, and 3 outfits. Those combined with our travel system and we can pick up diapers on the way to the hospital! 

Back when we were completing our paperwork, one of the main things I said to myself was "This has got to be the hardest part. The waiting will be easy......we will just keep living our lives until we have the baby." Now that we are in the "waiting" phase, I am not so sure. Right after we were posted on the Christian Homes and Family Services website, I constantly checked my phone and emails multiple times a day just to see if Christian Homes called.....JUST in case a family picked us right away. There was a sense of urgency to finish our home projects because "we had a baby coming!" 

It is an interesting comparison when they say "always be ready for a phone call but it could be a while before we call you." It's true but hard to handle. We are always supposed to be ready to drive to Texas but be patient for God's timing. Those concepts don't co-exist well! It's complicated, going through your everyday routines, engaging in work and continuing with your additional commitments while also wondering "when am I going to be a mom?" Don't get me wrong-the more we have gone through the adoption process, the more excited that I have become. I guess it comes with never really knowing when your life will change......When am I going to be a mom? When will we meet our birth mom? When will we get to introduce our baby to our family?" Adoptive moms, women who struggle with infertility.......our waiting feels more never-ending than short-lived. 

I write this to share what our waiting game looks like....hopefully I have touched on some of the feelings that some other adoptive moms felt (or are currently feeling)!! God is designing our family right now, and at some point he will bring our family together. We just don't know when that is. That brings anxiety, sadness, and longing but it also brings joy, closeness/increased trust with God, and belief in His promise to His people that He is faithful. 

So we continue our "constantly ready but ever patient" life. Because one day our question "When are we going to be parents?" will be the statement "Here is our baby!"

Legacy

Sorry that I haven’t blogged in a while…..after our yard sale (which we raised over $4,000 for our adoption!!) Joel and I dove into wrapping up the end of school. Now that we have finished school, we can spend some more time getting ready for the baby!

One of the things that has happened in our adoption journey is that one of our mentors, Tricia Lillard, passed away in May. This was devastating news as she had just returned home from a complicated procedure, and had picked up living life right where she had left off. Her death was unexpected. 

At first I was really upset (and angry). How can someone who literally lives and breathes Jesus in her life be gone? She, along with her family, have truly honored Jesus with their involvement in adoption and orphan care. They have mentored so many families in their adoption journeys and countless others through foster care. Out of all the people, why her?

Then I went to her celebration service. WOW. More funerals need to be like that. The entire celebration glorified God by discussing Tricia’s life. One of the songs has the phrase “running to Your arms” (talking about Jesus). She was a woman who truly sought Him in everything she did. Not only was it a celebration, it was a challenge to live life to the fullest through Jesus. We were all challenged to live on through her legacy-serving the fatherless, the orphans, and the needy.

You want to talk about a conversation starter! Are we truly living a life that at honors God’s command to serve these people? We know the legacy that Tricia gave to her family and to those who knew her. This is something that Joel and I have had to talk about…..what legacy do we want to leave for our family? What will it look like? How are we going to honor God’s commands with our family?

Joel and I are still figuring it out…..we will continue to shape and form our legacy for our family when we adopt and as we raise our children. I do know this-we have a great example through Tricia. We are so thankful for what she did for us and what she continues to do through her legacy. 

Feeling Alone

We are in full swing with the adoption. Several people have been asking me “How is the adoption going?” I have given answers that relate to the logistics of the adoption (i.e. paperwork, grants, etc) because that is what has consumed my life for 4 months. Very rarely have I really talked to people how the adoption is making me feel. So the title of this blog is “Feeling Alone.”

When we agreed to adopt, I knew that my experience would be different. However, I didn’t expect to feel this alone. I never realized how different of an experience adopting would be. It is very hard to explain to people how stressful it is to spend 4 months on paperwork, completely ripping apart our financial and spiritual history. As far as experiences go, I am creating an adoption photo album while other women are taking pregnancy photos, undergoing glucose tests, feeling their babies kick, etc. The experiences are vastly different, and I didn’t realize how much it would affect me.

Please hear me……I am not complaining. I am so excited for my friends and others who are having children. I can’t wait to see all of these new ones running around. I am also thankful that Joel and I are adopting (and for the support we have received). Even with all of the support, I have still struggled with being able to relate to others. So, I stopped talking about the adoption. I dove into the paperwork and logistical aspects of the adoption, isolating myself from people so I wouldn’t have to deal with feeling alone. I thought that if I controlled what I did and what I said, it wouldn’t be so bad.

I was wrong (as usual). A few years ago, I experienced some similar emotions of isolation (for different reasons) and God helped me realize that I need to be around people. I truly believe that God designed us to be relational and asks us to engage in community. By being isolated, I can’t receive strength from other people.

So I started talking about how I felt…I first told Joel, then my mom. I told my friend Meghan (love me some Meghan!!) and she was so supportive. I started to feel better. Then Jim (our youth minister at church) invited us to be prayed over at a prayer event that was geared towards those involved with foster care and adoption. I felt a little uncomfortable but said yes.

The elders and ministers at our church were great. There were others being prayed over and those who were there for support. It was such a big group of people that it made me come to terms with my isolation. I cried on the way home, telling Joel that I finally understood the difference between feeling “different” and feeling “alone.” The prayer time is just what I needed, and I didn’t even know it.

It is not wrong to feel “different.” Obviously I can’t relate to women who are dealing with nausea, stretch marks, and discomfort. Other people may not be able to relate to me with the paperwork, fundraising, or working with a birth family. BUT…….I am not alone. We have received so much support for the adoption, and I need to rest in the truth that in Christ we are never alone. He has put so many people in our lives to support us, and I need to embrace the support while recognizing that our family journey may look different. Over the past couple of days I have felt such peace about this, and I am so thankful!

My goal with this post was to educate those about one of the ways in which adoption can be hard. I also want to acknowledge that all families may not feel this way……this is our journey and what it looks like. But hopefully I shared some emotions that people can identify with.

We continue to ask for your prayers…..we definitely need it! We have gone through our home study process and been approved. All we need is to accomplish our fundraising goal, finish our adoption photo album, and write our birth mother letter AND WE CAN BE SHOWN TO FAMILIES!!! So much to do but it will go by so fast!!! Thank you everyone!!