2014

As 2014 comes to an end I can’t help but reflect back on the end of 2013 and all that we hoped 2014 would hold.

2014 was a wild and crazy one for us. With many ups and downs and round and rounds I am somewhat ready to see it behind us. However, 2014 was a formative year. It was a year that forced Aubrey and I to draw closer to each other and closer to our Father and caused us to lay our hopes, dreams, and expectations at God’s feet in new and at times painful ways and reminded us, once again, that his plan and his timing is perfect. Years like that are usually hard but important ones in your life.

However, this year along with all the pain and confusion brought so much joy. Though Aubrey and I had hoped 2014 would be the year our kids came home we instead were given another year with just the two of us. As painful as it was at times it also brought with it so many opportunities. So, instead of anguishing in broken expectations we were able to celebrate and relish our time together.

I went to Europe. For TWO weeks. It was an amazing trip that I will never forget.

I

We were BOTH in Grad school this year.

We took time off to help my parents move across the country.

We got a puppy!

We were able to take last minute trips when family passed away.

We went to the movies… a LOT.

I made the trip to Louisiana for Keeley’s wedding!

I spent a week with Tay and was there to celebrate Molly June’s 1^st birthday.

We made our annual Thanksgiving trip and spent 4 hours in the middle of nowhere Minnesota with car troubles.

All these things and so much more were reminders that God is still in control and that his plan is perfect. So many of the trips we were able to go on were unexpected and last minute trips that would have looked so different with kids in tow. (Not that we won’t gladly step into the chaos of traveling with kids when the time comes!)

This year taught us so much about patience, prayer, and being able to rest where you are and we hope to carry those lessons with us into 2015 and beyond. Yes, we have hopes and dreams about this year, but we are holding loosely to those and starting the year by laying them at God’s feet. We are praying that this year would be what he desires it to be and until our kids do come home we are going to enjoy our time with each other.

Holidays

This Holiday season has been a lot harder than I ever would have imagined. It is filled with time with loved ones, tradition, and many reminders that our kids are still not home.

Our Christmas cards last year announced our exciting news to family and friends and now a year has gone by. A hard, long, exhausting, and confusing year.

Last Halloween as we carved pumpkins with friends I thought, maybe next year we will carve pumpkins with our kids.

Last Fall when we took our family pictures to use for our adoption announcements I thought, maybe the next set of family pictures will have a few little ones added.

Last year during our annual Thanksgiving road trip I thought, this trip might be crazy next year with kids in tow.

Last Christmas I woke up Christmas morning overwhelmed with a deep hope and prayer that next year our kids would be home for Christmas.

As these fun annual activities rolled around this year my heart was filled with sadness with the realization that a year had gone by since those hopes and wishes and a feeling that we weren't any closer to having are kids home with us.

This season has provided yet another opportunity for us to trust God. Trust that his plan is perfect, that he has not forgotten us or our children, that he is holding us all in his hands until we can hold each other. This year, as last year, my prayer is that this is the last holiday season without our kids but I am resting in the fact that God has it under control.

This is our prayer this holiday season:

Father, wherever our kids are this holiday season we pray they would feel safe and loved. Thank you for holding them while we can’t. Thank you for your perfect plan that will bring us together in your perfect time. Be with all of us this holiday season as we are apart and we pray that this would be the last holiday season we have to spend apart. Be with all those hurting this holiday season, help us to remember that amongst the joy that this season brings for many it bring pain. Help us to be your light and love to everyone we encounter as we celebrate the coming of your son. 

Breaking the Silence

I knew adoption would be hard. The waiting, the anticipation, the unknown, the ups and downs and back and forth, not to mention the reality of then raising those kids you journeyed so long and hard to get to. Every adoption journey is different. Every journey to your kids, whether through adoption or birth, is different. Each story has its own twists and turns.

We are currently living in one of those twists and turns on the road. Maybe it is one we should have or could have seen coming, but we didn’t and here we are.

Back when we decided to start the adoption process we had a version of our life in mind. We were going to start the process while Aubrey finished grad school and then Aubrey would work the business. It sounded like a good plan and it probably would have been, but it would not have been the right plan.

A few months into the adoption process due to a series of unforeseen events we sat back and re-evaluated. These events allowed, or more like, forced us to realize that we had come up with this awesome plan on our own instead of listening to what our Father’s plan for our life was. Once we realized that we started to listen, pray, and discern what to do next.

We were reminded that Aubrey started seminary because of a call into ministry and it was time to get back on track with that. Because he was so close to finishing seminary and the rest of the classes could be finished online we started looking for full time ministry jobs. When we made the decision to look for jobs in ministry we knew that meant, very likely, a scenario in which we would not be living in Eau Claire. Because all of the jobs that we looked at were out of state we made the decision to put the adoption process on hold. It didn’t make sense for their time or ours to continue if we moved and had to start over completely. It broke my heart to put it on pause and has continued to break my heart every day since.

So, that is where we are right now. On pause. With everything. We are still actively looking for the full time ministry job we believe God has for Aubrey, wherever that may be. We still have our adoption process on hold. We are still walking forward in faith that God’s plan is perfect.

Well…most days. Honestly there are some days where it seems easy to rest in his promises and others where I feel confused and sad. Days where I know it doesn’t feel like it but that we are working towards our kids by finding where we are supposed to be and others where I feel overwhelmed by the feeling that we aren’t making any progress.  

Adoption is hard. Life is hard. Following God’s plan is hard. But not following God’s plan is harder. So we take one step at a time.

I apologize for the absence of updates. Honestly it took me a long time to finally feel like I could write this post and then a little while longer before I could post it. Thank you for your continued prayers. Please continue to pray for our kids, wherever they are and however they will come to us, that God would lead us to them in his perfect timing. Pray that we would find the job God has for Aubrey. Pray for patience on this twist and turn in our journey. And as usual… stay tuned for updates. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Five Years

Today marks our FIVE year anniversary! I can't believe its been that long since we walked the aisle together. Every moment has been an adventure with my best friend and I am so grateful to get to walk through this crazy life with him. 

I promise we will break our blogging silence soon with LOTS of updates - sorry to be mysterous and ambiguous but once we have news worth sharing you will hear it. Lots of things have been and still are up in the air. I am ready to have something concrete to share but until then silence will remain. 

But for today we celebrate. We celebrate the ups and downs, the love, joy, laughter, and even arguments that got us here. What an adventure these past five years have been. 

Three apartments. 

One cross-country move

One business started. 

One house. 

Many friendships built

Many variations of hair styles!

One journey to our kids started...

All this and more equals five crazy, wonderful, blessed years of our life.

Here's to many many more to come!

ReMoved

Aubrey and I have our first home-study meeting scheduled for next Monday! Woo! But since we are in a slow phase of the process and since the home-study meetings are probably going to take a while for us to complete with life being so busy, I thought I would share an amazing short film I recently saw.

ReMoved was originally created for the 168 Film Festival and is a portrayal of a child's journey through the foster care system. It wrecked me the first (and every other) time I watched it, but I think its an important video as we try to understand what these kids have been through.

I hope you'll take the time to watch it! You can find it HERE

Thanks for your continued prayers for us and our kids through this journey!

Pictures

Since we are in a "boring" phase of the process right now (filling out paperwork) there isn't a lot to update y'all on...so here's some pictures to tide you over!

I have gotten a lot of compliments on and requests to see more of the pictures from our announcements, thanks! All credit goes to Molly Bailey who has taken our pictures every year for the past three or four years! We love working with her not only because she is a friend and super talented, but because of her heart for adoption. Thank you Molly for the beautiful pictures!

I guess we wont hog them all to ourselves anymore.. here is some more of her beautiful work from our adoption shoot! (I had a little bit too much fun with all the props!)

We can't wait to take our next set of family pictures, hopefully with a couple little ones running around too!

Our House

After the Roller Coaster of Pre-Approval we were so excited to start looking for houses.

But, the very next day after we got pre-approved Aubrey went on a canoe trip for the weekend. So, I researched houses with my dad. We looked online and made a list that eventually ended with 8-10 homes that we wanted to go look at. Aubrey got home Monday from his trip so I showed him the fruits of all our hard house-searching work! That night we were sitting around talking and he called me over to look at a house that was listed on Craiglist, for sale by owner. I hadn't even thought to look for any for sale by owners! We immediately loved it. They were having an open house the next weekend, but that wouldn't work for us to go because I would be gone that weekend. We called that night to see if we could get a private showing and scheduled one for the next day during lunch.

So the next day we all (Aubrey and I, along with my parents) went to look at the house. We loved it. Scott and his sister, the sellers, had bought it to flip it, and they did an amazing job. After the tour Scott informed us that there had been an offer placed on it that morning, so if we wanted to act on it we would need to put an offer on it that day.

We really loved the house, but it was the only house we had looked at and we would need to place an offer on it in a few hours if we wanted it. We decided to each go back to work and pray and think about it and call each other that afternoon to see where we were.

Three hours later Aubrey and I talked. We were still both really in love with the house so we decided to put an offer on it. When Aubrey called Scott, he let us know that there was someone scheduled already to look at the house the next day and that he would let us know if they accepted our offer after that.

That night and the following day was torture! Aubrey called me while I was driving home from work. He had heard from Scott... and that they had accepted our offer!

So, 5 days after we were pre-approved we had an accepted offer on a house! Apparently we don't mess around with this house business!

We closed on November 15th and still can't believe this is our home! We are so excited that we have this amazing house to make a home with our kids!

Here are some pictures!

Us thinking, "Oh my gosh, we just bought this house!"

Kitchen -view from the front door

Dining room - view to the right of the front door

Living Room - view to the left of the front door

Den - view from the living room

(Yes, that's a ceiling fan on the floor. As you may have noticed in the kitchen there is no light fixture... the fan will {eventually} go there....)

Living room - view from the den

Upstairs Landing - view from half way up the stairs

Guest Bedroom - first room on the left upstairs (Ready to receive guests! Come on over!)

Bathroom - Second door on the left upstairs - view from the landing

Bathroom - View standing in tub area

Bathroom Tub area - view standing in front of sink

Master Bedroom - door to the right of the bathroom - view from landing

And finally - two extra bedrooms just waiting to be filled! These are to the right when you come up the stairs. No you cannot see inside of them because they are currently storage rooms for crap we haven't unpacked yet... guess we better get started on that though! 

Yes, we do have a basement, and no you can't see it. It's seriously a disaster zone. It's unfinished for the most part, but there were no shelves or any storage options in there so everything is laying all over the floor. It's frightening. However, as part of the basement there is a second bathroom/laundry room. 

Can I just take a moment here to say that this is the first time in our marriage that we have our own laundry system. Its like a miracle. My life is changed forever. I <3 my washer and dryer. That is all.

I'll show pictures of the basement later... after we put some major hours in down there!

The Pre-Approval Roller Coaster

I took some pictures of our house last week when everything was clean for our meeting, so my post after this one will be house pictures! But, before I share those I wanted to share how we got here. It was quite the journey to get to our house and we always viewed that as part of our journey to our kids. So here you go!

I wrote this post last October:

One of the goals that Aubrey and I had before we started the adoption process was to be in a house. We have loved our apartments, they were great for the two of us, but when we decided we wanted to start the process for kids we both looked around and realized another human being, no matter how small could not fit in our apartment, we have just out grown it!

So, our perfect plan was to get in a house over the winter and start paperwork in the spring. Sounds like a perfect timeline right? If only it was so easy...

We did know the process would be more complicated because we own our own business. It adds some nice loops and twist to the roller coaster that is the pre-approval process. And while I love twists and loops on real roller coasters, these twists and loops made me sick to my stomach.

Our first problem, in retrospect was that we were trying so hard to make our plan work that we were trying to do it all on our own. With no thought or prayer to God about his plan. We both felt so sure about the timeline leading up to kids that we assumed God must think our plan was looking pretty good.

The first bank we sat down with said, No. And not a, "well its a no, but lets look at what we can do to make it work." More like a, "No, and I don't know of anything I can do to help you and your situation." It was crushing. We both were set back. So, it looked like our timeline was going to be pushed back. We had some things we could do to put us in a more appealing spot for banks, but the new timeline would have us starting the house process next April, which meant kids would be pushed back to an unknown time. I was scared and frustrated.

So, I did something we should have done before sitting down with the first bank, prayed. I asked God what his plan was. I told him that we both felt like he had told us Spring was the time to venture into the kid process, and now we felt confused. But I eventually found rest in Him (of course, why am I always so surprised..?) We found ourselves praying for His will and His plan for our family. We trusted that he would guide us on the right path if we stayed close to his voice.

So, that was our prayer when we decided to sit down with the next bank. While waiting in the lobby I prayed that His plan be made clear to us. If it was a no, that we would have peace about it. Going into the meeting I did have the peace that God was in control.

The meeting felt surreal. From the get-go the guy we talked to (Jeff Sproul at RCU GO SEE HIM! He's great) was positive and excited about helping us get into our first home. Everything that had been an issue with other banks was apparently not a problem at all in his eyes. We looked at each other halfway through the meeting like, "is this really happening?"

The next morning we got an email from him with our Pre-Approval letter! I stopped everything I was doing and prayed. Thank you God for YOUR perfect plan.

It was such a reminder for us that we can do nothing without him, and I'm glad, what an amazing peace that we are afforded knowing that He is the one in control. Why do I waste so much time worrying when I should rest in his promise to take care of me?

So, with our Pre-Approval letter in hand we began house hunting!

First Meeting

We just met our social worker! As I said in the last post, this meeting was just to determine if we were a good fit for the program. She asked us a bunch of questions and let us ask some of our own. She is very nice and we are excited to get to work with her on this journey!

From here she will go to her supervisor and recommend that we be accepted into the program (which she felt would be no problem) and then if we are they will mail us some more paperwork to start on. This paperwork will include extensive background checks and personal references among many other things. After the paperwork is turned in we will start the home study meetings.

We are excited to get this ball rolling and see where it takes us!

Thank you so much for all your kind words of encouragement and prayers, we could feel them during the meeting!

Well that was fast

I just got a call from the person who will be our social worker. She has received our paperwork that we mailed off and we set up a meeting with her for this Friday

Wait... WHAT? Can you break that down for me again? Slower this time??

Sure!

Yes, the paperwork we mailed off on January 24th, the stuff we mentioned in this post, has made its happy way back to Eau Claire and has landed on the desk of our social worker. (We seriously have a social worker now??? I still feel like we should probably say that she might be our social worker...but I guess not...?)

Yes, this happened a LOT faster than we thought it would. Based on conversations with other's timeline of this part of the process, we estimated it would take anywhere from 1 to 3 months. It has been three weeks. Yes, this freaks us out a little, but it is also exciting and we are going to roll with it.

Yes, we are meeting THIS Friday. Two days from this moment we will be sitting on our couch with our social worker. Better get cleaning when I get home tonight!

Apparently, as our social worker told me, in this meeting she will go over what the program looks like and we will go over the paperwork we mailed in. Then she will go back and decide if we are a good fit for the program. If they decide we are then we will get an application to fill out, then the home study process will begin.

So, here we go! (I know I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it again a million more times as the process begins to feel more and more real!)

Please pray for us as we meet our social worker on Friday. Pray for timing throughout the process. Continue to pray for our kids and pray that we'll listen closely to the spirit's guidance to stay on the path that will lead us to them.

It is well

When peace like a river, attendeth my soul.
When sorrows like sea billows roll. 
Whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul. 

My anthem today, this week, this month, this lifetime..

Some days peace does flow like a river and my soul is soothed. Some days sorrows roll in like sea billows. And I focus on the fact that He is the one in control and that in the end it is well with my soul.

I pray that our kid(s) wherever they are, whatever they are going through might have that sense too. Even if they don't know what to call it or who it is providing it, I pray that at their core they would hold onto a hope that passes all understanding.

To Our Family

You might be thinking we are crazy, and that's ok. Some days we think we are crazy too! We hope to be able to answer the questions and concerns you may have. But, please know this is what God has called us to do, and we are stepping forward in obedience. Yes, even though we know it wont be easy, and even though at times we are scared, nervous, excited, and worried all at once, we are never doubtful. We are resting in God's good and perfect plan.

Want to know what this means for you? Well, it means a lot. It means that you are on this journey with us through thick and thin. Our friends get to choose how involved they are, but to an extent you are already involved. We are blessed to have families that are there for us, no matter what. We will rely on this and because of this will ask that you walk with us down this unknown path. We ask that you pray with us, mourn with us, weep with us, celebrate with us and welcome our kids with us.

Want to know how to get involved and stay informed? Check out our post to our friends, because all that and more applies to you! If you are a reader, we would love for you to read Adoption is a Family Affair: What Relatives and Friends must know by Patricia Irwin Johnston. Also check out the resources page for many more!

Most of all we want you to know that this is your story too. These are your nieces/nephews, grand-kids, and cousins. This is the story of how they joined our family. We are so excited and blessed that YOU are part of the family they get to join!

To Our Friends

First of all we just want all of our friends to know how blessed we are to have you in our lives. We have been overwhelmed with the amount of joy and excitement our adoption announcement generated. We have lived lots of places and have been fortunate to leave each of them with lasting friendships. So, to you, wherever you may live, thanks for being part of our story!

We want you to be as involved as you can be! So, what can you do?

Read the blog! We are doing this blog because our friends, and family, are scattered across the country. We will update this as quickly as possible, and at times things could be happening so fast that we just can call/text everyone, so check here! Sign up to get updates!

Pray with us and for us! Check out our prayer for our kids post and pray with us. We would love to know what you are praying for us and our kids, leave comments or email, we would love to hear your prayers.

Be there! Whether you live 2000 miles away or 2, be there for us. This process will be a roller coaster and we will need all the support we can get. Phone calls and texts of encouragement will be greatly appreciated!

Ask questions! We know you probably have questions, so do we. We would love to hear yours, who knows maybe it will jog one of our own to mind! We want you to be as informed as you want to be and we are figuring all this out as we go along. Check out the resources page for lots to look at.

We hope you will join us on this crazy ride! 

Welcome...No. 2

Now that we have officially sent off our paperwork and have therefore officially begun the process we would like to welcome the rest of the world to our little blog!

Hello world of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! If you are just joining us, welcome! We have some posts that are backlogged that we would love for you to check out to get updated about how we got here.

Also, we'd love for you to check out the About Us and Adoption Resources pages for more info.

So, for all our new visitors, here's the quick run-down.

WHAT: We have chosen to start our family through adoption!

HOW: We are adopting through Foster Care!

WHEN: Paperwork is mailed off, so who knows! 

WHY:  Check out our past posts for lots of information!

We are glad you stopped by and are so excited to journey with you during this new chapter in our lives!

It's Official!

Y'all, today we stuck an envelope in the mail that will change everything. Or at least will start a process that will change everything.

In December we attended an informational meeting for adopting through foster care that is required to attend before you start the process. We didn't know it, but we would leave that meeting with the paperwork we would need to fill out and mail in to officially start the process.

So we took our time, got through the holidays, started Grad school, and finally got it filled out.

So then we sort of looked at each other and thought, "Well, its filled out, so I guess now we mail it in..."

Sticking an envelope in the mail never felt so, exciting, nerve-racking, or "Oh my goodness, now its out of our hands and into theirs" before.

So the little envelope that will change our lives is off to Madison, where they will look it over and decide if we are a good fit for the program, if they deem that we are it will make a trip back to Eau Claire to the local office here where they will look it over and again decide if we are a good fit for the program, and if they also deem we are we'll get a call! Whew! This process (I've heard) can take anywhere between 1-3 months, so begins the waiting!

Praying for our kids

After the Ton. of. Bricks. hit me. And I realized that all I could do for our kid(s) is pray I wrote this prayer. This is the prayer we pray for our kids everyday. This prayer is for all of our kids that will come to us through adoption. Trying to trust Him and take one step at a time!

Will you join us in praying for our kids?

Father I pray for their physical, emotional, and spiritual health. I pray you would give them courage to face the challenges of each day. Spirit, give them a calm spirit to hear your voice and a willingness to obey. Jesus may their spirit be generous towards others as yours is. Father, give them a clear mind to learn and recall. Provide them with wise teachers, counselors, mentors, and friends. Father I pray they would find a unshakeable identity and trust in you. Jesus, I pray that they would know and become like you.

Father as they go through their day I pray that you would protect them, protect them physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Father when they feel unseen, let them know that you see them. Protect them from whatever circumstances they will go through that will result in them being in the foster or adoption system. Father keep them healthy and protect them from illnesses around them. Father, I pray you would put people in their life who would look out for them, others that would see them, and notice their hearts. I pray these people would have the courage to speak up for them and speak into them. May these people around them be your light into their darkness.

I pray for their daily needs. Provide food when they are hungry, clothes to wear, shelter to live in, and beds to sleep in. Father may they find rest each night from whatever the day held. If they are in school guide them to teachers and people they can ask for help from, help with school and help with life. I pray they would have time to play each day, to feel like a kid. Give them hope when the situations feel hopeless. Keep their hearts full of hope father. I pray that they would come to us as healthy and happy as possible, and that you would build in us the tools we will need to help them heal their hearts. Father I pray that they would come to us legally free, I know that with you this is possible. May your will be done.

I pray for their birth parents. Father, thank you for the amazing blessing of giving life to our kids. I pray that they would come to know you Father, if they don't already and that you would bless them. Provide a healthy pregnancy for their birth mother. Father whatever the circumstances that lead to our kids adoption, I pray you would be in the midst of it. Whatever the situation is, help them remember that their kids are just kids. Help them to desire whatever is best for their child. Comfort them in the grief that will come after losing their kids. Comfort the kids if their birth parents pass away. I pray that our kids will come to understand the circumstances that led to their adoption.

If they have siblings I pray that they would come to us together and not be separated. Help them to find comfort in each other daily. Bless their relationship and help them to get along and thrive with each other. I pray you would also begin to open their hearts to the idea of other siblings after they join our family.

I pray that they would dream and hope for a better life, a life with loving parents and a safe home. I pray they would long for a life lived with you at the center. Begin to work in their hearts to prepare a place for you.

Ton of Bricks

There was this moment. A moment that hit me like a ton of bricks. And then it kept coming back and hitting me like a ton of bricks all over again. and again. and again.

The moment when I realized that our kid(s) are out there somewhere. They are (in all likely-hood) born. They are living life. And they are going through whatever it is that they will have to go through to get to us. Like I said...ton. of. bricks.

The first time it hit me was in my office at work and I broke down. It was so overwhelming to know that they were out there and there was nothing I could do for them but pray for them. And so I did.

My prayer life has been changed by this process already. As I go through my days all the sudden it will hit me again. What are they doing right now? Are they hungry? Are they warm/cold/sad/scared/worried? And I turn to the only person who knows the answers and plead, Father please see them, see them because I can't. Please take care of them like only you can.

So when I sit down to eat, I pray for them. That they would have food to eat. When I lay down in my bed, I pray that they could find some rest tonight. And sometimes it just hits me out of nowhere and I break down all over again. And so I pray.

I have a feeling this whole parenthood thing is going to teach remind me how little control I have over anything. And believe me this control freak is going to struggle. I find peace in the fact that He is in control. And that he already loves my kid(s) more than I ever will.

Is this Plan B?

Aubrey and I are approaching our five (yikes, that's like a milestone or something..!) year anniversary. (June 20) So, we both understand that you might assume that we tried to get pregnant before deciding to adopt. While that is some people's story, it is not ours. Here is how we arrived here!

When we got married, and since then, we always hoped to wait at least 5 years before starting the journey of kids. Of course we knew we had little to no control over that, and we would have been fine with something different. We wanted God's plan for our family, not ours. I digress, about 2 years ago baby fever set in (with me) It set in pretty hard. It was one of those seasons where it felt like everyone around me was pregnant and having babies. However, as bad as I wanted to be a mom, I looked around at our current life situation (trying to get a business off the ground, I was still working part time, and we were nowhere near ready to buy a house) and knew it wasn't the right time. So, I just sat in baby fever limbo. It's no fun.

One day in a baby fever induced craze (i'm sure) I brought up the kid-timeline question to Aubrey. He reminded me that we had always said we would wait until we had been married at least 5 years, and I reminded him that we had already been married 3 of those 5 years, and his eyes got so big. Y'all, its like he forgot that "we'll wait 5 years" doesn't mean that we will always wait 5 years from now...(haha, sorry Aubrey! It was too funny!)

Once he stopped panicking we slowly began to talk about what that would look like. We began praying and thinking and talking and at some point (after looking at his grad school graduation date and where we hoped to be financially and with the business) and decided we would start he kid "process" in the spring of 2014. Whew! That was an exciting conclusion to come to! Now we just had to figure out if we were going to adopt or try to get pregnant when we got to Spring.

Aubrey brought it up first, God was obviously working in him before me, he just mentioned the idea of adopting from foster care first. I immediately had 14 reasons it wouldn't work, but God began working in my heart. Then the decision became to have one first or adopt from foster care first. I actually landed on adopting from foster care first just out of instinct. There was no major revelation that came to me, if just felt right, and Aubrey agreed.

In April (2013) I was doing research on the process, just trying to learn all about it, and I read that the large majority of kids in the Wisconsin system are 6 years and older and that younger kids are relatively rare. That statement began an unraveling of many sorts in me. From that moment on I began the debate between having one first or adopting from foster care first all over again. I told Aubrey about it and he was not affected. He still held firm in adoption, but firm in a way that let me find my way back on my own. The doubts flooded my mind, It seriously felt like I changed my mind every 10 minutes about what to do. I prayed and prayed that God would give us clarity on what direction to take to start our family. The paths were so very different and at this time we knew we were already less than a year away from starting whatever process we decided on.

One weekend at Jacob's Well, during a series on Jeremiah, John Stumbo spoke about being called. God knew before we were in the womb the calling he had for us. John said two things that hit my heart directly. 1. "It's not about who you are NOW, its about who God is making you to be." 2. "Don't ask, can I do this? But instead, Can God make me into who I need to be to do this" It became so clear to me that all my doubts about foster care came flooding in when I realized that it might be more difficult or not as pretty as I thought. The potential of older kids was scary, but God spoke to me that day saying, "Ask me, I can and will make you into the person you need to be to do this."

I came home and told Aubrey about my revelation, and he just smiled. He noted that with so many other "big" decisions in our lives he has been the one with the research, revelations, and reasons behind why we should do this one thing, and I have usually been the one who just "felt" like it was the right thing to do for no explainable reason, but that this time it was reverse! He had been there all along waiting for me patiently to get there too. So we looked at each other and smiled, I think filled with excitement and probably terror. We knew how we were going to start our family!

So, no we have never officially tried to get pregnant. No, this is not plan B, and honestly even if we had tried to get pregnant I don't think adoption would feel like Plan B. God's plan is always Plan A. This is God's plan for our family and we are so excited that this is the path he has for us.

Why Foster Care?

When I was younger and first felt the call to adopt I always assumed it would be international adoption only. I had a plan. We would have a kid first, then adopt a little boy from somewhere in Africa, and then adopt a little girl from China. That was how I pictured my family. (I'm not a control freak or anything...!)

Aubrey and I also discussed that we would like to be married about 5 years before we started a family. After our 3 year anniversary passed a class on adoption, If you were mine, was offered at Jacob's Well and I decided to take it. Aubrey couldn't make it to the class so I was in charge of bringing back all the information to him. If you were mine covers the basics of why to the details of how with adoption. Its a great class for anyone considering or about to start the process. As part of the class they explained the three ways you can adopt. 1. Domestic adoption - adopting infants from the US. 2. International adoption - adopting kids of all ages from different countries. 3. Adopting from Foster Care. - adopting kids of all ages from your State's/the US foster care system.

I knew about the first two. My cousins were adopted domestically and we were (according to my amazing plan...) going to adopt internationally. I didn't even know the third option existed. I was initially intrigued by it because compared to the cost of the other two options it honestly seemed appealing! There is no cost to adopt from the foster care system and in a lot of cases any costs you do incur will be reimbursed in the end. But, to explore an option just because its cheap did not seem like the way I wanted to go about starting our family, but God was already at work.

Over the next year God began laying foster care on my heart. I was honestly terrified at first. I never wanted to do foster care. I wasn't cut out for it, I argued. One Sunday during worship at Jacob's Well I just broke down. God had spoken and I had finally heard. Over the next few months a couple of things began to happen. God continued to work in my heart. The call that I originally heard as a call to one day do Foster Care began to come into focus as a call to adopt through Foster Care. It was different than what I had always pictured, but I accepted it relatively easily, even though I had no idea what that would look like.

One of the biggest ways that God worked in our hearts was through some friends of ours the Behnke's. We have been blessed to be witnesses to Paul and Nicki's adoption story as they adopted their 3 children through foster care. Paul and Nicki were actually in the If you were mine class and were the first people I heard express interest and plans to adopt from foster care. I felt not only certainty, but also excitement at the thought of adopting through foster care after seeing God's hand through their process. For their whole story check out their blog.

So, God had spoken to me, and I had heard, but he wasn't done yet. I still had my plan in my mind. To have a kid first, then adopt foster care, and then international adoption. The perfect family, or at least that was my opinion...