Are you ok if things move quickly?

This was one of the questions our social worker asked us during our intake interview.  We told them "Of course" and that we were very flexible.  Well we learned first hand that if you say you're ok moving fast than you better be sure about it. 

After turning in our Lifebook on Wednesday, we received a call Friday saying they had shown our book to a birthmother and that she wanted to meet us on Saturday.  We were already planning to be in College Station for a support group meeting that day, so we went down early to meet with the mother.  Long story short, the meeting went well, the birthmother was an awesome person and we fell in love with her. 

However, it's a unique situation in that ours was the only Lifebook they were able to show her because it was the only one they have that met the birthmother's criteria.  They normally like to show her more than one book, and she wants to see other books (understandably as she wants to have a choice and not feel like she's being cornered into a decision.)  So while the meeting went well, the agency is still hoping to be able to show her some other Lifebooks this week.  And since we said we're ok moving fast, we should probably mention she is due in less than two weeks. 

So we're cautiously optimistic going forward and hope to have more information later this week.  Please continue to pray for us as this will be a very emotional few weeks regardless of the eventual outcome.  We know God has already chosen a child for us and knowing that gives us peace about the situation.  Also, pray for the birthmother, Danielle.  Pray that she will be able to make a decision for her child and that she will be at peace with her decision.  We're happy to be moving fast!

Thank Goodness for Fridays

Whew--we have had an exciting but exhausting week! We met last week with our adoption agency for our intake interview, which is basically where they decide if we're allowed into the agency--kind of an important aspect in the process. :) Our social worker (technically the child placement manager) was super nice and we just chatted about our lives and faith and things like that. It went so smooth that he gave us the green light to get started on our homestudy paperwork (which includes things like a physical, fingerprinting, references, pet vaccination record, etc). And since the agency is in need of adoptive families, our social worker also encouraged us to begin working on our Life Book (basically a scrapbook of our lives and papers that talk about our personality, hopes for the adoption, etc) .

Of course we were just super excited after the meeting and left with our heads spinning of all the things we needed to do! So, over the weekend we got started on some of the items, which it turns out was a good thing because we got a call on Monday from the agency asking if we could have our Life Book to them this week. Yikes! So we spent probably 30 hours from Monday-Wednesday creating the scrapbook and filling out all the paperwork before dropping it off at FedEx for overnight delivery. Needless to say we were exhausted but excited to have sent it off so the agency can start showing it to birthfamilies.

We still have plenty of paperwork and things to do to get through the homestudy that will keep us busy (not to mention doing other things to prepare for a baby that could come at any time), but now we're also in that anxious waiting period to see if a birthfamily chooses us. We know it's all in God's timing--and we certainly take comfort in that--but there's still a bit of excitement and nervousness all mixed in!

Please keep on praying for us that we'll take this roller coaster ride (the emotions you go through are crazy!) with grace and be able to demonstrate Christ's love and peace throughout it all! Also, please pray for the baby and birthfamily that are out there, too. We of course want to pray for a healthy baby that is just the right one for our family. And we also want to pray that the birthfamily will receive comfort and peace during the difficult situation they are encountering and also come to know Christ if they don't already know Him.

On the Road to Parenthood

We never imagined that starting a family would take us on a journey that, at more than 2 ½ years, is still in progress. Like most people, we thought we’d get pregnant within a few months, have the baby 9 months later, and we’d live happily ever after. Yet here we are, still walking down the path that the Lord has put in front of us.

We kept some of our infertility journey private, which some people may not understand. But we had each other and we had the Lord, and that’s what we needed and wanted for a while. Our personalities probably played a role in that, as well as our desire to have that “surprise, we’re pregnant” moment. We gradually told our family and closest friends, relying on them to hold us up through prayer during one of the most difficult periods in our lives.

But now we feel as if we’ve broken through—broken through the grief that comes with infertility (more on that in another post, perhaps), through the natural tendency to withdraw from friends and family where constant reminders existed of our inability to grow our family, through the ceiling that has kept us from feeling excited about one day having a baby.

Yes, we’re proud and very excited to announce that we consider ourselves to be expecting—not through a pregnancy but through an adoption that God has planned out in His perfect timing. We have just begun our adoption journey, and we're not sure of all that it will hold, but we can't wait to find out. And we can't wait to share it all with you. 

So stay tuned and we'll attempt to keep the blog updated with our journey and our life.