Thursday, March 22, 2012

This journey we are on

My intentions were to start this blog about 9 months ago, but as you see this is our very first post! I want to catch up on what these last 9 months have held for us. I also want to share a little bit of our history as a couple. I know that will probably take a few posts to do that and this post has the potential to be very long, so bear with me.
  Joshua and I were married on December 23, 2006. The 6 months of engagement held many, many conversations about many, many things. One of those things were children. Joshua and I both agreed that one day down the road, after we have had our biological children, we would love to adopt children. We had NO IDEA what that looked like for us. We just knew we wanted to do that. We had also told each other that we thought it would be good to wait at least 4-5 years before we had children. Let me just say this... don't ever tell God what you will and won't be doing. Little did we know that the plans we had made would be completely turned upside down, turned around, flipped inside out and reshaped to fit God's plan for our life and marriage.
  After about two years of marriage, we had realized that I was having some health complications and that going to the doctor soon would be necessary. During my appointment with the doctor, I was told that being able to get pregnant would be impossible without fertility drugs. They had diagnosed me with PCOS (Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome). I left the office in complete shock. I was so scared that my dream and ache to have a child would never be fulfilled. At that point I started sobbing and praying and was reminded that God was able to do whatever He wanted, no matter what the problem was. A year or so passed and we came to the point of wanting to know for sure whether or not having biological kids would ever be possible. I started seeing a doctor who suggested we start trying fertility treatments. With much consideration and prayer, we decided to try. We went through 4-5 months of pills, shots, ultrasounds, doctors appointments after doctors appointments and the results were always negative. The doctor finally looked at me and said there is nothing more I can do for you so I am referring you to an infertility specialist for in vitro fertilization treatments. With that said, Joshua and I both dug our heels in and said no more. We can't take it anymore. So we stopped with all treatments and wondered what would ever become of our little family and what the plans were that God had in store for us. We were scared, hurt, nervous and unsure. My heart has always ached to have a child of my own. Coming to the point of knowing that biological kids would not be possible for us, hurt me in such a way that I can't even begin to put it into words. 
 After many months of praying, asking and trusting the Lord for His plans, we rested in the fact that He had great plans for Joshua and I as a couple.......without children. In 2010, we moved back to Fort Worth and were blessed with a house. We knew the Lord had a plan for this house and we wanted to open it up to people that were in need. Again, we had NO IDEA what that meant for us! After a few months of being here, the Lord impressed upon our hearts adoption and possibly foster care. Many emotions came with that. We finally did some research on an agency that we had heard about, but didn't know much about it. The agency was Buckner. We decided to go to an information meeting on foster care/adoption. We said that we would continue to follow through with this until the Lord shut the door. Needless to say, He never shut the door. In fact, from that one night of the information meeting in April of 2011, our lives have never slowed down. From that point on, we felt led to continue with foster care. 
 In September of 2011, we got the news that my dad had passed away.( I know that seems random, but it really does play a huge part in this process) :) We flew to New Mexico for the funeral. While staying with family during this time, we got the phone call that we had been licensed and on top of that, there was a possible placement(child) waiting for us! All they told us was he is a four month old African American boy. Of course we said we would take him. I was blown away! It was literally like God had shut one door and immediately opened a new one. A few days later they called us and said that they actually had TWO children they would like to place with us. The other was a 10 month old little boy. They told us there is a high chance that both boys would be up for adoption at some point soon. We told them again, yes, we would take both of them. 
 When we arrived back home from the funeral, we welcomed little D into our home. He does have a full name, but we can't share it publicly on here, so we are just going to call him D. The other little boy didn't work out, so we just got D, the four month old. We were so scared the night we went to pick him up. While driving the 30 minutes to go get him, the realization of having a child in the home and actually being parents was completely overwhelming. It hit us that we had no idea what to do with this child except to make sure we keep him alive and breathing! The moment we walked in that door of his foster home, our hearts COMPLETELY melted. The fear left. The unsure thoughts disappeared. I have never attached to anything/anyone so quickly in my life than when I looked into that little face. Watching Joshua with him completely melted my heart again. I knew life was about to take a CRAZY kink and we were going to be going a totally new direction, and I was totally excited.
 This is a very long overview of the journey we have been on the last 6-7 years with our family. Many more details are involved, but hopefully I will have the opportunity to share those with you at a later time.