Our journey to becoming foster parents.

I titled this blog "The Year Long journey" but I don't think it was just in the past year I think God has been working us up to this for a LONG time.

I'm excited to share with you guys our experiences leading up to THIS moment.

When the plan I had for my life isn't what God has in mind.

Learning to accept the fact that the plan YOU had for your life is NOT the plan God has for you is... well, frustrating. Although, I know it shouldn't be, we as christians should trust His plan with no questions asked. We know that he has our best interest and he already knew the plan and outcomes before we were born. I KNOW that. I think it's just easy to get caught up in life and try to control every outcome. Letting go and giving up control is something I STRUGGLE with. But, through the past year that's exactly what I've learned to do.

Let's go back to when I was 9 or 10 years old.

I had a dream I was adopting a child from Haiti. It was so vivid and I never forgot about it. I held onto that dream and knew adoption was going to be in my plan and hoped It would also be in my spouses plan when the time came. Before Drew and I got married we had the kid talk and he said he would be open to adoption! Woo hoo! We didn't think much about it we wanted our own kids first before we opened our home up to others. If you know us personally or have read my earlier blog post you know our story of losing two baby boys due to a genetic condition, If you're new here please feel free to go read my About Me page or Owen's Birthday Blog to get the full story.

Now, to the past year.

After we knew Owen had the same genetic condition as Bennett we knew we would be done having bio kids and that was a whole new grieving process that had to take place. The doctors told us that we could do IVF to "weed out" the effected embryos and only implant the ones not effected. I didn't have the greatest feeling about it because I personally could not just throw out my babies who were affected I would want to carry them anyway but knew emotionally I COULD NOT go through another loss. Wanting to be pregnant SO BAD I kinda thought about it and contacted a friend who had just went through the IVF process and she invited me to some IVF support groups on Facebook I added them and as soon as I started looking through them I felt like the Lord said "that's not what I have for you" so I left the groups. I also looked into adopting an embryo and again, "that's not what I have for you" Kinda thought well I guess adoption is our next step! Looking into adoption is very intimidating. You need A LOT of money for adoption and we just don't have that kind of resources. I felt kind of let down but I knew we weren't done, God had SOMETHING for us.

2 days before Owen's due date we got a call from a close family member saying that they knew of two kids needing emergency foster placement and thought of us, up until this point fostering was absolutely not on the table for us. We had been through so much we didn't think we would be emotionally capable to take on foster children who would possibly be going back to their birth families at some point. I talked to drew about it and he told me just to call and get info on it to see if we would even be eligible to take kids without being licensed or anything. I called the case worker and she was ready to come see our house THAT NIGHT I was freaking. Out. She told us "This would be a find their forever home type of situation" which was like OMG Here it is! She asked us, "how quick can you get another crib" I told her 'I'll go get one tomorrow' she was planning on bringing us two kids ON OWEN'S DUE DATE! which was already to be an emotional day. I called in the family who were all super supportive and ready to get over to our house to help us prepare. I was taking all of my breast milk to Springfield for donation that morning so it was going to be a CRAZY day of running around and preparing a bedroom for these kids. My sister in law took the day off and offered to go shopping for us while I ran to drop off my breast milk which was a huge help. I was a admittedly a hot mess dropping my milk off, I was on a high because things are coming together we're potentially going to get to adopt these kids in the future, they're coming to us on Owen's due date it just felt like a promise, but also obviously sad and overwhelmed by dropping my milk off I was just all OVER the place not to mention HORMONES being only 9 ish weeks PP. Going into the building and meeting the person who was in charge of the milk donation was... kinda crazy. She asked about Owen's story which I loved to talk about the boys and asked if she could pray for me of course I said "please do" she held my hands and prayed over me I was bawling because not many people do that and Holy Spirit was just flowing. I told her "this is crazy because I'm about to get two kids when I go home and God is just SO good" she looked at me and said "I can see Jesus all over your face" which I don't even know how to explain my feelings about that statement. I felt honored? proud? that I was giving that off to people I was coming in contact with.

Side note: You need some money to get a crib, car seats, a couple necessity things like tooth brushes, sheets, at least one outfit and one pajama set just to get us by until we could take them shopping with us. We honestly didn't have it... But, God provided! Drew randomly got a bonus check for a few hundred dollars! My SIL brought me the receipt and she spent $50 less than the bonus was! God's so good!

We had an extra room the kids could share but it was not at all set up for kids to stay in it so my brother and his wife met me at home and helped me clean, organize get things set up. They got here before me and I noticed that there were two stuffed animals on the table and figured my sister in law thought to pick those up but it was actually my brother who picked them out and said "well they're gonna be part of the family so I thought I'd get them something" which made me cry again. lol We worked on the room for a while and never heard anything from the case worker so we were getting nervous. It came time to putting the crib up and I was questioning on if we should even put it together since I hadn't heard anything.. We sat there an stared at it a while and I decided 'Well, if it's not for these kids it will be for another kid someday' so we did go ahead and put it all together. We got it all done and still heard nothing... Kind of frustrated and worried about these kids we did finally hear from the case worker around 8pm and said they had found a different placement for them that was already licensed and closer to their office which was totally understandable, but we were honestly heart broken, frustrated we spent all this time and money and ON Owens due date it felt like we lost 2 more kids or the hope of ever having more.. It felt cruel. My thought was 'I couldn't focus on my baby that I have lost on his due date because I was too busy running around like a chicken with it's head cut off for these kids we were never going to even meet.' Foolish is also another word that comes to mind. I had the phone number of the lady that prayed for me in Springfield and I updated her on the kid situation and I never got a reply which seemed kind of.. Odd. I look back on that and sometimes wonder if I called that facility would they even know who I was talking about? Did I stand in the same room as an angel and didn't know it??? Hmmm... seems like a possibility to me!

The case worker asked if we wanted to get our license for fostering and we weren't super sure but asked for more info. Months went by and we never got the info for it so we hung up the idea. Like I said, we weren't too hot on the idea of fostering anyway so we didn't try that hard to get things going.

On to the next thing.

the idea came up that maybe we could just get an adoption lawyer incase we were to find a mom that wanted to sign rights over for her baby, long shot but possible with word of mouth..

Eventually I did call a lawyer and it did not go well.. The Lawyer was so rude and nasty to me it really turned me off and I gave up. We hit a lot of highs where we felt like 'ok this is it!' and a lot of lows where we were being told "no" over and over, talk about an emotional roller coaster we just wanted to have more kids and at this point feeling bad that Finley would be an only child.

So many doors were slammed in our faces but there was always one cracked all we had to do was push it so we opened the door to foster care. It took some time to decide to do it but we both agreed all the signs were pointing here and we would deal with the emotions as they came. Our families were supportive, but obviously trying to guard us from the pain of loosing another child.

It's a LONG process to get licensed at least it was for us trying to fit in all the things and paperwork between life, work and a 2 year old. Home study, paperwork, scheduling physicals, more paperwork, background checks, more paperwork, setting up classes. attending the classes that were online 3 times a week but us not having wifi and driving 35 minutes to use the wifi, water samples that no one wants to do for us, MORE PAPERWORK and one more home study... that doesn't sound like a lot but it took us 5 months to complete and the entire time questioning if this is what we're suppose to be doing but as time went by gaining more and more peace about the decision to take this on. Our biggest fear was the kids going back to their families which sounds selfish but in our case we had already lost a lot, but the fears changed throughout the process. Like, would our friends and family be as understanding about the children's struggles because of their trauma? Would we loose people because we were making the choice to do this? Would we ourselves be able to handle a kid with behavior issues? We would like to think yes but it's a totally different thing when you're in the middle of it. Meanwhile praying that God would give me such a passion for this work I couldn't imagine my life without it because we were doing this out of obedience not 1000% because wanted to. Our classes we learned about trauma which actually taught us a lot about our own and how to approach certain things in our marriage which has been helpful to us.

By the end of classes we were so happy to be done with it now all that was left was all the homework and the last home study we were feeling very prepared then my fear changed again. "what if we get our license and we NEVER get a call?" or "they just won't approve our license at all and we did that work for nothing." I'm a worst case scenario kind of person so I had to talk myself out of these thoughts all the time.

The final home study was done, our licensing rep took all of our stuff and told us it would be a couple weeks. We were finally done! *big sigh of relief* but the anxiety continues, fear of the unknown, will we be parents to 1 or 2 kids or 30 kids by the time we're ready to be done.. I'm just anxious to get to the first call so I can learn the process of how this works. The waiting game for our license lasted about 2.5 weeks and I got THE text "Hi- your foster license has been approved!" immediately, so excited and nervous and happy we are finally here! I replied 'so we just wait for a call?' "yep!" Alrighty let me try to live my normal life while anxiously awaiting a call that will change our families life... I'm on a fostering Facebook page and the question is asked all the time "how long did it take to get a call after you got your license" the longest I saw was 18 months the shortest I saw was 13 minutes so that's a huge range and still don't know what to expect. Well.... ours took 24.5 hours.. Talk about wanting to puke! prayed a little prayer of "if these kids are suppose to be here send them, and if not find another family for them" Imagine running a marathon and finally crossing the finish line. That's how I feel. The last year (or 5) have been a huge roller coaster of challenges and emotions and it was all for HIS GRAND PLAN. Ugh, such a good feeling and so overwhelming to look back on. We're excited and nervous to start this new journey and appreciate any prayers you're willing to give. We're walking into something incredibly unfamiliar but overall we feel confident about where we are, what a change of outlook right? I was mad at God that he had us here it wasn't at all what I wanted, but I know he makes beauty from ashes and he will be walking with us through this.