The Beginning of the Journey

Wow, where to start? I guess we would need to go back a little of a year ago in June 2009. Kelly and I had been trying to have children for over a year at that time. We had gone through every single test available, and there was nothing wrong. It was at this point that we realized God had different plans for us. At the same exact time, we both individually felt God tugging at our hearts to start thinking about adoption. This was hard at first, because nothing was wrong and we knew that we should just keep trying and we would get pregnant one day, but again, God kept tugging harder and harder. After about a month of feeling this way, we finally started to talk with one another about what we were feeling. It was definitely a crazy conversation as we realized not only were we both feeling called to adopt, but we BOTH felt God calling us to adopt a teenage boy! (I'll pause now for your gasp of "what!?!?").

It was incredibly reassuring that we weren't completely crazy in our thoughts since we now knew it was coming from Him! So we started our research regarding what this path was exactly. We found out that Tapestry, an adoption & foster care ministry, was putting on their annual conference in October. We were very interested in learning more about all of this in general and answering some of our questions. So we went and were filled with excitement, encouragement, and a little bit of fear about the path that was ahead. We decided at this point to start looking more into foster care because we were not parents already and did not feel equipped to become instant parents of a teenager. By becoming foster parents, we would gain more experience in raising children. The next step was to pick out an agency and attend trainings/get certified.

In January 2010, we attended trainings and became certified with Covenant Kids. After completing all of the 80+ pages of paper work, we had our Home Study in March. We decided that we would open our house up to 1 teenage boy since that is what we felt called to from the beginning. Over the next few weeks, we were super excited to receive a placement in the house! When May rolled around, we were wondering why we didn't have a placement yet. Around this time, through my prayers and quiet time, I started feeling a very heavy conviction that we were not living in God's perfect will! Kelly and I talked about it and realized that while what we were aiming to do through foster care was a "good" thing and more practical in the eyes of the world, it was not what God had called us to do! We prayed about it a lot and realized that originally, God had called us to adopt a teenage boy, not to foster one. So we changed from being foster parents, to now being put on the list for a matched adoption in June 2010.

Stay tuned for more to come...