Bad News, Good News

It has been 7 weeks since baby girl left us. I have typed out this blog posts 5 times, but I never could finish it and post it. When she left, it broke my heart. I miss her more than I could ever express. Even though she wasn't mine, I loved her as though she was. She was the sweetest baby, always smiling. We got her when she was 4 days old, and had to give her back when she was 3 1/2 months old. I was allowed to visit her 5 days after she left, and as soon as she heard my voice, she looked up at me, and wiggled and kicked, wanting me to pick her up. Leaving her that day was even harder than the day she left.

I'll be honest, I cried. A lot. I'm sure I cried almost every day for the first 5 weeks. There were days I didn't want to get out of bed. I kept looking at her pictures and videos, knowing I was torturing myself, but I just wanted to see her so bad. Everything reminded me of her. And knowing she will forget me is almost more than I could bear. Sometimes I don't know how I made it through those first several weeks. Cory was a huge support. He was mourning too in his own way, but he was always patient with me, and comforted me the best he could. I honestly felt like I was mourning a death, and really, it was as sudden and final as that. But the whole time, God was with me. It brought me closer to Him, and I am so thankful to serve a God who loves me and cares for me. I have learned to trust him more, and slowly but surely, my heart is mending. I still get a little emotional, but I am able to think of the memories I have, and it brings a smile to my face rather than tears. She was a blessing to us, and God has His reasons for her being with us, even for such a short time. I will always love her and cherish our memories.

I felt like I couldn't tell this part of our story without giving some closure to the last chapter. We got a call about a girl a long time back. I want to say it was almost a year ago, but I can't remember the exact dates, it might have been January or February. We were instantly interested, and anxiously awaited more details, but things kept coming up, delaying the process, and we either figured or were told that they weren't going to move her at that time. Then a few weeks ago, we got another call about her. She was already in a foster home, so they didn't need immediate placement, but were talking about sometime in the future. Plans kept changing, and on Friday we got a call and were told she would be moved that day. As we waited anxiously for that call, it never came, and we assumed they found another home in her school district, which we knew was a possibility.

My parents and I had been trying to plan a field trip to the Creation Museum in Kentucky for several weeks, and it kept getting put off because we kept thinking we were about to get a placement. So after we thought she had been placed elsewhere, we decided to go ahead and go. We left for Kentucky at about noon on Monday, and arrived at 9 pm. The next morning, we got up, went to the museum, and after being there a couple hours, I got a text asking when I was coming home, because they needed placement now. First of all, it was a miracle that the text even came through. I was in the bottom level of the museum with absolutely no signal. That was God's providence! My heart just about jumped out of my chest. We waited around an hour or two, texting back and fourth, and making sure that they planned on placing her with us. And finally, we got that confirmation. We went back to the hotel, got dinner, packed up the van, and drove back overnight, arriving home at 6 am. She arrived at our house at about 4 that afternoon.

I can't share her with you now, but I'll tell you what I can. She is such a sweet, beautiful girl! She is almost 11, and she is keeping our boys in shape! =) They adore her, and they get along really well. Cory and I were so nervous. She has been through some rough things, and we didn't know what to expect, but she listens well, she keeps her things nice and tidy (maybe she could teach the boys a thing or two) and she is so sweet! She literally fit right into our family like she should have been here all along. She is bonding with Cory and myself, and she genuinely seems happy. She is either legally-free, or will be soon, so I believe there is a very real and strong possibility that we could adopt her one day, although we still have to foster her at least 6 months first. We have only had her 3 days, but already she has been the biggest blessing to us. We prayed about everything and just put the situation in God's hands, and this was the plan He had for us. I am so thankful, and already so very much in love!

Update

Wow, what a summer! This has been a challenging but rewarding time in our lives. Baby girl will be 10 weeks old tomorrow! I can't believe how fast it has flown by. We have absolutely fallen in love with her! 

This whole time, we have known there is a real possibility that she could be leaving us. A few days ago, we were told that the parents were doing well, and could possibly be on track to regain custody in December. Yesterday we got a call from our social worker that it could be sooner than we expected. They are still looking into relative placement, and they might be moving her as soon as next week. That was heartbreaking to hear. 

I suppose at first I had very high hopes of keeping her, but as we were updated on what's going on, it seemed more and more likely that it wouldn't work out like that. For the past several weeks, I have been praying that God would give me peace about His plans. It can be so hard to accept that what I so desperately want isn't what He wants for us. I believe He is working in me, and while the thought still saddens me, I know that God is in control, and He is going to do what's best for us and for her.

People have asked me if this doesn't work out, would I be able to do it again. How can I stand to fall in love, only to have her taken away? How can I put my heart out there like that? I have to trust that even though she was only here for a short time, there was a reason for that. I hope to maintain a relationship with her, and the family, and share the love of Jesus with them. 

I am trusting that if this isn't God's plan for us, He has a child for us, and that it will be well worth the wait. Holding onto that hope and having something to look forward to makes all of this a little easier. 

With all of the terrible Planned Parenthood videos going around, I am so saddened by all of this evil. I know there are many people outraged about it, and want them shut down. There are so many children out there that need homes, and as Christians, we are called to care for the orphans. I urge you all to pray about adopting or fostering. Maybe adoption isn't God's plan for your life, but one thing is for sure, you are not called it sit and watch all of this play out. Pray about what He wants for you. We can make a difference by providing a loving home for these unwanted children. This is God's plan for us, and while it can be challenging, it has brought us so much joy, and we wouldn't trade it for the world!

God doesn't call the strong, He strengthens the called.

Times of Uncertainty

I'm sitting here holding this beautiful baby girl. We've had her all but 3 days of her whole life. When we decided to be foster parents, I didn't realize how hard it would be. The emotions I have felt have been so strong and so real. I have spent the last two weeks praying and asking God to fix my attitude and give me peace about this situation. I'm getting there, slowly but surely. 

It's no secret that I wanted a baby. She is so beautiful and perfect as she can be. Ever since bringing her home from the hospital, I've had to tell myself that she's not ours, but I didn't listen to myself very well. I love this girl like she was my own, and it's hard not to feel defensive or upset when they talk about taking her away. As far as what's going to happen, it could go either way. Children have to be in foster care for at least year before the parent's rights can be terminated. That gives the parents a chance to get their life back together. If that doesn't happen, then they can make them legally free for adoption. They usually give the foster parents the option of adopting them first. 

In our case, they are looking for relatives that would be willing to take her and are able to pass all their inspections and background checks, and relatives are always given priority. Knowing what I do about this case, which isn't a whole lot, that thought scares me. I feel like she would be so much better off with us, and I fear that putting her back into that situation will result in a difficult life, possibly in and out of foster care, and most importantly, a life unexposed to Jesus. But I have to remember that Jesus loves this little girl more than I do, and God's plan for her is better than mine, He knows all things, and He won't be surprised when things turn out "unexpectedly". There are so many obstacles in our way of being able to one day adopt her, and either God is going to work all these things out, and when we look back on it, it will be an amazing and breathtaking story where you can see his work, and give Him all the glory. Or she will be leaving us, and we just have to trust God. 

Here are some promises I'm leaning on.

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. Proverbs 19:21

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

Proverbs 16:9

I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world! John 16:33

We are Foster Parents!!

    We finally heard back about our foster care license, and as of April 8th, we are approved foster parents!! I am so excited! We could literally get a placement at any time. We tried just adopting through the foster care system, and we inquired and inquired on dozens of children, but none of them ever worked out. Some we were turned down because we were out of state, some because the child needed to be the youngest or the oldest, some because they didn't want any siblings, some because they didn't want brothers, and so on. We were getting quite discouraged, so we decided to go the foster care route.

    We still intend to adopt. Fostering to adopt definitely comes with a risk. The child may or may not become available for adoption. There's a risk of getting very attached only to have the child placed back with their parents. But a lot of times, the child does become available for adoption, and the foster parents usually are given the option of adopting them first. So that's what we are hoping for. I sat down with the boys and explained to them what foster care was, and the differences between fostering and adopting, and explained to them that just because we get a child, doesn't mean she is here to stay. They need to be prepared for that, because it's going to be very hard on them.

    I also closed down my shop. There are still a few items left, and you can find them at my Facebook page, For Beautiful Baby. I created an album trying to sell the last bit of clothing. My sewing room was set up in the spare bedroom, and we will probably not get much of a notice about a placement. Usually when they take the child out of the home, they pretty much bring them straight to us. So we have to be ready!

Here was some of the mess, although I hadn't started taking things out of the closet. I wish I had taken a picture of that so you all could understand just what a big mess we had! You couldn't walk in there. But a huge shout out to Hubs who worked all weekend toting boxes and doing all the heavy lifting for me. What would I do without him!?

Here it is all cleaned out, except for my remaining dresses. I'm still trying to sell those rather than store them. 

And here it is, empty except for a nightstand and an old bed. 

    Once we get the call, and know what we're getting (we're open to any age between 0-12) we can set it up quickly. I still have the crib and bedding I made in storage under our house. The bed that's currently in there is very old (the mattress is an ancient artifact wrapped in plastic, but we had to have a bed in there to pass our home study). If we get an older child, I want to buy a new bed, but I don't want to do that now in case we get a baby, in which case, we'll toss this one out and set up the crib. 

    I spoke to my amazing boss, and told him the chances of me getting a call and just not coming back in were pretty high, and he was very excited for me! He is completely understanding, and letting me stay on until something happens. I have an amazing, supportive group of after school staff, and they will be able to carry on without me without missing a beat, if it comes to that. 

Y'all, I am so excited, it is just about impossible for me to be patient any more! It has been a long 3 years. Please, please pray for us! This is going to be more challenging than I think, but whatever God has in store for us will be so worth it!

Making Plans

      It has been almost 3 months since we found out it wasn't going to work out with Victoria. It's been a challenging time. I guess sometimes I'm surprised at how much it affected us. We had never even met her. How could she have this big of an impact? Every time I saw her picture, it would bring back that sadness, but I couldn't bring myself to delete it. I still get a little upset when we talk about her. But we are talking about her, and maybe even accepting the fact that it's time to move on. I suppose I still held on hope that something might work out. I still feel deep down that she should have been ours, and it's hard to accept that she's not. Cory and I were talking about her the other night, and he opened up about how hard it was for him. I knew he was hurting far more than he let on, but I wish guys would talk about things during that difficult time.

      Part of moving on is looking back into children's profiles. We sat down and did this a few weeks after it happened, and I found myself getting cranky, and even a little angry. I guess I wasn't ready for that yet. But we are looking again. I still haven't heard back from our NC foster care people, and I know state agencies tend to move slowly. We are still approved in Texas, however, and they have a lot more children on their list. We've submitted a few inquiries, and I'm waiting to hear back from those. Sometimes they take forever, though. It's frustrating. I'm hoping they don't keep turning us down because we're out of state. We've checked every profile very carefully for that little statement before inquiring.

      I'm starting to wonder if God's plans for us are different than our plans. I think He may have used this experience to make us more open, and that is something that we're praying about. I feel like maybe we put too many limits on what we would consider, and God is putting us through this to make us more open to what He has planned. Please pray for us! We need guidance and patience and wisdom. I'm going to let God take the lead on this, and just see what He has in store!


But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” 1 Corinthians 2:9 

Foster Parents

It's been a little over a month since we received disappointing news about the child we were pursuing. I still get sad when I think about it, but I'm eager to move on and finally get a placement. When we started the process for Victoria, we thought we were going to have to become fully licensed foster parents. After we started that process, we realized that that wasn't a requirement, but we decided to follow through with it. I'm glad we did, and maybe that was God's purpose in all of that.

We pretty much finished up everything we needed to do for that. We had to do all the paperwork from scratch, redo all of the fingerprints and background checks, and do several home study visits. The only thing we're waiting on is a form from the doctors that we already turned in, but somehow got misplaced. Once we turn that in, that will be the last of it, and our social worker will send our home study off so that hopefully we will become approved licensed foster parents. Once she sends it off, they have 50 days to make a decision, but hopefully it wont take that long.

Another neat thing was about half way through our MAPP classes (foster parenting training) we realized that one of our instructors lived in the next neighborhood over from us, had kids that went to our school, and her little boy was in Ryland's class! What a small world! It was nice to have that connection.

I really did learn a lot in our classes, and feel better prepared to parent an adopted child. I used to think my kiddos are turning out fine, we seem to have this parenting thing down okay. I hadn't considered that what these children have gone through affects the way they respond to everything. Normal parenting techniques might not work. These children might have some very extreme or unusual behaviors, and you can't focus on those behaviors, but rather figure out what need is not being met that could be causing those behaviors, and understanding what they're feeling.

For instance, if a child is hoarding food, that's a good indicator that they hadn't been adequately provided for, and maybe they are scared that you wont meet their basic needs either. So then how do you show that child that they don't need to worry about not getting enough food? By being patient with them, and constantly fulfilling that need until they can learn to trust you. Or if you get a child that was physically abused, and you spank your children. What type of message might that send them? We spank out of love, but do you think the child is going to see it that way? But if you spank your children, and use something different on the child, that also sends a message that the child is different because you're treating them differently. That's just a couple of different examples of things that I hadn't really thought about.

Anyways, I will definitely let you all know when we hear something. Please keep praying for us. This has been a long journey, and we're ready for it to be over!

Grieving Victoria

It all started a few months back. It had been almost 2 years of waiting with nothing to show. Our social worker told us that we had the option of looking at older children on adoption photo listings. I woke up one morning, browsed through sites, and found Victoria, a beautiful 12-year-old girl in Texas. Cory and I fell in love with her right away. She was perfect for our family! All we could think about was having her with us. We felt like part of us was missing, and that she should be here with us.

During our decision making phase, we prayed a lot! We prayed for guidance, and for doors to open. I was prepared for a baby. I had everything except for the car seat. Yet, I didn't care that I had spent hundreds of dollars on diapers, I just wanted her. We started thinking about all of the potential reasons why it wouldn't work out, but one by one, God provided answers. The biggest example I have was our concern for affording her tuition at school. But about three days later, I was promoted at work with a pay increase and tuition discount increase.

We had a very hard time finding someone who knew what we needed to do to start this process. She was in Texas in Foster Care, and we were in NC, approved to adopt an infant. Everyone we talked to gave us a different answer, and our agency had just lost two of their social workers due to them moving out of state, so they were too overwhelmed to be of much help to us. I probably made 50 phone calls trying to find someone that could help us.

Most people told us that we would probably have to become licensed foster parents. We searched for MAPP classes. That's the training course for parenting foster kids. Everywhere we called told us that they weren't having more classes until next year, and it would be a several month course. I was about to give up hope when I made one last call, and found a class that started that very night, and it would be over in 5 weeks. We got in the class, and learned so much!

We finally found a social worker who knew exactly what we needed to do, and she had helped families do exactly what we were trying to do. We spent three months doing classes, updating all of our paperwork, and everything else. We had to get our new home study to Texas before we could even find out more about Victoria. All we had was a picture and a paragraph about her interests. We didn't know what happened to her or anything.

The day before Thanksgiving, our Social Worker over-nighted our paper work to Texas. When they came back from break, they would have it. It wasn't a matter of whether they would accept us, it was when would they accept us. We were perfect for her, and she belonged with us. All of that hard work and paper cuts, and long nights of classes was worth it! We couldn't wait to fly to Texas to meet her.

I got a confirmation email from them saying they had received our paperwork, and just a couple of hours later, we received our rejection letter. It said that the selection committee had reviewed all applicants, and our family was not chosen. It did not even give us a reason. I sat there in shock reading it. On paper, we were the ideal family for her. How had they turned us down so quickly? They didn't even have to think about it! I had to contact them to get a reason. They said it had nothing to do with our family, but a judge had ordered the case worker to find a family in Texas. I don't think they had even really looked at our home study. They looked at our location and stuck us in the reject pile.

While we were in classes, we learned about the stages of grief. And I went through them all. That evening, I was a little sad, but mostly I just felt shock, like it hadn't sunk in. The next morning, I was devastated. I couldn't stop crying, and I just felt like I didn't want to adopt anymore, because it was supposed to be Victoria. Then I was angry. I was angry with our agency, and how they held us up. I was angry that they didn't bother to look at who we were, and the fact that we had just focused the last three months of our lives on working for this child.

I was bargaining. I kept thinking of all the ways I could change their mind. What if I called the judge and begged him to let her come with us. If he heard our story, surely he would know he had made a mistake. Then I was depressed, and all I could do was cry. She was never going to know how much we loved her and wanted her. Older children are so hard to place, and if she never gets adopted, she will feel so unloved and unwanted. This wasn't supposed to happen. I wanted to call out of work because I couldn't seem to pull myself together, but staying home, all I was doing was wallowing in my sorrow.

I am still very sad about it, but my anger has faded, and I've accepted it. We are emotionally weary, but we haven't given up. We are very confused as to what God's purpose was in all of this. Had we misinterpreted His will? Is He leading us this direction for another reason? Is our pain and suffering teaching us a valuable lesson? Where do we even go from here? I hope to someday understand His reasoning for this. I do know that He knows what's best for us. 

I also have to hold onto hope that He has bigger and better plans for Victoria. We never actually met her, but we became so attached, and to us, she was ours. We had made a place for her in our hearts. I pray that she is loved, cherished, well looked after, and that she is adopted.

"He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will." Ephesians 1:5

"A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." Proverbs 16:9