Our Journey to Adoption

Our journey to adoption & our plans for the new year!

 

As many of you know I have been wanting to be a mother ever since I was a little girl.

I couldn’t wait to get married & immediately have children.

I remember years ago when I heard married couples talk about being on a 5-year plan I honestly thought they were crazy.

Why in the world would you want to wait to have kids?

But a few weeks after Roger & I were married he started dental school, not an ideal time to start growing your family (my in-laws had 2 children while they were both in medical school & they highly recommended we wait, which was wonderful advice at the time).

We had originally planned to start trying to have children during his last year of school.

However, the intensity & stress level that comes with this level of education was beyond what I could have ever imagined.

So we decided to wait until Roger was done with school & settled at a job.

 

About two to three years into dental school I decided I had to stop taking birth control because the side effects were real & I did not like the person I had become while taking them.

Most of our family & friends who knew I decided to stop taking birth control assumed that meant we were ready, or maybe even trying, to get pregnant.

And while I love being open & honest with you all, there are some things that need to stay private between a husband, wife, & God.

So I won’t go into any details except to say we were still taking preventative measures to avoid pregnancy, because Roger was still in school & waiting was what we decided was best for us.

 

Once dental school was over I was sure we were going to start trying to get pregnant, as I’m sure all of our family, friends, & facebook acquaintances assumed as well. 

Especially after I wrote this post about waiting to conceive (which was written not in the stance of trying to get pregnant, but for any woman waiting for any reason to conceive).

But when your husband spends the first part of his first year as a dentist working at what is primarily a children’s dental clinic, the idea of going from screaming children all day to a crying baby at home was not ideal either.

So we decided to wait a little longer.

No matter how much I want children, my husband & our marriage comes first, there was no way I wanted to start a family with an exhausted husband who wouldn’t be able to enjoy the joy of a new child.

 

So we waited.

And while we waited we renovated our house, traveled, & prayed.

We’ve been praying about our path to parenthood since long before we were even married.

We know there is no perfect time to become a parent. We weren’t waiting for perfection, but rather we were waiting for God’s calling.

It’s been 6 & 1/2 years now since we were married, & somewhere in year 5 our prayers & conversations began to change. 

We had always had this plan to adopt from China someday, but since you have to be 30 to start their adoption process I assumed we would wait until then (still more than another 2 years away for me).

In the post I mentioned above I also shared (under #5) “Even though we have our hearts set on China, we are praying that God will open our hearts to His timing & the child that we will call our own. We have started saving so that when the time comes & we hear Him calling us directly towards a country (even our own) & child, we will be ready.”

And last year we heard God calling us in a direction we hadn’t originally planned, to adopt first.

 

 

Late last spring Roger & I decided that we wanted to start our family through adoption.

The only problem, we had just started building a new house & where we were living was temporary.

And since I had several parents who have been through the adoption process encourage me to wait until our home was finished being built so we wouldn’t have to do two home studies (especially since some home studies can run between $1,500 – $4,000) we knew we shouldn’t start the adoption process immediately.

So we were called to wait again.

My goodness waiting is hard.

 

So while we waited we prayed, researched, prayed, talked, & prayed some more.

We prayed for the house we were building to be a good home for our future children.

We prayed for direction about how to adopt, whether through foster care, an adoption agency or through a lawyer.

We prayed that our family & friends would be accepting & open to this different, yet equally beautiful path that we have decided to take for our family.

We prayed for the birth parents of our future daughter (yes, we want a baby girl).

We prayed that we would be good parents to her & know how to raise her to love God as much as He already loves her.

 

We are almost finished with the building process of our house.

In the next couple of months, we plan to start the paperwork so that we will be ready to turn it all in as soon as we are settled in our new home.

And then we will begin a whole new season of waiting.

But this time, we will be waiting with more hope, more joy, & more excitement about bringing home our baby girl.

We will continue to pray for all those things above (& more) & hopefully in the next year (or two) we will be matched with a baby we will call our own forever & always.

Thank you so much for your kindness, encouragement, & prayers during this time of wait & excitement.

 

If you enjoyed learning more about how we plan to grow our family, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter below so that you can join us on our adoption journey!

Have you adopted & want to share your experience?
I’d love to hear from you!
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With love, G

But now, Lord, what do I look for?
    My hope is in you.
Psalms 39:7