My love

My love
Photo credit:Britt Lanicek Photography

Thursday, January 13, 2011

What season are you in?

We know that God takes us through seasons of life for a purpose. Winter: is for waiting, Spring: preparing, Summer: enjoying, and Fall: gathering. What season are you in?

One of the things that attracted me to Greg was his view on adoption. I have always had the heart for adoption but did not know if God was leading us there. We have two biological boys and due to my lack of desire to ever be pregnant again.. I had a tubaligation. I loved my boys, but pregnancy was not for me. Some say that they loved being pregnant, but that wasn't the case for me. After Alex was born we decided that if we were to have any more children, it would be through adoption. Over that past 3 years our desire for adoption has increased.  In 2008 we started out doing fostercare, hoping that God would just drop our baby in our lap and we could adopt through a simingly less financially stressful process. Wow, what a journey that was! Although it did not result in us adding to our family, it was a major growth process for us. It opened our eyes to the hurting children that are waiting for a family, as well as helping us come to the realization of our limits as parents. Not everyone is fit to parent every child. Although we did go through training, we weren't prepared to tackle some of the situations we were put in. We are fairly new to the parenting process and thankfully our boys have been "easy" to parent. We had no idea what it was like to care for a child who was wounded by abuse. We had no idea what challenges parenting a child with a mental disability would bring. In our time fosterparenting we had several children for Respite care and one "failed adoption" as I heard someone call it. A 16 yr old boy we had in our home for 7 months and were going through the adoption process. As the adoption date moved closer we soon  decided that this was not a good fit after a course of events took place. I won't go into all of the details, but we did learn a lot through this time and we often think about this young man. The boys still talk about him.Well, we were able to finish our homestudy for adoption in PA and we thought for sure that our child would come. Soon after our PA homestudy was approved Greg took the job in Ohio. We knew that we would have to go through the homestudy process all over again because of this move. I called around and found out about Ohio's fostercare program and Greg and I began training in October of 2010. Our last training was suppose to be December 4th, and as most of you know, that is the day I was released from the hospital after having a craniotomy. We took the last few weeks for me to recover and for us to pray about where God is leading us. I wasn't sure what kind of limitations the brain tumor had left me, but I am so happy to find that I have made a full recovery. After going through this uncertain time, we have grown closer as a couple, as a family. We have been overwhelmed by the love and support from our Christian family and we have realized the true power of our God. We haven't even considered international adoption because of the financial barriers.. until now. The God that saved me is the God that will walk with us through the adoption journey and will remove the barriers that need to be removed. We just have to get out of the way and let Him lead! Over the past few weeks we have had several confirming circumstances that lead us to believe that God is pointing us to International Adoption. Wow, even writing those words terrifies me. This is so major... and it is nothing short of God that will make this happen.

So, what now? Well, we have begun the research process. Trying to get a lot of our questions answered. Looking up what resources are out there and what we can do to spread the word and call on anyone who may feel God leading them to adopt or support us in our endeavor. Please pray for us as we follow God's direction. 

We felt Gods presense throught the winter of this process, even though circumstances confused us, they caused us to grow. We now feel that "spring" is coming and we must begin preparing... but not without His continued leading.
What season of life are you in? Whatever it may be, remember that God has a specific purpose and plan! Make the most of your season!


http://www.showhope.org/
http://www.adoption.com/

Update: Doors did not open for us to adopt internationally but we were able to find an amazing Christian based foster care agency and received our license in July 2011. We had a placement and a few respite experiences before God brought our little girl on March 7th, 2012. 8 1/2 months later we welcomed her precious newborn brother into our home. October 13th, 2013 we finalized our adoption and officially welcomed Marlena Marie and Maxwell Antonio into our family. God is GOOD!