Keeping Faith

When we realized shortly after trying to have kids several years that the process for having kids was going to be difficult, we did not realize just how difficult of a journey it would become.  Our journey for children started off quite rocky with infertility issues.  Once we found medication and the dosage that worked, we were able to conceive relatively easy (all things considered!).  However, we were never able to maintain a viable pregnancy.  Each miscarriage left a void in our hearts.  I struggled to come to terms with my body and its in ability to become pregnant without a ton of medication and the inability to sustain life.  After several months of research, praying, and just time we decided to go the adoption route.  We felt like we should adopt through foster care instead of a private adoption.  We spent 14 weeks taking training course to become certified foster parents so that we could adopt. (Arizona requires everyone who adopts through foster care to "foster" the children first, even if the parental rights are already severed.) Once we received our foster license, we were excited at the possibility of having a family in the very near future.

Much to our dismay every "match," and I use that term very loosely, was completely opposite of what we wanted.  Our criteria was somewhat limited (limited for our region anyhow) in that we wanted a child or children that spoke English, had similar religious views, and were relatively healthy (no major or terminal medical conditions).  After several of months of poor "matches" we began to loose hope.  We decided that perhaps foster care wasn't for us and that we should just looking at adopting older children.  We could not pursue this possibility until our adoption certification was finalized (which we are still waiting on).

We were quickly loosing hope and had decided that as soon as our adoption certification was complete we were going to look in to interstate adoptions.  We had been very patient with our agency through multiple case manager changes, being "lost in the transition," and the holidays.  The week before Christmas I had enough.  I called wanting answers and discovered there were several errors in our file.  After getting our file corrected and letting our newest case manager know what we wanted I felt a sense of relief and found new faith.  Two days latter we received our first call about a possible match.  This match was much closer to what we wanted, but we did not feel it was right for us.  Four days later we received the call about the boys!

Throughout the journey to get kids I kept praying that we would be open to God's plan for us.  Ever since we picked up the boys, we knew the possibility existed for the boys to return to their biological parents or to relatives.  Every day, several times a day, I find myself praying for the well-being of the boys in the long term, for us to be prepared for whatever happens, and for us to have faith and follow God's plan for us and the boys.  Some days I am confident everything will work out for the best for us and the boys and other days I just keep praying, and praying.  I do not know what this journey has in store for us, but I know I love these little boys with every ounce of my soul and I try to keep the faith that everything will work out the way God has planned.