Our Expanding Family

I think it took about 1 day after I had Cason for someone to ask me if I was ready for another one. 

Seriously?  I think I wanted to hit them.

Cason is almost three and I get asked that question much more often. 

When someone asks when we are having another child I typically say “no way”. 

But there is a little more to the story- so let me tell you now.

 

Mike and I have always wanted to adopt.  In fact, I think we talked about it before we even got married.  The thing we didn’t know was HOW or WHEN. 

We had Cason and I felt like my life was spinning out of control for a few years and more children was the last thing I wanted to think about.

This summer Mike and I were visiting friends in Houston and sitting in their church service and I felt convicted about saying we wanted to adopt but making absolutely no progress towards that.  We felt it was time to start researching our options.

 

One thing that really pulled at our heart was foster children.  Mike’s sister works for an agency so it has always been on our radar- but as we started thinking about how we would add another child to our family, foster care kept coming back into our hearts.

We are in the early stages and there are still so many things we do not know.  Here’s what we do know.

The Lord has called us to adopt and given us this direction.  Unless the Lord gives us a different direction, we will continue to move forward. 

Based on the fact that people feel compelled to tell me foster care horror stories every time I mention that this is what we are planning on doing, foster care has a scary reputation.  Here’s the deal though, the LORD is guiding this process.  There will be ups and downs.  We are not naive to think that it’s going to be easy, we know our hearts might get broken, but we are trusting the LORD to carry us through.

 

Can I have more children (a common question)?  It doesn’t matter right now.  We want to adopt whether I could get pregnant again or not. 

 

One night mike and I were praying about our decision to adopt.  I showed him a verse God led me to in Ephesians: He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—Ephesians 1:5.

A few days after that we found out that we couldn’t work with the first foster agency that we wanted to and would have to keep looking.  It was discouraging and was easy for me to start thinking that it would be easier to just wait a few more years.  That Sunday in church pastor started a new series and the verse he opened with was Ephesians 1:5.  I started laughing (almost crying) because I knew that was the Lord telling us to keep going.  Since then we have found an amazing agency to work with and we can’t wait to get started.

 

I’ll be keeping you posted with updates and timelines as we continue in the process.  I can’t wait to tell you all the details as we go along.

If you feel led to pray for us, please do.  Here are a few things:

• We had lots of training to do over the next few months- we need to find time to fit in the training and find childcare for Cason
• Pray for our future child(ren)
• There are a few things we have to do to the house to get ready.  Although adopting through foster care is not very costly, some of the stuff we need to do at the house will cost money.  Pray that the Lord will provide for that.
• The Lord gave us a very laid back son in Cason, perfect temperament to have a new sister arrive on the scene one day- but we know that with any change it will be an adjustment period.  Pray for his heart to be ready when the day comes.

Thank you- and stay tuned!