Tag: Adoption

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Adoption

Following the Call – They’re HERE!!!

We are so thrilled to announce that our sweet sweet children are home and finally in our arms!!!! After a few long weeks of traveling and visiting they are HERE.

We have three adorable little girls, four and under.

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for and supporting us through this process. I will be getting back to sharing the process of our foster adoption and will share more detail on how we got to this point. We also would like to ask for your help and understanding with our sweet little ones. They are easily overwhelmed by meeting new people and are just learning that we are their new parents. As we build trust and attachment in our relationships with them we ask that you be patient as we very slowly introduce them to each of you. When we are able to introduce you or if we happen to see you out and about please don’t rush up to them, pick them up, or put them in your laps. Please ask them and us before you hug them.

We love you all so much and we are so excited to share this journey with you! Thank you so much for all of your love, prayers, and understanding.

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Adoption

Following the Call #5 – Mounds of Paperwork

Devastated. That is how I felt after finding out we would have to wait a quarter of a year to take the classes we needed to move forward. I was under the impression that we had to take the classes before we could begin the process of becoming certified to foster and adopt. Never have I been so thankful to be wrong!

We were quickly assured that we would have plenty to do while we waited! We had mounds and mounds of paperwork to look forward to. Paperwork that exposed all of our “deep dark secrets”. We had three packets to complete. Packet one (the application) was complete before we found out that we would miss the classes. Then we had packet two…oh packet two…the exposing packet! Packet two was fun. It asks tons of questions about marriage, the good, bad, and ugly. I mean it dives right in, sex life and all! This packet also asks a billion questions about your parents, your upbringing, and your always fun and entertaining teen years. The best part of this lovely form was that 90% of the questions were multiple choice. No need to explain your answers here…

Fost/adopt is not for the faint of heart or those looking to hide from their past. This is authenticville, the open book lifestyle! Thankfully I am open to a fault and maybe overshare on occasion. Packet two was long and it was an individual packet so Luke and I had our own. SO. MANY. QUESTIONS. I may have been a little nervous to turn it in. I mean do they read the answers to the questions about the teenage years? That can’t still be held against me right?!?!? Just kidding. I wasn’t a rebellious teen by any means, but still teenagers are crazyville. They aren’t fully baked.

When we turned in packet two and no one told us to take a hike, we moved on to packet three. Now I have to say, I am list person and Koinonia was very kind to supply me with the ultimate list. Packet three had the most things to check-off, so naturally it was my favorite. It also had way less questions and a lot more things to do. We had to get fingerprinted twice for the foster care and adoption background checks (please do not believe that California shares fingerprints you have to get different ones done for everything). The prints are the most expensive part of getting certified, I think Luke and I paid around $150 each. That is one of the very few things that we had to pay for.

We also had to get our DMV records ($5 each), take a CPR class ($50 each), and pay co-pays for our physicals ($20 each + blood work cost). Yes, you have to get a physical to adopt! They gotta make sure you are healthy enough to chase after little ones! That is basically the total cost we accrued through the certification process. We did have to spend some money to get our house up to home study standards, but that cost will depend on what you already have in your house and usually isn’t much (more on this later).

Packet three also required us to draw up floor plans for our house and yard, make an emergency contact list, write rules for our home, name someone guardian of our kids if we croak, get vaccine records for the pups, prove our income and employment, make a detailed financial statement, and I am sure there’s other stuff I am missing…

 

I was so anxious to check things off our list that I may have become a little bit of a stalker. I definitely called our doctor’s office a few hundred times and might have camped out in their office on a Friday afternoon to make sure they gave us the LAST piece of paperwork that we needed before they closed. I’m pretty sure the receptionist thought I lost my mind. She might have contemplated calling security when the words, “I will wait as long as it takes” escaped my lips. They were already closed at that point.

In my defense, that piece of paperwork was SUPER important, it meant we could start the home study process. So ya know, it had to be done because waiting until Monday sounded like eons of torture. Plus I was fairly confident the Lord would do what He needed to do to slowdown this crazy train if He wanted to, even if I was camped out in my doctor’s office.

Did I mention waiting isn’t my strong suit?

Categories
Adoption

Following the Call – The Decision to Start #3

One year ago, almost to the day, our journey towards adopting started. I was getting ready to start a new school year. As I sat on my bed prepping and watching TV, a commercial for an online school came on and I had the strongest feeling that the Lord was telling me this would be my last year teaching. I was very excited about going back to school and so I shook it off, thinking that can’t be right!

As the school year continued, more and more signs started popping up, it was a rough year to say the least. The year started with severe behavior issues, difficulties with parents, and quite a few CPS calls. Interacting with CPS and having to put a student in a cop car, in September, that would take her to a foster family was really heart-wrenching. I didn’t know if I would ever see that student again or what the family would be like and she kept asking if she could come home with me. That broke my heart.

Luke drove right over to the school and comforted me. His first response when I told him the story was, “Is that an option? Could we actually take her?”. We weren’t approved, plus we lived with Luke’s parents at the time, so it didn’t seem like a possibility. But at that moment I knew we needed to start praying about adopting from the foster care system in the very near future.

Our dear friends, Russell and Janna, began the process to fost/adopt shortly after that day. I was so ridiculously excited for them and a teeny bit jealous. Luke and I started picking their brains, maybe annoyingly. We wanted to know everything about the process!

The school year continued down a sad road, I called CPS several more times on many different students. I really started to fall into a dark sad place realizing what some of my students and their families go through. God really used that dark place to lead Luke and me.

In January, Luke and I started researching adoption agencies. I had always thought that you only used an agency if you were adopting out of the country or if you were doing a private adoption. I also thought that if you used an agency, that you would have to pay agency fees. That is NOT the case. We found out from Russell and Janna that there are agencies that you can use free of charge for adoptions through the foster care system. On a side not, I just want to let you know adopting from the foster care system is very low cost (I will cover cost in depth in another post). These agencies help people to navigate through child protective services, educate, and teach what to expect.

After researching for a week or so we decided to use the same agency as Russell and Janna, Koinonia Family Services. We know a lot of people that have used Koinonia and loved them! We were ready to get started!

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Adoption

Waiting, Just Wait

Writing clears my head and on a day like today, it really needs clearing. See everything seems very frazzled and half done. I hate half done things. Half done things stress me out, give me anxiety, and make me want to finish the task at all costs. I’m also a detail-oriented person, most likely to a fault. Maybe even a very big fault. But see details don’t really go with half done things.

Life is changing and lets be real, life is always changing. ALWAYS…but sometimes the changes are small and gradual. Like a slow, tiny, barely noticeable drip of the faucet over years. Yes, the dripping may be annoying, but after a while it fades into background noise, maybe you don’t even notice it anymore. You, especially if you’re like me DO notice it, but its not the end of the world. It happens. Its life.

The kind of change that is happening this year though, isn’t like that at all. It’s that weird kind of change that feels really fast and really REALLY slow all at the same time. It is also the kind where you know nothing, or very little will be the same after it happens. I find myself in a constant state of I CANNOT WAIT ANY LONGER!!!! I’m so excited and happy and joyful and thankful and just AHHHHHH, WHOOHOOO, FINALLY!! Yet, at the same time ohmygosh, fear, worry, anxiety, can I even do this, am I ready for this, are we ready for this, what’s going to happen, will my heart be ripped out and stomped on, are we insane, are we equipped for this, God are you sure we can handle this? And those are just the thoughts I have in a one minute time frame.

Well, here’s the thing, I don’t actually have any doubt at all that this is what God wants us to do. With the details and the when, you can just call me Doubting Thomas, but with the actual main event there isn’t a single doubt in my mind that God has called us to do this. So unlike me, I know! Don’t worry though I am most certainly still me am I going to do it well and all those other thoughts I listed above are still fully active. But the thing that is making me crazy and frazzled is that I have done all I can do.

And you know the worst best part?!?!?! I am not actually waiting on any people. I am waiting on my God, my Lord, my Father, my Savior and He has quietly and gently said wait my child, I’ve got it all under control. And I know He does, I know He knows best, and loves me deeply.

He even sent me a very special verse, He sweetly tucked it in my heart and mind. You know it’s special when I didn’t even have to try to memorize it. I read it once and it stuck and He repeats it to me over and over. I can honestly say I’m not sure I wanted it…not even a little bit (read more about that here), but even now He whispers, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait on the Lord” (Psalm 27:14). I don’t like it, I don’t want to wait. I want to KNOW because knowing I can plan for, knowing I can prepare my heart for. In the knowing, I don’t need God as much or should I say, I surely don’t rely on Him as much.

Trust is a funny thing. I want so desperately to trust the Lord whole-heartedly and every time I think I’ve got it down He shows me another area I haven’t fully given Him my trust in. He wants it all, my whole heart and I keep praying I learn to trust Him fully. I guess He’s going to really see me through on that prayer! And I am just so very thankful for that. For right now, I wait. I rely on Him for my strength, I remember He’s got this, and I wait.

*I wrote this a couple of months ago and it is still so true today. A friend recently told me how important it is for us to learn how to wait on the Lord. It is such a difficult, but important lesson to learn. Wait on the Lord, for He is good!

Categories
Adoption

Following the Call #2 – My Control, His Plan

Have you ever gone on a zip line? People love those things! They want to ride zip lines in the jungle, at the beach, and anywhere in-between and I CANNOT understand that for the life of me. I hate zip lines. HATE THEM.

The summer of 2008, I decided I would be “brave” and pack up and move to Sugar Pine Christian Camps to be a camp counselor for the summer. I wanted to find out what my true character was and what better way to find out than to stick myself somewhere I’d never been, with people I’d never met, in the middle of the woods. I hadn’t ever been to a summer camp or any kind of camp for that matter and I don’t think I had ever even gone camping before.

Well one of the things we had to do for team building was the rope course, ya know the rope things way high in the trees? I didn’t think it would be that bad. I’m not afraid of heights and I’m tough I like to think I’m tough. So I go through the whole ropes course without too much trouble or fear and then I get to the end. The STUPID end is a zip line and until this moment I had no idea I didn’t like zip lines or that I was under no circumstances going to willingly throw myself off of a tall tree. Mind you I am extremely competitive and there may have been a boy there that I was dating at the time, whom I wanted to impress and yet I could not jump. This was a team building activity and people were starting to pass me. I was NOT embarrassed and I was NOT throwing myself down. Finally my boss, with my permission, pushed me off the tree, thank the Lord she agreed because I would still be up there now.

I did find out some stuff about myself that summer, namely, I don’t like to feel out of control. Zip lines = no control. Once you let go at the top of a zip line you can’t stop until you hit the ground. Why that is appealing to people I do not know or understand, Luke tried to explain several times. It was and still is all lost on me. God used that summer to show me that I really really don’t like to be out of control and on a completely different note I am super indecisive, those two go great together in case you were wondering. That has led to some good things like never getting drunk or wanting to, but it doesn’t exactly put God in His proper place in my life.

Waiting, is another thing that we have no control over, at least when you are waiting for God’s go ahead. During the last 10 years of waiting to adopt, I felt very out of control of my life. I hated waiting and not knowing when or if it would ever happen. Sometimes I felt it was taking so long that I might forget about the calling and drift into a life that didn’t have adoption in it. At times I even doubted if I had even been called at all.

God, of course never faltered in His plan, despite my struggle for control. See I am one of those people that have always (almost always) wanted to have lots of children. I am also a self-proclaimed realist, Luke calls it being negative or something. So I knew we needed to wait to have kids and to adopt. That was the practical thing to do since we didn’t have any money or a house. So I tried to plan everything out. We would pay off student loans, buy a house, start trying to get pregnant the summer of 2016, the next summer we would get prego again, and then within a year or so of that, start the adoption process. Don’t be fooled folks, the plan was WAY more detailed than that, but I will not bore you with the insane plans of a crazy detail-oriented control freak.  Let’s just say God did not determine our my plans, let’s be real Luke only knew like a third of the craziness going on in my heart, the way I planned them. In August 2015, God decided to start changing my heart and my plans, leaving me feeling less in control <insert horrified, ear-splitting scream here> and much more excited for what God was doing in our lives. His plan is ALWAYS so much better than mine, hopefully I remember that someday.

“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” Proverbs 16:9

Categories
Adoption

Following the Call #1

I heard the call as if it was spoken aloud to me. It was direct and clear. My heart, unflinchingly and whole-heartedly said YES! I remember this moment like it was mere seconds ago. It was one of those moments when obedience to what God is calling you to almost seems too easy and I can honestly say that though I have always strived for obedience, it doesn’t always rarely comes easily for me. This wasn’t one of those times in my faith where the Lord and I were on a mountain top, lest you believe His callings come only at the best of times. During this time in my life my faith was growing, changing, and it was scary, sharp, pointy and difficult. My faith was becoming my own, a relationship with the Lord. It was wonderful and terrible, beautiful and terrifying. This calling can at the perfect time, something to hang on to and make Romans 8:23 all the more real and tangible to me. I clung to Romans 8 at this time in my life, nothing could separate me from His love.

I was 19, driving through Fresno and listening to Focus on the Family or something like it, on adoption. I’m not sure if the point was to encourage people to adopt or if adoption was just a piece of someone’s story, but in that moment I heard,  “You are meant to adopt”. To love someone, who may not have felt love otherwise, yes Lord! My heart soared! I want to love like you have loved me, well at least to the best of my ability and He called so I believed He would provide the love.

I dove in. I researched, I went to classes on the different types of adoption. I majored in psychology and I wrote research papers on attachment theory for adopted children. I knew the time wasn’t quite right, but I wanted to prepare. When I met Luke at 21, I remember one of my most important make or break our relationship questions was how do you feel about adoption. He was more than favorable to the idea. We got married when I was 23 and years went by, sometimes I wondered did you really call Lord. Why is it taking so long? When will it be our time to adopt? To have children? It hurt to wait, to have a calling and not be able to act on it. But my heart would never let go and Luke carried that calling in his heart with me, never letting me lose hope. The Lord was and still is preparing the way to our children.

Ten years have passed since that day in my car.

Categories
Adoption

Our New Adventure

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Photo Credit: Kati Catania

We are going to be parents!!!! That’s right everyone! We are so beyond excited to share our good news with you… Luke and I are adopting!!!

 

We wanted to share a little bit of our journey with you. We decided in January that the Lord was calling us to adopt. Now if you’ve known me for any length of time, you probably already know that adoption has been on my heart for my whole adult life. Luke and I were ecstatic to hear God saying now is the time!

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Photo Credit: Kati Catania
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Photo Credit: Kati Catania

We are adopting through the foster care system, which means we have spent the last 6 months taking several classes, doing stacks of paperwork, background checks, medical exams, home study interviews, and more. On June 1st we had our last interview!!!! This means that all of our part is done. Now we wait for a report to be written on all of the information that has been gathered on us. Once the report is written and we approve it, we will wait for our approval or certification.Then we wait for children to be placed with us. Lots of waiting… We can’t wait to have our sweet kiddos in our arms!!!

I will be posting more detailed information on our adoption journey through the fost/adopt system for all of you interested in learning more very soon.

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Blog

Praying and Helping Others

God’s faithfulness and growth in trusting Him has been the motivation for this blog, right??!?! So today I thought I would feature two families who are really trusting in God and His faithfulness! I know this post is a little departure from the normal financial, student loan stuff, which isn’t completely abnormal for me 😉 as I am trying just to write about whatever God would like me to write about. So I would like this blog to be a place where we pray for and help each other. With that in mind, I would love to invite you to pray for and help, as you feel led, these two families.

I mentioned on my last blog post, a friend that is pregnant and found out she has leukemia. Her and her husband have done an amazing job of following the Lord in this valley. They have shown their faithfulness to the Lord and their devotion in trusting what He has for them. I am encouraged and driven to follow Christ with more devotion because of their obedience to be joyful in all circumstances, to trust the Lord, to lay all of their fears and worries at His feet and I have seen the peace that has come over them as a result.  I ask you to join in prayer for this faithful little family! I am praying for complete healing, protection over their unborn child, and continued trust, joy, and peace! If you would like to follow Allison’s story click here. You can follow their emotional and wonderful video series here:

The other family I would love for you to pray for and help, is a family that is so near and dear to my heart! You may have seen me posting about them on Facebook or Instagram, Rob and Andi Lambert! They are such wonderful people, that have devoted their lives to serving the Lord and whom I have always been able to count on. To make it even closer to my heart it is their process of adopting, which Luke and I LOVE and can’t wait to be a part of ourselves! They are in the process of adopting a sweet baby and the road to becoming parents has been long and hard, but more importantly filled with faithfulness and trust in the Lord! This couple has also spurred me on to trust in the Lord and His will for Luke’s and my life. You can read about their story on their blog here. You can also help them bring  baby L home here

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with their super fun LOVEraiser (with the chance to win an awesome portrait or here on their GoFundMe page.

 

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this, pray, and respond to these two families’ stories! I really appreciate it and if you need prayer please feel free to message me or leave a comment! Let’s be a community of people that love on each other in good times and in times of need.