Well, God certainly took the pen...

If you recall from my last blog post, Mike and I decided to end the fertility treatments since it was costing so much money and they were not working for us. We made the decision to take a break and pray about the Lord's direction for us from here. We knew that either In-Vitro or adoption would be our next step, but we were unsure where the Lord would lead us. We just knew that whatever decision we made, we wanted it to be the Lord leading us. A very wise friend of mine has said to me several times to make decisions from a place of peace, not from a place of fear, and I thought that was such great advice. The title of my last blog post was "Letting God write our story"...well, He certainly grabbed the pen and ran with it! And it certainly caught us off guard, but in such a wonderful way!

A few weeks ago, in the midst of this waiting period, I was contacted by a friend of mine from college who told me that the Lord had put us on her heart and she felt like she just needed to share something with us. I have not talked to this friend in several years (probably since college), but we were in the same sorority in college. She has been keeping up with my blog, which is how she knew what we had been going through. She told me that she knew of a young couple who were pregnant, due in September, and have made the decision to put their baby up for adoption. She said the Lord brought us to mind, and she felt like she needed to share with us.

Initially, when I read the message, I got really excited, and shared the message with Mike. Then I started thinking about the logistics and decided that it probably wouldn't work. I thought that 3 months was not enough time to get everything done, so I was quick to dismiss the idea. Mike said, "Let's just pray about it and see how we feel about it in a few days." I'm always so thankful for his approach to situations, and agreed to just pray about it. That night I "left" for a work conference. (It was in Fort Worth, but I stayed in a hotel with my co-workers, so it felt like I was away!) I found myself praying and thinking about this situation and this baby constantly, and when Mike met us all for dinner on Tuesday night, the first thing he said to me was, "Have you still been thinking about this baby?" I just laughed and agreed that I had. Through the course of praying and talking to Mike over the next few days, we decided that whether or not things worked out with this baby, we felt like the Lord was leading us to adopt. We felt like maybe this was the baby for us, or maybe the Lord just used this situation to make the decision for us that adoption is the way we were supposed to go. Either way, we felt such an immediate, overwhelming peace, which is something we haven't felt in this area of our lives in a long time.

I sent a message back to my friend letting her know that we were interested in seeing if adopting this baby would be an option. She then had her friend talk to the birth parents about us, and told me the couple was going through the Gladney Center for Adoption. The next day, my friend told me that the birth parents said we sounded like a great family for their baby, and said they were going to talk to their adoption caseworker about us! That Friday I called Gladney and was told what we would be going through is considered an independent adoption because Gladney is not having to match us with a birth mother/parents. I left a message with the caseworker (who was, of course, out of the office that day!) Then we had to wait for more information from her.

Last Monday, the caseworker emailed me back and said she needed to check with the birth parents' caseworker to see if they had talked to her about us. On this past Thursday (which seemed like an eternity of waiting) the caseworker called me and said she had spoken to the birth parents' caseworker and she reported that the birth parents are definitely interested in us as a possible adoptive family for their baby! So what that means is....

We are starting the adoption process for this baby girl!

We talked to the caseworker about the process briefly and on Friday as we were leaving for our anniversary trip we got the social and medical history on the birth parents, which was great! After hearing this, we gave our caseworker the go-ahead and she put the paperwork in the mail to us (all 60 pages of it!) So now our next step is to get our profile together to give to the birth family, so they know some more information about us, and lots of pictures of us (which I told her was no problem for me!) After that, they will (hopefully) agree to move forward with us and then the next step would be our home study. And then, if everything works out, we will have our baby girl home in 4 months!! (We found out Friday that she's actually due October 11).

This whole situation has been crazy...the fact that the Lord just dropped this in our laps, that He changed our hearts and desires almost in an instant, and that we feel just as excited about starting our family through adoption as we would be if I were pregnant. I can't explain the sense of peace that we feel about this decision...Mike and I just know that this is definitely a God thing.

These next few months are likely going to be really crazy (in a good way!) so we have some prayer requests: First of all, pray for the birth parents to have a peace about their baby becoming part of our forever family, and deciding to go forward with us and this process. Pray for a healthy pregnancy for the mother, and safety and health for the baby girl. Pray for us: we have to come up with the money for the adoption, everything we need for the baby, and if she comes home to us, I will be on maternity leave in a few short months, and won't get paid for the majority of it, so please pray for our finances! We are going to try to fundraise as much as possible, but we don't have a huge amount of time. I am also planning to apply for some adoption grants, but we have to have our completed home study done first, so again, time is a factor. So please pray for us as we begin this next phase of our journey to become parents!

As crazy as these past few weeks have been, we are feeling such a peace about starting our family through adoption, and we know that this is the Lord's path for us. We may still have biological children if the Lord chooses to intervene, or we may adopt all of our children. Either way, we know that His plans are better than ours, and that He uses any means necessary to bring His plans to fruition. I told Mike the other day, how amazing would it be if this baby comes home with us, because that would mean that the Lord used our blog about infertility to bring us our first child...and in 4 months, after 2 1/2 years of waiting!

His plans are always better.

--Becky