Sometimes it hurts...

...that my baby boy had a life before us.  I am pretty sure I feel this way because we do not have contact with his birth family.  I think mostly it hurts because I grieve for his loss.  I grieve for the day he truly understands and it hits his heart like a ton of bricks.  But I also pray that God would take that burden and make it light for him.  I pray that the love of the family he now has can be a comfort to him.

The beauty of adoption is that even though it comes from brokenness, God takes all those pieces (i.e, loss, abuse, neglect, barrenness, etc.) and puts them together to form something new.   A creation more beautiful than the individual parts were before being broken and reconstructed.  Let us not forget that our God is a redeemer!

Crazy Thursday

I have an insane day scheduled for tomorrow.  Why am I still awake?  We have Baby J's weekly two hour parental visits (which equals about 3.5-4 hours out of the house for us).  Then we go to her mandatory dental checkup.  After that to our pastors house for some event planning.  And to cap it all off, mandatory ongoing training with our adoption/foster agency in the evening.  The icing on the cake is that neither of the kids will nap unless it is in the car driving from place to place (this will be a first - we do not mess around with naps in this house).  Oh boy!

I received some good news from Baby J's CW today.  Her mom got a job!  Good step in the right direction for sure.  Praying that this really has been the wake up call that she needed in her life.

Sweet Baby J

Baby J came to us on a hot July evening.  It was an emergency placement and I picked her up at the hospital.  Yes, she came to us with broken bones in her little 9 month old body.  No one knows (or is saying) how it happened.

Baby J's bones are healed now.  She has two new little teeth.  She has gained the confidence to explore her world.  She is strong willed, beautiful, and loved. Most of all she is cherished.  My prayer is that where ever she goes from here that remains true.  You see because if she is cherished then she will be seen as a blessing and not as a burden.  If she is cherished then she will be protected, treasured and loved.  I pray this for my sweet Baby J. 

I knew in my heart from the very beginning that she would not be with us long.  CPS is in the process of a home study on the parental grandparents.  She could be leaving any day now.  I know my precious boy Jamie is going to miss her.  We have been talking about her leaving.  I don't know how much a 2 1/2 year old can understand.  We assure him every time that he is staying forever.  Mommy, Daddy, Jamie, the puppy and kitties will all stay forever.  I have introduced him to Baby J's mother at the weekly visits.  We tell him that we are helping them take care of her right now because they cannot.  I hope his heart understands.  I pray that God would protect him in a way that I cannot.  

Fostering after adoption

So why are we fostering when we had such a great experience with matched adoption?  Well, adopting a 15 month old through CPS is almost unheard of.  Obviously it happened but lightening rarely strikes twice in the same location.  When we decided to continue with our agency after finalizing our son's adoption they didn't give  us many options.  Our choices were
 1) matched adoption but it had to be for a child over the age of 6.
 2) Foster to adopt any age child.
 3) Find another agency if options 1 or 2 didn't work for us.

Option #1 did not work for a few reasons.  I mentioned earlier that our profile for adoption was for a sibling group up to three children.  We were very surprised to be matched with a single child.  That also meant we would be adopting again.  We really feel called to keep birth order for now with our son.  So that meant we would be looking to adopt a child 2 years old or younger.  That eliminated option 1.

Option #3 did not work as we had no desire to start the process over with a new agency.

We prayed long and hard about option #2.  After much prayer we concluded that this is what God was calling us to.  So here we are, foster parents.  Loving and serving the precious children God has placed in our home.  It could be for a little while, it could be forever.  I just have to keep reminding myself that God loves them more than I do!

"You cannot just be into adoption to adopt; you have to be into parenting."

The title is a quote from Jen Hatmaker. I know many of you have read this blog entry. But for those of you that haven't I am linking to it here. It is a beautifully honest account of adoption. A must read for all.

After the Airport

Our Son's Adoption Story

One of my main goals with this blog is to inform and encourage others as they start the journey to adopt.  For that reason I wanted to share some (not all) of the specifics about the adoption of our son.  So often during the process I searched blogs that would give me some insight.  It was difficult to find blogs about adoption through foster care or foster care in general.  I longed to see and hear about others in my shoes.

Our profile for adoption was for a sibling group up to 3 children, ages 0-6, any ethnicity.

May, 2010 we received a call from our agency that we were one of 4 families selected to adopt a 15 month old boy.  We asked "Who else?"  They replied, "No one, a single, 15 month old boy."  We were very surprised and you will see later, how that has shaped where we are today (fostering).  They told us the Selection Staffing would be next week and we would know more then.

The day of the selection staffing we received confirmation that we, yes WE, had been selected to parent this child.  We were over the moon!  Of course we wanted to find out when we could meet him.  The next step was the formal "Presentation" where CPS and all the people involved in his case would "present" his case and history to us so that we could formally say yes or no.  We knew the answer was yes, but this is part of the process.  That meeting was scheduled for a month later.  I don't think I slept for the next month.  All we knew was his name.  We had not even seen a picture of him.  I helped the time pass by preparing his room and getting everything ready for his arrival.

The day of the presentation staffing I was nervous as could be.  I think I was just so afraid that they were not going to like us, or change their mind.  It was all unfounded, but I was nervous none the less.  The staffing went perfect.  We were able to talk with his foster mom via phone and all the people on his case. We formally said "YES" and arrangements were made for us to  meet him the very next day.

Before I get to the meeting, let me bring you up to speed on some of the specifics of our son's case and how God's hand was protecting him.  Jamie (not his real name) entered CPS custody at birth and went home with his foster mom at 3 days old.  He would have one foster mom, one CASA, and only two caseworkers for his entire 16 months in the system.  This is really rare.

So, on a beautiful June day, we met our son for the first time.  Literally saw his sweet face for the first time. We had fallen in love with him long before we saw him, much like other parents do while their children are still in the womb.  He was sleeping when we arrived and he looked like an angel. Jamie wasn't and still isn't quick to warm up to adults.  But we had been praying to our Lord that He would seal our hearts together and allow Jamie to know that we were his parents when he met us. And he did!  We even slept with a stuffed bear for the month prior and left it with him the day we met him.

Let me tell you, leaving him there after meeting him was the hardest thing I have ever done.  Not because he wasn't being cared for, but because I was in love with him and wanted to soak up every breath, every smile, every cry, everything.  We returned the next day for another visit and then the foster mom agreed to bring him to our home every day until placement which was scheduled for the upcoming Friday.

Well the visits went beautifully and placement took place as scheduled.  I am going to skip over the next 6 months and fast forward to finalization.  The next 6 months will be some of the most honest thoughts on this blog.  Parenting is not easy.  We learned a lot and are still learning as we go.  Parenting and adoption is not all roses.  But it is amazing!

We finalized our adoption January of 2011.  It was a perfect ending and beginning all in one.  We kept the first name that his birth-mother gave him for a few reasons.  He already knew it.  It was a family name on my side.  It was biblical like his daddy's.  We liked it.  We did change his middle and last name.  Here is father and son at court.

Jamie's birth-family did not desire to have contact with him.  We do not currently have any insight as to parenting a child in an open adoption due to this.  It was not our desire but we cannot do anything to change this.

So this is a really condensed version of our son's adoption story.  I will share deeper insights in later post about becoming parents, peoples reactions, the highs, the lows and all the in between.

A little history and where we are headed...

My husband and I have been married since 2003.  We knew before we got married that we would grow our family through adoption.  What we did not know is that adoption would be the only way (at least it has been to this point).  After several years of infertility we absolutely knew that assisted reproduction of any sort was not God's plan for our family. After lots and lots of research about adoption and all the different ways it can be done, in October of 2008, we partnered with a local agency to adopt through Foster Care.  We fostered two boys, ages 3 & 4 for two months in 2009.  In July of 2009 we went inactive so that my husband could knock out some more college courses.  We reactivated our profile with our agency again in April of 2010.  We were matched with our son Jamie in June and he came home in July.  We finalized our adoption of him in January, 2011.  We are current foster parents to the sweetest little 10 month girl, baby J.  Her plan is reunification and she will likely be going home at the end of Sept.  So that is the short and quick of where we have been.  I plan to elaborate much more on the adoption of our son over time here.

So where are we headed?  I have been working outside the home during all of this.  As of October, 2011 I will be starting my new full time, 24 hour a day, 168 hour a week job as wife, mother, foster mom, teacher, chef, maid, etc.  My family is so looking forward to this, and so am I.  We will continue to foster after baby J leaves.  We are considering fostering a newborn next.  We are licensed for 3 children so it could be a sibling group as well.  We are committed to serving and loving these children well and seeing them reunited with their family.  However, if/when the plan changes from reunification to adoption then our home is open to them staying forever.  We look forward to seeing what God has planned for all of us!

Our family loves Jesus and we acknowledge that our role as foster parents is a ministry.  It is through God's grace and strength that we are able to persevere in this calling.

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." James 1:27