In May of 2011, God clearly told Jarrod and I that we were to grow our family through adoption. God has taught Jarrod and I so much through this journey. We have grown closer to Him through our constant reliance on Him in prayer as we made so many tough decisions these past 3 years. For that I am thankful.
One of the most amazing parts of this journey has been experiencing God erase our fears and give us the ability to fully trust Him and his plan for our family. It started with the fear of adoption in general, there are so many unknowns that your mind can race with different scenarios of all the things that could go wrong. When we felt God wanted us to pursue Ethiopia there was the fear of traveling so far and leaving Lily and Jett, and all the things that could happen with bringing a child from a 3rd world country into our home; unknown diseases, behavioral issues, attachment disorders the list goes on. But as we prayed and gave God our concerns, he calmed our fears and told us to TRUST Him.
The period of waiting was hard at times, but mostly it was a time of maturing on our part, of being happy with the season of life we were in and trusting and praying that God had it all planned out and we just needed to follow His lead. Being completely submitted to God in our decisions gave us great JOY and PEACE knowing that He was in control.
And then God's plan began to unfold.
It started with a stirring in my heart back in the spring of 2013. I was spending a lot of time in prayer while I was on a mission trip in Costa Rica with my sister. We had lots of quiet time to pray and think. God clearly told me He wanted me to quit my part time job and stay at home. I had no idea why, and although it took me a good 6 months to FINALLY obey him, I did. I quit a job that I really loved. I spent every morning after that praying and reading His Word. I knew that He wanted my undivided attention and I had better give it to Him.
Most of those mornings I spent on my knees crying out to God, praising Him for the time I was allowed to spend with Him and asking him what He needed me to do. I will always remember and be so thankful for that time of closeness I had with Him.
As I prayed for our adoption journey, God once again began to stir in my heart the desire to adopt domestically. I had my list of fears that I brought to Him about domestic adoption and through prayer and several friends who had adopted domestically God put all those fears to rest.
Again, He said trust me.
In May of 2013 I knew we were going to need a bigger home. For some reason Jarrod and I both knew that God wanted us to adopt two children. This was all GOD because Jarrod and I had always said we never wanted four kids. (HA!) But he changed our hearts and we knew we needed to be open to two children.
We found a house that we loved. It has four bedrooms and one of the bedrooms is HUGE, a perfect room for twins, I jokingly said when we toured the house.
He began to prepare us for something we didn't really know was coming. Jarrod and I both agreed we needed a mini van, something silly maybe, but actually a little odd that Jarrod and I would both agree that we needed to buy a mini van when we only had two kids and honestly were not real into the mini vans. (: But on New Years Eve we drove home in an eight passenger mini van. OK God, what are you up to?
As I was spending time with the Lord while my big kids were at school, I felt a peace about starting the process of domestic adoption. Our agency we were working with for our Ethiopia adoption continued to give us bad news about more slow downs and even possible shut downs of all international adoptions from Ethiopia. We really prayed about whether God wanted us to continue to wait it out or move on to a domestic adoption.
Close to the end of January we started talking with Deaconess Pregnancy and Adoption services about pursuing a domestic adoption, we prayed through each decision we made and felt that this was what we needed to do. It only took a few weeks to get all the paperwork done since we were home study ready. I felt this urgency that I needed to get our paperwork done quickly. The paperwork was a breeze (which never happens in adoption) and on February 20, 2014 I turned in our last form and birth mother letter and book.
On February 21, I decided I needed to buy a few baby items and some bottles, and diapers just in case. I felt really silly jumping the gun when I knew we could wait anywhere from 6 months to 2 years as Deaconess told us in our orientation. But just in case I bought a few girl sleepers and few boy sleepers.
On February 23rd just 3 days after our paperwork was turned in, on a Sunday afternoon at 4pm we got our call. The call we had waited for for 3 years!
A birth mother had chosen us, she wanted to meet us.
Jarrod and I were shocked and filled with joy at how quickly this had happened. Then the most exciting words came next.
It's TWINS and they are already HERE, a boy and a girl.
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