I have been thinking a lot about if… and how…. and when to share our story of adopting our sweet littlest girl.

I sometimes find myself having a difficult time balancing between wanting to share our lives and protecting our privacy {especially when it comes to the kiddos.} That being said, I feel like enough time has passed that it feels more real – and “safe” – for me to share about how God sent this little blessing into our lives.

If you’re not super familiar with our family, Wes and I have had adoption on our hearts since before we were ever married. We looked into “private” adoption a few times, but knew that it wouldn’t be financially possible any time soon. Over time, we started to learn about foster care from various friends we had who were/are foster parents and decided we wanted to learn more. A couple months after our second daughter was born {Spring 2013} Wes and I attended our first informational meeting. We got on a waiting list to start our 10-week long class in October, and the following March {2014} we got our license in the mail. We were excited to get started, but it would be a while before we received any calls.

In June 2014, we found out we were expecting a sweet little boy, but continued to take short term “respite” placements. We decided not to take any babies long term since we had our own little one on the way, and we knew that lots of foster families were supposedly  “seeking an infant.” That changed in November, when we got a call from a caseworker having a difficult time finding a home for a 2-week old newborn girl. Due to the circumstances before and around her birth, all of the families she had called said no, but she got our name from one of the families we had done respite for.

I can only give God the glory for how it all unfolded. We had already said no to a couple of infants at this point, but when I called Wes, we both knew that we needed to accept the placement. By the time I called the caseworker back, she had already been turned down by another family {they don’t wait on us to make decisions!} So at 5-months pregnant, I packed up the big girls and headed down to our DHS office to pick up baby girl, and she’s been with us ever since!

There’s a lot of joy and a lot of stress that can come with being foster parents. Mostly, it’s just hard dealing with the unknown. It’s hard when you’re falling in love with a sweet little child to know what to pray for. The initial goal with foster care is almost always reunification {except in extreme cases of course} as it absolutely should be. We learned to pray for baby girl’s best interest rather than how we thought specific things should happen. We learned to pray that whether she ended up with up or back with her birth mother, she would be safe and loved and grow up in a home that protected her. As it turned out, her birth parents were unable to care for her, and in November of 2015 {a little over a year after we ‘got’ her} the adoption was finalized!

We feel so grateful and blessed that God has allowed us to be her forever family. During the time before the adoption was final, it was hard to pretend like she didn’t exist in most settings {foster care privacy laws} so I kind of stopped sharing very much about what was going on in our family. I’m looking forward to “catching up” and sharing some of our awesome memories and trips together, but I’ve also included some of my favorite pictures during that time.

We plan to foster again if the situation is right. We know it may or may not lead to adoption, but feel called to possibly help out another family through the process. We also recently learned that the state we’re in “cuts you off” at 5 kiddos in the home, so this could also be our last change to adopt through the system. Whatever the case, we are so so grateful for the children that we have and will continue to move forward one step at a time. <3

*Note: This post was originally published on our previous blog Discover. Create. Live. on February 16, 2016