Sept 30, 2019!

Hey everyone,

I am happy to report that our little girl is finally here!!! I can never thank you for the love you have all shown us, especially over this weekend. Thank you for the prayers, calls and texts! Keep them coming because we gonna need them. This little girl has no idea how loved she already is by so many people. I hope she gets to meet as many of you as she can.

Our pride doesn’t like asking for help but so many of you have asked how you can help and what we need. We want to let you help in anyway you want. We are doing things a little backwards but we have made a registry through target and amazon. It is a work in progress but it is there. Don’t laugh at our choices, we have no idea what we are doing 🙂 So feel free to get us whatever you think we need! I’m sure there will be many things we can’t even think of so gift cards are great as well. If you want to give us anything you don’t need anymore let us know. And books of course.

So let me share with you what has happened since I last updated you two months ago.  I pray as you read this you see how God has been orchestrating things. That you see his faithfulness, his goodness, his love.

I last updated you on August 4th. If you remember that post was about how nothing has really happened. We were at a stand still it seemed and I shared some of our struggles with it all. Not long after the update I started thinking that some of our classes we have to take every year were going to be expiring soon. I emailed our agency and at first didn’t get a response. After about a week I emailed them again on August 22nd. They emailed me back the same day with a few classes we were going to need to renew in the next month or two.

When we woke up the next day on August 23rd, we had a message from a friend. It read “Hey are y’all still looking to adopt.” A few chills definitely ran down my body when Nick showed me that message. Literally, one day after I had messaged our agency about renewing our classes.

Proverbs 16:9 In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.

We did some praying and told them we were interested. We were airing on the side of caution until we got some more info. If you remember a little over a year ago we had gotten another message about adopting a newborn and it didn’t happen. By the way that sweet boy is right where he needs to be. I did not realize however how much that affected me. Up until a week ago I had been very guarded through this whole process.

After gathering some more info and speaking with our agency and the cps worker we felt at peace with saying yes we wanted to potentially adopt her.

It is crazy to think when we first started this journey we wanted to just adopt a child whose parents rights were already terminated. When asked our preferences we said boys. Obviously we didn’t really care. If we were able to get pregnant we wouldn’t be choosing.

In this situation the parents rights aren’t terminated. It is a little girl and we will be fostering at this time with the end game hopefully being adoption. Why we try and even control certain things I don’t know. You would think one day we would learn God is going to wreck our plans anyways.

But I will tell you, there is something about the peace that comes with God’s plans. Even though this is opposite of what we planned. Even with the risk of knowing something could change and she might not be with us forever; we feel such peace about it all.

The verse I have held on to this past year rings so true right now. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. not as the world gives do I give to you. Let your hearts not be troubled, do not be afraid.” John 14:27

Fast forward about a month and all of the paperwork and classes are taken care of and we get word a couple of days ago that her advocate needs to come out to the house and see her room and talk to us. We got the room ready.

Side story: About two weeks ago we had a friend bring a few items over from the collective closet. It is for fostering families in the area who might need immediate things for a new placement or can get things as needed. One of those items was a pack n play. Incase we needed it temporarily before we got a crib. We hadn’t opened it yet until a couple of nights ago when we were getting the room ready. We had decided last weekend that at we were going to do her room in animals. Imagine our surprise when we opened this pack n play for the first time and it was animal themed!  5 days before she is supposed to come. Seems like another God wink if ya ask me.

Here is one more God wink for ya. Beginning of Sept my mom was at a women’s retreat. I had called her and told her we had talked to cps and we would know the next week if they were ok with our home study and a few other things. That weekend she won a prize. It happened to be a small pink blanket and pink heart pillow that would be perfect fr a little girl.  And yes the next week cps approved all our stuff! Pretty neat if you ask me.

The advocate came Saturday to check things out. It was a short visit and he gave the ok. We worked all weekend anxiously awaiting Monday. We woke up to a phone call that Monday was still the day.

She was placed with us yesterday afternoon and we survived the first night of playing, dinner, bath and bedtime. We love her so much already and will love her for however long God calls us too.

Prayer requests

1. Pray for us as we all get adjusted to what this new life is gonna look like. We are just  jumping right in there.
2. Pray for her as she warms up to us and gets used to us and her new home.
3. Pray for her family as they adjust without her
4. Pray for Nick and I as we figure out this parenting thing. That we wouldn’t get frustrated with each other and we continue to communicate well why figuring out how to parent.