Happy Monday, friends! Who said Mondays can’t be happy?!
I have sat down to write this post multiple times the last few weeks, but for some reason I just couldn’t do it. It’s not that it’s a hard post to right necessarily, but sometimes trying to convey your words and how you feel can be difficult. I will try my best to be as brief as possible, and hope that you all can see our heart in the matter. We wanted to share an update on where we are as far as our adoption, Charlie, and what the future looks like.
Many of you have been faithfully following, and supporting our journey the last three years as we worked to adopt a little one from Haiti. We did fundraisers, filled out PILES and piles of paperwork, prayed, celebrated the victories and grieved through the waiting. In the spring of 2015 we found out we had officially finished everything on the United States end of everything. Our homestudy was approved, and we were ready to start collecting everything we needed for our dossier to send to Haiti. The next big installment of a few thousand dollars would be due soon, so we worked hard filling out grant applications. That’s about the time everything in our life seemed to crumble around our feet. Have you ever had one of those days, weeks, months, or even years where you can’t imagine anything else going wrong? That was 2015 for us. All of our dreams, hopes, and desires that we gripped so tightly on began to be ripped right from our hands.
There is a quote from Corrie Ten Boom that says, “Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.” Well, wasn’t that the truth.
We had experienced some deep personal hurt that we were trying to navigate through, when summer came along and we found out some hard news from our adoption agency. Up until now we had loved how much our agency kept us in the loop of things going on, but this news wasn’t shared with us through a phone call, or email, but rather when I just happened to be looking on their website. To try and explain in the least confusing way, they basically had to halt all dossiers being sent over to Haiti until at least 2018. And they had no choice but to close the Haiti program for those not already in it. When we became a part of the program so many things had been looking up, and the future looked promising. But things in Haiti had become so chaotic in the year since we started that the changes became fewer and the waits longer. We thought we would wait it out a little bit and just see if anything changed.
Through the waiting, towards the end of 2015, some major life changes were beginning to happen. I found out I was pregnant, but soon after had a miscarriage. It was a devastating time, that is still difficult to convey. Just a few months after that we decided it would be best to take our family and begin a new adventure, in a new town, and a new job at a new church.
So much change, so many things to think about. When we moved away we began to weigh our options as far as continuing our international adoption. Should we just learn to wait at least another three years and spend time and money that could potentially be wasted, or should we begin to seek other options? Let me tell you something though before I share where we are today. From the VERY beginning of our adoption journey, 6 years ago, I said I would NEVER ever do foster care. Many things caused that reaction, but I think the biggest was just fear. Do you see where this is going, friends? Something funny happens when you tell God no, He usually says yes. When we moved to our new town something happened. Our eyes began to open to the needs around us. Our hearts were burdened, and broken, and completely changed. Saying yes started to become not so impossible. Until saying yes was the answer.
So here we are. This week we will sign our contract and our family will officially be certified to foster, and also adopt here in Oklahoma. Dustin and I have been working since the beginning of the year doing paperwork, house assessments, homestudies, and training and we have finally reached the end. We have decided to push our own fears aside. We are excited, scared, relieved, full of hope, nervous, and basically every other emotion under the sun. Somehow God has a plan in all of this, and we can’t wait to see what that is. So while the door to our adoption adventure to Haiti had been closed, at least for now, our eyes are fixed on God and the new door He has opened right now.
Oh, and Charlie. Sweet Charlie. Charlie is not lost in our hearts. We honestly never felt 100% sure of where Charlie would come from. We just knew one day he or she would be ours. They could have come from Ethiopia, South Africa, Haiti, we didn’t know. But maybe we’ll one day learn that all along, Charlie was going to come from right here in Oklahoma. So don’t be quick to throw your Charlie shirts out, or stop wearing your bracelets. We haven’t. Those things are a reminder to pray for this journey and for the journey of Charlie, whoever they are, and wherever they may be.
There is so much to this journey that we would love to share as time goes on, but we wanted to be as brief as possible while still trying to explain where we are at in this moment. The amount of gratitude we have in our hearts for each one of your prayers, support and love is greater than I can even say. Please keep praying for our family as we begin this new adventure any day now. We are so honored that we get to help families in the hardest, most darkest times of their lives. To love on little ones, and care for their parents. But we would be absolutely silly to think this will always be easy, full of happiness, or always go the way we want it to. We need you all more than ever. And throughout this whole journey we have clung to this verse, and we will continue to do so.
Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. ~Romans 12:12