Changes

It has been an extremely busy week here with our girls. Zoelle has been showing her spirit wherever she goes and in whatever she does, so she is keeping me constantly on my toes. Meridian, we think is about to pop her very first tooth, so she has been struggling to fall asleep for nap time and bed time and then stay asleep. So, I haven't been on here to update much. They are still both darling though and I love them with all my heart:




Unfortunately, this post is actually going to be quite short (in terms of not really talking about the adoption). As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am doing some changing and updating to my blog. In addition to changing this blog, I am going to start a family blog as a way for our kids to have a record of their childhood.

One of the first and biggest changes to this blog will be the blog address. I wanted to forewarn you all of it first before I actually went ahead and changed it. Those of you who are my friends on facebook, I will post the new address there, so no worries. However, any who don't follow me on facebook, or aren't my friends there, just leave me a message and I will send you the new address once it is switched. I'll wait a few days in order that everyone that wants to sees this and is able to let me know they want the new address.

As far as the adoption goes, I will post more on that later (I promise) as we are in the process of making some decisions of whether to show our profile or not in a few different situations. Prayers are always appreciated! :)

Don't forget-leave me a comment, or somehow contact me for the new address if you want to keep following. Those of you who are faithful followers, our blog is staying the same as far as my posts will not disappear, etc. Just the address is changing right now.

Not yet

I haven't had the time to come update, but our social worker let us know on Tuesday night that the birth mother was presented with enough families and therefore did not need our profile. So not yet.

We are VERY at peace about it and know that God has the perfect baby for us and we just need to be content in waiting. We are.

Oh, and we let our social worker know which agencies we want our profiles given to. So, we join the official waiting game. Very exciting, but also hard as we know the wait could be very long, or could be super short.

All we know right now is that it is not yet and we are content in that.

Declare It!

And then God answered: "Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. This vision-message is a witness pointing to what's coming. It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait! And it doesn't lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It's on its way. It will come right on time.

Habakkuk 2:2 The Message

This past week, at our marriage group, God really spoke to my heart through the above scripture. I guess it had never occured to me to write down the vision that God had given us. I gently felt God nudging me on Thursday night to write it down in our blog. I know I have shared why we are doing this, but I've never just declared the vision. While I still don't feel comfortable sharing specifics on the vision God has given us, I will just declare now that God has called us to adopt, that it will happen, and that He will provide for us financially without us ever having to take out a loan.

Oh does it ever seem slow in coming. Yet God says to wait and that it is on its way, right on time! Praise God for that!

Meanwhile, we may possibly be sending out our profile and homestudy to our very first birth mom. Our social worker emailed us on Friday with a situation, and we have spent the weekend talking, praying, and seeking Godly counsel on this particular situation. We feel that we are to present our profile and homestudy, and that if we are chosen, or are not chosen, that this is God's will for our family. Pray with us as we now wait on God.

Also, look for upcoming changes to our blog. I have been praying for some time now about updating/revising our blog and starting a family blog so we have a record of life for the girls. However, I had no idea how to go about it on my own. Then, I came across a fellow mom and blogger who wrote a book about how to blog and she was giving a book away. I happen to enter the contest and low and behold, I won! :) So, be on the look out for changes.

He Cares

I am in a state of shock today. Yesterday I had a particularly hard day in regards to the adoption. However, I should probably back up and explain to you the decision we came to over the weekend.

Over the weekend, Chris and I had some time to talk about the adoption and if we want to move forward with it or not. Time and time again, we kept coming back to an adoption story that some friends of ours had in which they felt God calling them to adopt, but not take out any loans for it. God faithfully provided for them and today they have a beautiful little girl to demonstrate God's faithfulness. Essentially, we felt that God was reminding us that from the beginning He told us that He would provide and we had to keep trusting Him as He would be faithful to follow through with that promise. So, we wrote an e-mail to our social worker and told her that we do want to adopt and that we believe that God will be faithful to provide, so please distribute our profiles. Our social worker e-mailed us back yesterday and basically said that they can and will do that, but will not really "promote us" so to speak as we technically do not have the funds. Talk about another disappointment to us. I cried out to Chris and God yesterday...again. Oh, and Zoelle heard some of my crying too! :) Outside of those two, I only shared with my mom briefly about what happened. Thus, what happened today, shows me that God truly cares.

As a stay at home mom, getting the mail is the highlight of my day! Pathetic right? Well, it breaks up my day and is always fun to see what we got. Today, I was going through the mail and saw a check in there to us. I had no idea why or who would have sent it to us, so I opened it up. Inside was an anonymous gift given to us by someone who wants it to go towards our adoption expenses. There is no way anyone outside of my mom, husband, and Zoelle, that anyone could have known that yesterday I was crying out to God to show us where we are to go again. There is no way this particular person could have known when they sent this check that they were showing me that God cares. Pretty amazing, huh?

So, I just want to say thank you. First of all to God. Thank you for showing me you care and that you do not want us to give up, but you want us to continue to trust and follow you in this adoption journey. Secondly, thank you to whoever sent us this. I have no idea if you even read our blog, or if you even know us. All I know is that I am thankful that you were faithful to God in sending us that money. God knew that yes, we needed the money, but even more so, that I needed to see that He cared. Many blessings on you for allowing God to work in your life, and in return, ours.

Our Story

Most of you don't truly "know" our story and so we thought after a year of being on this road to adoption, you deserve to know us completely.

Our story really begins with myself (Vanessa). From the time I was a little girl, I always wanted to do one thing: become a mom. Seriously, my parents and older sister can vouch for me in that I would play with dolls all day long. Growing up, I literally had all my "children" named and my life planned. At the age of 13, God gave to me the desire to adopt a child. I can't remember the details exactly on how it happened, but it was so real in me. In fact, I actually bought an African American Bitty Baby Doll because it was so strong in my heart that one day I would adopt.

Chris, on the other hand, was definitely your typical boy. All boy in fact. I think he can attest to the fact that he never gave a thought to growing up, getting married, and having a family at all. He had hunting and fishing on his brain pretty much exclusively.

Thus when Chris and I met and started even discussing dating, I let him know one thing. One day, I would adopt, so if that was not something he wanted to do, he needed to let me know right then. He was very honest with me and told me that it was something that have never occurred to him. Children and marriage were just something he had never thought of. He agreed to commit it to prayer. It was actually over time, watching the adoption of my siblings, that changed Chris' heart on adoption.

When we did get married, it was strong on our heart to adopt. We wanted to finish school first and then start a family. For me personally, I did not care if we adopted first or had a biological child, but for Chris, it was important that we have a biological child first. If that never happened, he would be fine with it, but he did want to give it a try. Thus, Zoelle came to us and we would not trade her for anything in the world. :) She brings spirit and spunk into our lives each day, but boy does that make our lives interesting!

Shortly after Zoelle was born, we felt that now was the time to adopt. We committed a year to praying about it and talking about what was right for us. Once Zoelle turned a year old, we decided to fulfill the plan God had for us. We are still waiting for that plan to be filled, but in the meantime God brought to us Meridian. Meridian was not totally planned, but she was not a complete surprise to us either. Before we ever got pregnant with her, we discussed with our social worker that aspect of getting pregnant (as we knew an adoption could take a long time and we didn't want our children too far apart in age). Thus Meridian came into our lives and what a sweet, content little babe she is.

When we first told people we were going to adopt, we got a ton of questions from friends and family.

"Why would you do that if you can have your own children?"
"I suppose you are adopting because your parents adopted your siblings?"
"What kind of child do you want?"
"What color of skin?"
"Are you crazy?"
"Why would you wreck your perfect family?"

The answer to all of these questions is: God. He has given me a passion to do this, and in turn given Chris this same passion. Those are just a few of the questions we have gotten, and perhaps I will dedicate another post some time to questions and answers that you have about us and our adoption process.

For now, I know that God has written the beginning of our story and that He knows the ending, but has yet to reveal it to us. I cannot wait to see the ending!