Our journey to adopt...

I don't even know where to start with this blog post.  I've attempted to start blogging several times but always came up short.  Well, the journey we are on now needs to be told.  Our daughter needs her story told!  Let me back it up for a bit...

Before I met Dave, I was in the process of adopting a very special little girl.  After we met and quickly were married we had hoped to adopt her together.  Unfortunately that people who made the big bucks and the big decisions didn't think we wanted to adopt such a special child right at the beginning of our marriage.  Now, that is months of heartache in a couple sentences, but in the end, we lost our sweet girl! 

From that point on, we knew we would one day adopt.  It wasn't something we dwelled on or even talked much about.  We went on with our daily lives and waited on the Lord's leading.  We decided to become foster parents and for 4 years had a number of kids ranging from newborn to 17 come through the doors of our home.  Some stayed for weeks and others stayed for 12+ months.  There were a couple we wanted to adopt as our own, but for a variety of reasons those didn't come to fruition either.  We never grew bitter.  Each disappointment only solidified our hearts desire to adopt.  

This spring that Lord really started to move in my heart about adoption again.  Specifically in regards to adopting a child with special needs.  I would search the internet occasionally to learn more about the process.  During one of those times, I came upon a website called Reece's Rainbow.  It is an organization that specializes in placing orphans with special needs.  I looked through the pages and pages of kids and kept coming back to a sweet little girl.  After a few days of not being able to get her out of my mind I talked to Dave about it.  I showed him the picture and we discussed it briefly and then went on about the day.  The next day I mentioned to him that I couldn't get her out of my mind.  I told him that she was the first thing I thought of in the morning and the last thing before bed.  He said he was right there with me.  We went ahead to gathered some more information and asked a lot of questions to the New Family Liaison.  It was a Thursday evening and we had been talking and praying about it a lot.  We decided to wait the weekend and really pray hard and make a final decision on Monday.  Well, Friday morning came.  Dave's alarm went off and he turned to me and woke me up and said "we can't wait until Monday, submit the papers TODAY! Do it this morning!" Now, my husband is an amazing leader and is very strong in his convictions, but it is completely out of character for him to speak with such certainty and with such seriousness.  I said ok (but secretly I was still doubting his conviction and was terrified myself).  I wrote the email that I needed to write to get the official commitment started, but before I pushed send I called him one more time at work.  His convictions were even stronger than early in the morning.  I sent that email and we official committed to our daughter!

Please continue to pray for us and our family!  Over the next little bit I will share more about the process, our hearts in it, and just our day to day lives.  I'm not exactly sure where this blog will go or what it will look like on a day to day basis.  I'm sure it will be ever evolving, just like me! But, I will end each post with a few specific prayer requests.  We just as that as you finish reading please offer up a quick prayer for our family!

Prayer Requests:

-Pray for Treva's safety and health until we can get her home

-Pray our home study can be completed quickly and without issues

-Pray for people who are willing to join our team to bring Treva home to a family and out of a life destined to be lived in institutions!