It has been almost a year since our last post and a lot has happened. We are keeping most people updated through our adoption Facebook group; however, I love documenting our adoption details through this blog.
Fundraising...a lot of it. Grant applications...a lot of them. This has been our life during the first half of this year. When we felt we were being called to adopt again, we were drowning in medical bills from all the surgeries, trips to out of state hospitals and supplies for Aiden. Sinking. It didn't make sense for us to start this process again, but God was asking us to step out in faith again. So we did. We are praising the Lord for the funds he has supplied and that every time we have another fee to pay, we have had just enough money to cover it. We have received money from every grant we have applied for so far. So we continue to fundraise (we have currently made 150 dozen cookies and counting!) and are finding more grants to apply for. This is the part we least enjoy, but we now see the other side of adoption, and it is worth ALL the effort!
We knew we wanted to adopt a little girl this time around and knew most of the special needs we were open to when we had to work through that dreaded checklist. When you check "no" to a special need, you feel like you are saying "no" to a specific child. It is hard. As we were filling this list out, I felt like the Lord was wanting us to be open to a child with Down Syndrome. I mentioned this to our case worker, but we still checked "no" beside Down Syndrome.
Throughout the summer, the Lord kept putting children with DS in front of me. I still wasn't ready to be open to that possibility and neither was David, but we were open to praying about it. Then it happened. I was on a Facebook advocacy page looking through pictures of about twenty-five children when I saw HER...Mabel (her agency name)! Ever have a picture take your breath away? Her picture jumped off the page to me. I clicked on her picture to read about her and to see what her special needs were...only one, Down Syndrome. She was on the Shared List (meaning any agency can pull her file) so I thought I would just see where this goes and asked my agency if I could see her file. They could not find it. I worked with another lady who advocated for children and another agency to help us find her file, and it could not be found. I thought I should have been relieved, but I was so disappointed.
Over the next two months, we continued discussing DS, and I continued looking at little Mabel's picture I had saved. Then on November 5, Mabel's picture showed up again on a Facebook page and someone said she was back on the shared list. The next day, November 6, I told my agency and they found her file immediately and sent us her file and pictures. The file was two years old, so I worked with several other DS mama's that have been encouraging me on this journey and came up with 20 questions to ask about her. We paid the fee and submitted the questions and waited...impatiently.
Last Monday, November 20, I was sitting in my BIL and SIL's kitchen updating them on the situation when I received the update! Not only did her nannies answer all of our questions, they sent updated pictures and three videos! I still can't stop watching them. David and I talked about the update and then called our children together to discuss her. We wanted to wait until all six of us were ready to say, "Yes", and all six of us weren't ready that morning. This is not a decision we take lightly. This is not a need we knew much about a few months ago. This is the same situation we were in with Aiden, but God knew he was ours. We did not push. We waited and prayed. Then on Tuesday, we met again with everyone and this time everyone said, "Let's go get her!"
Our girl just turned three on October 28, is SO adorable, is active, loves her xylophone and drums, is SO adorable, has long enough hair for pigtails, and is tiny...22 lbs, and SO adorable! We have all started working on learning sign language since we do not know yet how verbal she will be. We will gladly show you pictures of her in person, but we just can not post any online yet. And yes, she will have an "A" name. =)
So this is where we are. Emotions are high, and we are ready to get our girlie. God is faithful in leading us to this point. Again, we shouldn't be surprised that we are taking a different route than we had originally planned.
"A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." Proverbs 16:9
Fundraising...a lot of it. Grant applications...a lot of them. This has been our life during the first half of this year. When we felt we were being called to adopt again, we were drowning in medical bills from all the surgeries, trips to out of state hospitals and supplies for Aiden. Sinking. It didn't make sense for us to start this process again, but God was asking us to step out in faith again. So we did. We are praising the Lord for the funds he has supplied and that every time we have another fee to pay, we have had just enough money to cover it. We have received money from every grant we have applied for so far. So we continue to fundraise (we have currently made 150 dozen cookies and counting!) and are finding more grants to apply for. This is the part we least enjoy, but we now see the other side of adoption, and it is worth ALL the effort!
We knew we wanted to adopt a little girl this time around and knew most of the special needs we were open to when we had to work through that dreaded checklist. When you check "no" to a special need, you feel like you are saying "no" to a specific child. It is hard. As we were filling this list out, I felt like the Lord was wanting us to be open to a child with Down Syndrome. I mentioned this to our case worker, but we still checked "no" beside Down Syndrome.
Throughout the summer, the Lord kept putting children with DS in front of me. I still wasn't ready to be open to that possibility and neither was David, but we were open to praying about it. Then it happened. I was on a Facebook advocacy page looking through pictures of about twenty-five children when I saw HER...Mabel (her agency name)! Ever have a picture take your breath away? Her picture jumped off the page to me. I clicked on her picture to read about her and to see what her special needs were...only one, Down Syndrome. She was on the Shared List (meaning any agency can pull her file) so I thought I would just see where this goes and asked my agency if I could see her file. They could not find it. I worked with another lady who advocated for children and another agency to help us find her file, and it could not be found. I thought I should have been relieved, but I was so disappointed.
Over the next two months, we continued discussing DS, and I continued looking at little Mabel's picture I had saved. Then on November 5, Mabel's picture showed up again on a Facebook page and someone said she was back on the shared list. The next day, November 6, I told my agency and they found her file immediately and sent us her file and pictures. The file was two years old, so I worked with several other DS mama's that have been encouraging me on this journey and came up with 20 questions to ask about her. We paid the fee and submitted the questions and waited...impatiently.
Last Monday, November 20, I was sitting in my BIL and SIL's kitchen updating them on the situation when I received the update! Not only did her nannies answer all of our questions, they sent updated pictures and three videos! I still can't stop watching them. David and I talked about the update and then called our children together to discuss her. We wanted to wait until all six of us were ready to say, "Yes", and all six of us weren't ready that morning. This is not a decision we take lightly. This is not a need we knew much about a few months ago. This is the same situation we were in with Aiden, but God knew he was ours. We did not push. We waited and prayed. Then on Tuesday, we met again with everyone and this time everyone said, "Let's go get her!"
Our girl just turned three on October 28, is SO adorable, is active, loves her xylophone and drums, is SO adorable, has long enough hair for pigtails, and is tiny...22 lbs, and SO adorable! We have all started working on learning sign language since we do not know yet how verbal she will be. We will gladly show you pictures of her in person, but we just can not post any online yet. And yes, she will have an "A" name. =)
So this is where we are. Emotions are high, and we are ready to get our girlie. God is faithful in leading us to this point. Again, we shouldn't be surprised that we are taking a different route than we had originally planned.
"A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." Proverbs 16:9