Our foster/adoption training is over- now we wait

You may remember me sharing about my heart to adopt here. And our desire of having a large family.

As a Christian I feel called to the ministry of helping children and young people. I remember feeling so overwhelmed as I began to learn about how many children are in foster care, how many children are being shuffled throughout the system and how many children are waiting to be adopted. I then remember realizing that if we as Christians would step up and care for these children then there would not be a "foster care crisis"- every child would have a home. I can think of probably 20 families in my church that would be beautiful foster parents. But for some reason many people seem a bit scared, a bit unequipped even. We did too! But we certainly did feel this call on our life. So here we are.

We finished our training our requirements to become a foster/adoptive parent last night. I have to say some of it was pretty difficult to get through- learning about the traumatic pasts some of these children go through- it was rough and there were tears from my husband and I both multiple times. There were also tears of joy as we learned how God transformed some of these seemingly hopeless stories into stories of redemption, hope and grace.

So we turned in all of our paperwork and now we are waiting for our final walk through from an outside consulting firm. He/she will come into our home and ask a bunch of questions to my husband and I and will review our home again. I'm not sure when this will happen but it can take up to 8 weeks- that honestly seems so long at this point as we have been going through this process so long already- but we are just praying for a quicker turn around and patience.

Don't all 16 year olds talk about adopting one day?

Oh my goodness. These past few months. Almost a year actually- but these past few months have been such an emotional roller coaster.

I'll start way way back. Like when my husband and I were dating in high school. Yes we dated way back then and have been married almost 14 years now. I remember when we were dating and driving around in his truck we would talk about the day when our home would be full of little feet. Even as teenagers we knew that we were called to be parents. Even back then we talked about if we could not have children ourselves we would be open to adopting.

Well we graduated ( high school and college!) and got married and started working on our family. Within a year and a half of marriage we welcomed our first child- a beautiful baby girl. A bit later came daughter number two then several years later came our son. Three beautiful children. And let me tell you we are blessed. Blessed beyond our wildest dreams.

When our son was born we always thought we would have another. We prayed about timing and when God might see fit for us to try to start trying again. Many a night we prayed that if it was time for us to have another child that we would know. We never felt that the timing was right and never felt that calling to try to have another child.

So come last October we started feeling VERY strongly that adopting from foster care might be in our cards. We both prayed about it a lot and on January 1st of this year (2017) we submitted our paperwork to become a foster family with the intention of adopting.

Okay guys- the time is almost here. We've done paperwork and background checks and physicals and more paperwork, and home visits and this weekend we will finish up our training. Meaning that it could just be a few weeks ( probably longer but who knows?) until we see a child in our home. That is both terrifying and amazing at the same time. We are very excited about the possibility for our family to provide love and care for a child ( or children) that may need it.

I hope to talk a bit more in the coming days about the decision to become a foster family as well as some of the training we have went through ( it's been great by the way!) in coming blog posts.

If I can be an encouragement to just one person reading this then I'll be overjoyed. If this is just an outlet for me to write and share my heart- just for my sake- I'm okay with that as well.

Until next time!
Happy Homesteading Y'all!