Crazy Week!

This week was crazy!! On Tuesday we official signed up with Christian Adoption Consultants (CAC). They are a consulting firm who works with many different agencies so you can apply to several instead of just one. In God's goodness, He placed Carlee in my Bible Study group this year. Carlee is one of the consultants with CAC. She has talked us through this whole process and has prayed for us continually. We are so thankful to have her along the way to help.

Carlee is also a social worker so she was able to do our home study. We completed that on Wednesday. I have always thought of home studies as scary and overwhelming, and even though there is a lot of paper work, it was in no way scary. I think it helped that Carlee was doing it and made us feel really relaxed. She told us to expect our home study to be done in about a month and that is when we can start applying to agencies. Well, our home study is almost done!! She pounded through it and all of our background checks came back (except for the KY one, and it should come soon!!) So we should be able to begin applying soon.

The rest of the week was spent doing a lot of other adoption related things. One thing was finishing our profile book. A profile book is a picture book that also describes your family. When a birth mother decides she wants to give her baby up for adoption you are able to "present" which means you want her to look at your profile book. So we finished that up with week.

Another thing we are working on is a fundraiser at our church. On May 5th we are having a dinner and a silent auction. Our church family has been so supportive and so helpful! I am working with a couple of ladies to get donations and plan the event. We are excited to see what God will do through this!

Whew! What a week. It has been busy, but amidst the busyness God has been reminding me of my need to trust Him in this. It's not up to me to find a baby for us, it's up to Him. It's not up to me to raise the finances we need, it's up to Him (and He's already doing it, before we've officially started!). None of this is in my control, it's in His and I can trust Him. This has been a busy week on our beautiful journey, but again, He is with us all the way!

How we got here

So I'm going to go back and talk about how we got here for those just now reading the blog. Heath and I have been trying to get pregnant for about 20 months. After we had been trying a year with no pregnancy we went to the doctor. I figured nothing was wrong it was just taking us longer than most people. I was wrong. There was a problem. And so began the roller coaster of trying new medicines and getting them regulated.

All this time Heath and I had talked about adoption some but weren't really sure if that was what we wanted to do. In God's grace He put an adoption consultant in my Bible study group. I began talking to her some but we still weren't sure. Two weeks ago Heath and I met with her and her husband and asked a lot of questions. We decided to wait to decide about adoption until we had some other things figured out. The next day as we were talking about it though, it kind of came to a point where we were like "what are we waiting on?" If this is what God has called us to do then we can't ignore it-no matter what our circumstances are. So that night we decided it was time to proceed.

Later that week we got the word we were not hoping for. The medicine that we hoped was working, wasn't. In so many ways that news was devastating, but in God's goodness He had already led us to make the decision to adopt. Infertility has been hard-there's no denying it and I am very honest about it (this whole blog thus far has been about the ups and downs we have faced), but God has opened this door for us and we are excited to see what He has in store for us!

So what now? We have chosen to do a domestic adoption. Next week we will have our initial home study. When that's complete we will apply to agencies. From there we will do fundraising and be trusting God to provide a baby for us. We can't wait to be parents!

Let me say this to close, Heath and I both became Christians in college (Heath his freshman year, me my sophomore year). We both would have said we were Christians, but our lives told a much different story. Your life is a dead give away to what you really believe. In college we both realized we really were sinners and were in need of Jesus to be our Savior and Lord. It wasn't about "cleaning up" our lives, it was about Jesus. All that to say He is Lord over our infertility. We don't understand and have struggled at times, but He is Lord and we will trust Him. Please pray for us as we start down this road of adoption!

Adoption it is

That's right folks, Heath and I have decided to start the adoption process. AHHHH! Last Saturday we met with a friend of mine who is an adoption consultant. We both left feeling like we needed to seriously consider this option. We decided to hold off on making a decision until we made a few decisions on some other things. On Sunday, though, as we began to talk about it we realized that we need to just step out on faith and ask God to do this for us. We are going to be doing a domestic adoption. We are excited about this but also very nervous.

It is unbelievably overwhelming to start this process. Which agency do we use? How long are we willing to wait for a child (that determines how expensive it is)? How are we ever going to afford this (it's unbelievably expensive if you want to try to know for sure you won't wait 2+ years)? Will God raise up the money we need? How do we even fundraise for something like this? Will people be willing to give? What if we never get picked? What if we get picked then the birth mom changes her mind? That just barely scrapes the surface of what has been going through our minds. Like I said, it's unbelievably overwhelming.

One thought has been good for me though: Just take the next step. That's all. I don't have to worry about the finances or getting picked or whatever else might be driving me crazy, I just need to take the next step. So for now, the next step is to get our home study done. That's all. That's all I need to get done, that's all I need to think about in regards to this, that's all. So we have begun paperwork for that and will hopefully have an appointment with our case worker in the next 2 weeks.

Please be praying for us as we begin this part of the beautiful journey. We can't wait to see what God has in store for us!

Love His Method

This past week at church we talked about the story of Abraham and Sarah. Long story short, they couldn't have children, but God had promised to give them a child. They decided (well Sarah decided and Abraham went along with her) that Abraham should sleep with her servant-that must be how God was going to provide. Well you can imagine the mess that created. The point made though was that Abraham trusted God's promise, but he didn't trust His method.

Hmmm...that kind of sounds like me. God hasn't promised me that I will ever have a biological child. But He has promised that He works all things out for the good, He is faithful, He is good and lots of other promises. I trust those promises, but I have a hard time trusting His method. I never wanted to go through infertility, I wanted a baby, I still want a baby. The question I have been asking myself this week though is if I will trust His method. It isn't the method I would have chosen, but it's His method and therefore it is good.

It may not be infertility for you, but where do you need to not only trust His promises, but His method as well.

As an update on the medical side, for now everything in the blood work looks like the medicine is doing it's job. There will be another semen analysis in the next couple of weeks to see if the sperm count and motility has gone up at all. Then we will know next steps. Keep praying!