Racine Family Update!

As of May16th, 2017 we officially welcomed a new member of the Racine family! We made official what had been true in our hearts for a long time and adopted Brayden. He is such a joy to us and we are so thankful that God allowed us be his parents. He loves playing outside, loves to cuddle and is constantly telling us thank you for everything.  Kaleigh and Brayden love each other so much! They hold hands all the time and love to give each other hugs. It is so obvious to us that this is what God has for us and that this is the beautiful journey He had for us all along.

One thing I told Heath as we said "yes" to fostering and adopting Brayden is that I still had a desire to have another baby in our home. We weren't sure what that would look like as far as timing with starting another adoption. To be honest, the thought of starting the adoption process again was exhausting. For the last 7 years we have either been trying to get pregnant, going through infertility or in the adoption process. 7 YEARS. That's a long time. And the adoption process is exhausting. It's mounds of paperwork, constantly wondering when you are going to get chosen (emotionally exhausting), tons of prayer and trying to trust God with the process (notice I said trying, I'm not very good at the whole trusting God part!) and so many other things that I can't even begin to explain. It's totally worth it, but it is HARD.

As we have talked about it more and prayed and prayed and prayed some more, we feel like now is the time to start the process again. So, as of today all of our applications and profile books have been mailed off and we will become active again.

One big change is that we have changed agencies. We were working with an agency here in Indiana for nearly two years. During those two years we had a lot of issues with the agency and as much as we tried to resolve the issues it just became clear that we should no longer work with them. So now we are back with Christian Adoption Consultants (we used them when we adopted Kaleigh). It was definitely a step of faith for us to make that decision as it is more expensive and there will be travel involved as most of the adoptions they facilitate don't happen in Indiana, but as we spent months praying about it we have had so much peace to take this step.

So what that looks like practically is we have several agencies that now have our profile book. When they have a birth mom, they will contact us and we will choose whether or not to have our profile book (think Shutterfly photo book describing our family) shown to that birth mom. Then the ball is in the birth mom's court. So here's a few things you can pray for:

1. Our hearts will trust God with what He has for us and that we will be patient as we wait on Him.
2. For the opportunity to have our profile book shown to birth moms.
3. That a birth mom will choose us to be the parents of her precious child.

It's crazy to think we are starting this process AGAIN, but we feel so confident this is what the Lord has for us. Kaleigh wants a girl and Brayden wants a boy so they have been praying for two babies (the noise you just heard was Heath passing out from the mere thought of that!). The kids are excited and have been telling everyone we are adopting a baby. We are excited to see what the Lord is going to do and how He is going to grow our family! It's just another step on this beautiful journey!