Our Second Adoption Journey...pt1

Three years ago we were blessed with a son. A son so full of life and joy...and energy. We had such an amazing experience that we decided to try to adopt again. We were approved in July 2012 and matched with a baby girl a couple of weeks later. We named her Madison, were blessed with boxes of the sweetest little dresses, and cleaned out/ painted/ set up her room. 

Well...if you know us then you know that we do not have a little girl who just turned one. We are still just a family of 3. We still do not know exactly what happened, but it seemed that Madison's birth mother decided to parent. She stopped communicating with the social workers while she was in the hospital. We were heart broken. I am not telling you this story to scare you or for pity, but so you know how important it is for God to be at the center of your adoption plans. He is the one who helped us through our grief. The hard part was not knowing what happened. But we were surrounded by awesome friends and family who lifted us up through encouraging words, letters, and phone calls. Our social worker was also amazing. I know that she was just as heart broken for us as we were! She called to check in with us and even when we were trying to push things aside she encouraged us to allow ourselves to feel the feelings of grief. We wanted to be strong and unselfish and the good Christians who trusted Gods plan, and we did, but she helped us to see that our feelings of loss were real. And that was okay. 

Even though we didn't understand our hearts were able to heal by repeating scripture to ourselves and talking to God about what we were feeling. We were constantly reminded that God's plans are so much better then we can even imagine (even when we think ours are pretty awesome), His timing is perfect (even when we are impatient), and He loves us and wants the best for us. Hebrews13:5-6 says: " ...for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” No matter what tough thing in life we come up against God, the God of ALL creation is standing by our side. He is fighting for us, He is cheering us on, He cares- not only about us but about our future child! 

So, we packed up a month later and moved to Phoenix as a family of 3. We were sad that we weren't able to rematch before we left, but trust with all our hearts that God is orchestrating things we can not even fathom. He has awesome things in store for our family, even if we stay just the way we are, we are PERFECT in His sight.

Stay tuned to find out what God has been doing in our lives since moving to Phoenix!