Thank you to all of you who texted, sent messages and comments on the first part of our story! I loved reading them all and I am so happy to know that our story is encouraging others. I am sorry this part has taken so long for me to post there is no excuses really other thank these posts are hard to emotionally right and life with three under 3 is a little crazy! I don’t pretend to be a rockstar mama at all but man this whole adjusting to being a mommy to three hasn’t been easy! We have been so busy the past 5 weeks with normal summer business I am looking forward to schedules and routines starting up next week! I am most importantly loving being a mommy of 3 even though it is super exhausting and a lot of work every day with my precious babies I am reminded how truly blessed I am and I do not take it for granted!

To read the first part of our journey click here! …

Our initial meeting with our recruitment worker happened in May and we were informed that there would be a lot of training that would be required in order for us to be approved as adoptive parents. Yes while most people don’t have to do school to have children this was just part of our journey and something that we needed to do if we wanted to have a family and we were more than willing to do it. We were so anxious to become a mommy and daddy and love on a baby that we would have done whatever was required. Pride Training is the mandatory training course that you must take in Canada to become approved and it is a 9 week course done 1 night a week from fall – spring so we were discouraged when we were told we would have to wait till the fall to take our training but we knew it was all in God’s hands. We had our first interview (yes they are interviews) on Monday and to our surprise we were invited to a “crash” course training that would start that Thursday and would run 5 full days. My husband made a call to his boss asking if he could get the time off work and than we were good to go. Wow God had opened that door for us and we were excited to start. The training they informed us would be long and exhausting and would require homework each night to be done before the next days training. Once our training was complete we were told we would be placed on a waiting list to have our home study completed and that wait could be a couple of months. A home study usually take 6-8 weeks to finish once we had been assigned a resource worker. About 2 weeks after completing our training our worker who initially did our first meeting called and said she had spoken with her supervisor and had received special permission to complete our home study right away. She speed the process up for us and our home study was complete in 4 weeks. Those 4 weeks were very intense as the home study is very personal and can be exhausting and nerve-racking. The hard part was we could pass our training, complete our home study and still not be approved for many different reasons but we were confident that we were safe in God’s hands and that He was in control as nervous as we were He had brought us this far through our journey He wasn’t leaving us now. A few weeks after our home study was complete we were officially approved as foster/adoptive parents. I than gave up my job and became a Stay at Home Mom In Waiting! Waiting is no fun and after years of struggling with infertility and waiting to get pregnant you would think I would be good a waiting but I wasn’t (I still am not). We were waiting for God to give us the “desire’s of our hearts” and we knew He would in His perfect timing. It could be a little boy, it could be a little girl. It could be fora short period of time, it could be forever we didn’t know but we were ready to love him or her with all our hearts. We were reminded many times along this journey that our story is so different than most but we knew it was how God was going to bless us with children. Different isn’t bad it is just different. Every day I would wake up and wonder “Is today the day we get the call that will change our lives?”  We signed our official papers in September and we waited till November before we got a call about a placement that was a great match for us. We welcomed a sweet baby boy into our hearts and our home and we loved him like crazy for 6 months. Our first placement taught us so much about grace, about strength and showed us how deeply we could love but saying goodbye to him broke our hearts.  We wouldn’t change any of it because our time with that little boy was worth it all.

(Our last cuddle before he left)

A little over 2 weeks after he left I got a call about a baby that wasn’t born yet but they needed a home for the baby and at the time it was unsure if it would be a foster or adoptive placement. We anxiously awaited baby’s birth and a few weeks after that call baby girl was born and we fell in love all over again. Her case was so different than our last little one’s and we just loved on her and prayed for her and after a few months it was determined she would be placed for adoption and we excitedly put in a plan of care to adopt her. We were so excited and couldn’t believe how God was growing our family with this sweet baby girl. Our hearts were so full and we were on cloud nine. 8 months after sweet baby girl joined our family we received a call from our worker explaining how a biological great aunt and uncle had come forward and now wanted to adopt this sweet little girl. This little girl that was ours! I will never forget that day, that call, those words. The complete devastation and heart break we felt! We tried everything to be able to keep her but our efforts weren’t enough and 11 months after she came into our lives we had to say the most painful goodbye. After she left I wasn’t sure I would ever heal from that – I wasn’t sure we could go on and ever parent again. Such fear of the heart break happening again took over me. I was angry at God for allowing this to happen and yet deep down inside I knew He had allowed it for a reason. I had to decide what I wanted to do with this experience. Was I going to let it harden me and make me angry and bitter or was I going to use my pain to glorify Him, to seek His will with all I could and to just cling to Him and let His strength be my portion.  The days were very long and I tried filling them with things to keep me busy. My day to day routine all of a sudden was no more it was a very hard thing to go through. The house seemed so quiet and my arms were so empty.

(She was about 5 months here)

 

I was thankful when we got a call for another placement. We had a little guy come and stay with us for a couple weeks while things were being sorted our with his mom and then he ended up going to live with his dad and our house became deafening quiet again, but on May 18th (about 6 weeks after our little girl left) I received a call that forever changed our lives.