*Let me start by saying this is an extremely personal and vulnerable post so bare with me. I want to use my experiences and my journey to inspire and help others going through the same thing. It is really hard to write it all out and relive the feelings and things that happened and yet it is freeing as well. I will try to keep it a short as possible I will do it in three different posts but I don’t want to leave out the important parts so it may be a bit long but I hope you will read it.*

Tom and I had been married about a year and a half when we started talking about starting a family. As many people know my life long dream was to be a mom and Tom and I felt we where in a place as a couple that we were ready to start a family. We had enjoyed each other selfishly for the past few years and now we were ready to share ourselves with a little one. We had talked about having just one first and from there we would decide if we were going to have any more biological children or if we would adopt. Adoption had always been something we had talked about it from our dating years and is something that was close to our hearts even though we didn’t know anyone that had ever adopted. We really didn’t think getting pregnant would be hard for us especially when all our friends and family (at the time we have since made friends who have shared our struggle) never really had any trouble. After a few months of trying I started to get nervous and scared that my dream of being a mommy wasn’t going to happen. I read up a lot on things that could help and I had many doctors appointments.  We felt like our struggle was far too personal to share with anyone so we kept it to ourselves. We took everyone’s “when are you going to hurry up and have a baby” comments with a smile all the while our hearts were breaking . We continually had to bit our tongues from shouting “If you only knew ….we ARE trying!” After about a year of trying and watching painfully as so many friends and family members got pregnant and had babies we decided to share with a few close friends and family about our struggle because we needed support and we needed prayer. We couldn’t suffer alone any longer! Our close family and friends were gracious with their comments like “stress can be causing you not to get pregnant” or “all in God’s timing” and as much as we knew that was true we couldn’t understand why God’s timing wasn’t now. God than began to really break me down. I was hurting so badly and what made it worse I knew Tom was hurting too. There are no words to describe our pain and no way you could understand it unless you walk this journey and I pray that you never have to but I also know too many have! Month after month negative pregnancy tests, so many questions and doctors had no answers. It was so hard, lonely and heart breaking yet such a sweet time for us as a husband and wife to grow even closer and strengthen our walk with God. There were many, many days where it didn’t feel sweet, it felt as if God didn’t care about us or our dream of having a family, but even in those dark days (and there were many) He did care! It was in January of 2010 that we decided that maybe God’s plan for us to have a family was not going to happen for us naturally. Even though we had always been open to adoption our plan was to have biological children first – but God’s plan is not our plan! We started researching adopting and all that is involved with the process. We knew there are lots of children in the world that need a mommy and a daddy, they need unconditional love, a safe home, stability and a chance to know God – all things we could give them! So we started looking at different agencies and we learnt quickly a couple things. First, it was going to cost a lot of money and it secondly would be a very lengthy process. Things we didn’t know: how completely broken we would be along the journey but how incredibly faithful God would prove himself to us. We didn’t fully understand how much time, work, emotion and personal growth the journey of adoption would require from us. It was in April when God really started to open doors and started piecing together the puzzle of our lives. God started to show us the huge need for parents right in our own city. We knew that we wanted to adopt but along the way the idea of fostering was put out there. We knew nothing really about fostering other than the typical things you usually hear about which are negative. We started to talk about it and pray about it! After a few weeks we made the initial call to the agency and God put us in contact with a very sweet worker who we grew to love. We were about to embark on a experience we didn’t know a lot  about and a journey to find our forever baby!