brian and i met during the summer of 2005 while working at a camp. we worked with inner city kids and fell in love with each other falling in love with the kids we worked with. we got married a few months later knowing that God had put adoption on our hearts for the future. during the summer of 2008 brian and i both felt God tugging on our hearts that it was time to pursue adoption. although we thought we would have our biological children first (they will just have to come later) God had a different plan. we began pursuing international adoption through an amazing adoption agency bethany christian services (we highly recommend!). they walked us through some paperwork and talked with us a lot. that is when we began leaning towards domestic adoption because we thought we really wanted to start with an infant. so for about a year we walked the road to pursue and infant male. we had a few maybes along the way but nothing that stuck. it was just a lot of waiting. i'm pretty impatient and i began questioning God whether now was really the right time or not. we had said "yes" to whatever God wanted but i wasn't ready to say "yes" to all this waiting.
so in october 2009 we began searching hearts to see if we were really saying "yes" to WHATEVER God had for us and not just the "idea" we had in our head of how our family should start. once again God began tugging our heart strings and steering us towards foster/adoption. we didn't know a lot about it but began researching, contacting, and gathering as much information as possible. we were so excited to have something to do. we started in on the PATH class which all foster parents have to complete before pursuing any children. we completed the classes before christmas then hit a few road blocks. we were being told that the foster system didn't need us. just one more thing that made us doubt where God had us. but God...
God had a different plan. the wrong doors were being closed so the we would walk through the right open door. and that we did. we met an incredible case worker who has been walking with us step by step for the past 2 months. she introduced us to our soon-to-be fantastic 4. our family has been made up of only brian and i (and our dog jackson) for the past 4+ years and now in the next month we will be adding those fantastic 4 to our family. wow. isn't God awesome?!?!?! we never dreamed this is where we would end up but so grateful that God has brought us here. thankful and honored that he has invited us to join him in what he is already doing in these young men's lives. we feel blessed beyond belief to know them and have them in our home. it won't be all cupcakes and sunshine. the expectations and dreams i have had about what life would be like with kids has been surrendered to the Father. brian and i are jumping all in, dangerously surrendering, to whatever lies ahead, wherever God decides to take us from here. as some dear friends state all the time "we're trading in the ordinary for the the extraordinary!!!"