Our Story (The longest post EVER!)

Its been a long journey to this point and I know we have a LONG road ahead of us. As I mentioned in a previous post we have decided to become foster parents. How did we decide this you may ask. Well to make a long story...well long. God has been working on my heart for a really long time. My whole life He has been growing me and shaping me for something but I never knew for what. At a young age I knew of people who had adopted from other countries and always thought that maybe one day I would. On the other had I knew people first hand who had adopted domestically and thought that I would never be open to that. I thought the kids here are all crack babies and I didn't want that (horrible and untrue I know but honest). As time went on I noticed my love for children. Not just family members or friends children but ALL children. I could not and still cannot see a baby/young child in the grocery store and not smile and wave maybe even play peek a boo. Then I met David. I noticed his love for babies/children too. (He has the same problem as me in the grocery store). We had never talked about adoption let alone fostering. In our pre-marriage counseling our preacher asked us something that we had never considered before."What if you cant have children of your own?" David replied without missing a beat. "Then we'll adopt as many kids as we have to until we feel like we have enough." Ha! That made me smile. We got married and started living out life with no plans for children anytime soon. As the years went by God continued to prepare me. I had a chance to work with troubled children at the YMCA. There I saw that no matter how tough a child may try to look or act and no matter how much they act out they are all just children who need love. I continued to work with kids at church and found that I have such a deep love for children that I almost felt as if they were my own. Time continued to pass and David and I decided to try for children. We tried for a year on our own then a year and a half on fertility medicine. Finally we conceived and thought that this was it. We were going to be just like all the other couples our age and be content will our own little bio family. That didn't happen. At 8 weeks we were told that something didn't look right and that we needed to come back in a week. A week later I went back for another sono to find out that out little one had quit growing. I was sent home to wait on a miscarriage. A week later with still nothing happening and a snow storm on its way I was sent into to surgery to have a DNC and that was it. After that I wanted to take a break from all the meds and the stress of trying and even though the baby wasn't much it was my baby that I had pictured in my head and dreamed about. I had thought about whose nose it would have and what she or he was going to be when they grew up. just like that it was gone. I wanted some time to mourn. I was told by my doctor that right after a miscarriage its prime time to conceive so no break for me it was right back on the meds. After 6 more months of feeling horrible with every pregnancy symptom and no baby I decided to stop meds and doctor appointments completely. By trying to take my fertility in my own hands I felt like I was telling God that I didn't trust His plan or that it wasn't good enough for me. In the middle of all this we would go to Cicis pizza about once a month to eat with Davids mom after church and every time we would go there would be foster families there. I would catch myself just watching them thinking for the first time 'I could do that'. I began to pray for God to reveal His will to me. As I said before I felt so strongly that I was meant to be a mom and I couldn't understand why I wasn't already. As time went on and I prayed more things started happening around me. I would see a video about foster care and feel a little twinge. Our preacher would preach a message and I would be thinking about fostering the whole time. I even dreamed about having foster kids. I finally brought it up to David, and he completely shut me down. I was so upset. I felt like God had finally revealed a part of his will to me and now my husband was going to keep me from it. Then I found The Foster Parent Podcast. I listened to ever single one in a week. By listening to them I realized that this journey was going to take Davids full support and the only thing that I could do is turn it over to God and pray about it. So I did. God started working on him. I would talk to him briefly about the reason why I felt called to foster but tried not to push him. He would come home with stories about how guys he worked with were foster parents and he never even knew. Then he started telling me about how he told people that he was going to be a foster parent and their reaction to it. This was surprising to me since just a few weeks earlier he was completely against the idea. Then one night he was in the shower and I was brushing my teeth and he said "Babe, I have a feeling that we aren't going to have much support from our families." Surprised I asked what he was referring to. He continued, "When we become foster parents I know that its going to be really hard and we will get our hearts broken but I know that the good times will far outweigh the bad". I wanted to cry. He finally felt the way I felt. God had done the job. In a couple of weeks is the next orientation meeting and I was nervous that he wouldn't be able to take off for it but God has proven to me again that this is his will. The closing on our house was pushed back another week and he will already have to ask off in order to move. God is so funny sometimes. Keep us in your prayers as we start this journey. We are very excited and a little nervous but we know that Gods got this.