Blessed Assurance

"Blessed" - divinely or supremely favored; fortunate; blissfully happy or contented; bringing happiness and thankfulness.

"Assurance" - promise or pledge; full confidence; freedom from doubt; certainty; covenant.

When I was in high school, I remember feeling a strong pull towards adoption. I can't remember exactly why this feeling started, but as I continued to learn about adoption and of orphans who are suffering around the world, I knew that this would be something I had to be a part of during my lifetime. When I met Chris and told him of my desire to adopt one day, he wasn't hesitant nor was he afraid. He easily could have pulled away or objected, since we had only begun to date at the time, but he shared in my heart's desire and was nothing short of encouraging about it during every conversation over the last 7 years.

When we made the decision 4 years ago to expand our family, we never thought adoption would be our first choice. We arrogantly assumed that we could have children of our own and would adopt later down the road. But this was not God's plan for us. Over the last 4 years, we have experienced pain and loss, heartache and disappointment time and time again. We have taken the medications, we have had the outpatient procedures, we have been intrusively examined over and over again, and God still did not see fit to bless any of those attempts. It took us a while, but we slowly began to realize that this decision was not ours to make, we played no part in this process, and it was all up to God.

I don't believe for even a second that this was something we weren't meant to experience. This process of infertility revealed so much of ourselves and of God to us, that we would never be who we are today and could never clearly hear the Call from God had we not gone through all of that. I'm so thankful that adoption has always been close to my heart because it makes letting go of one dream to walk the path towards another that much easier to accept.

So today marks the beginning of our journey. I have titled our story "Blessed Assurance" because, as you have read above, those 2 words combined means that we are fortunate and blissfully happy to confidently enter into this covenant with God. James reminds us of our responsibility to look after the orphans of this world (chapter 1 vs 27) and I am constantly reminded that we are all adopted by Christ into His eternal family through His salvation. What a joy it is to confidently know that we are following God's example by emulating His love and compassion towards others through this process. I have always felt that a "blended family" is such a beautiful representation of Christ and all the He stands for. We're so blessed to be one of the chosen few who get to experience this for ourselves.

The journey will be long and there will be many updates along the way, so I ask for your patience and prayers as we write our story. There will be times when all we're doing is waiting and there is nothing to update on. And there will be times when there's so much to update that I fall behind on my posts. But I promise that we'll do all we can to keep everyone aware of what we're going through at all times.

Right now, we've only just made the decision to move forward. So the first step in the process is to become educated on all things adoption! We are scheduled to attend a seminar in Raleigh on September 26th. There is also a much bigger conference in Nashville on October 2nd-3rd that we're considering as well (http://www.togetherforadoption.org/?page_id=11). For now, we ask for prayers regarding when and where to receive education as well as clarity and unity of thought regarding the type of adoption we are to pursue (international vs. domestic).

We thank you for your continued love, support, and prayers and can't wait to take you on this journey with us!