Our Adoption Story

As we move further through the adoption process and are getting closer to our homestudy, we are telling more people about the adoption. The most common thing we get asked is "why??" So I decided to write our story, which is a long one.

Over a year ago, in the beginning of 2009, I happened to look on TARE - Texas Adoption Recources Exchange, which lists photos, bios and heart galleries of children that are "hard to place". These children have typically been in the system for a while, sometimes many years, who may have had failed adoptions in the past. I was just looking out of curiosity, not with the intent to ever adopt through the foster care system. My husband and I had just had our third baby, and he was always against adoption since we were able to have three of our own. I saw a picture of a little girl, and something made me mention her to Josh. We both thought she was beautiful and wondered why she was not adopted yet. We both talked about it, and wanted to see what it would take to adopt her into our family. But just her...we agreed that we would not adopt any other children, but were only interested in her because she looked like she would fit into our family, and we weren't ready to think about adopting just any kid(s). In the spring of 2009 I contacted a caseworker, who told me that to adopt her, we had to go to an information class. We set it up and went one night, coming out very interested in the whole process. The class taught us about what kinds of children are in the system, and informed us of the entire process. We would have to go through six weeks of classes, paper work, and home study. One week later the little girl was matched with a family. We decided we just weren't ready to adopt yet, and put the idea on the back burner as something we would definitely consider doing in a few years when we were more ready.

No matter how hard I tried to push the thought back, I kept thinking about the kids on the website that didn't have permanent parents, or a real family. I kept looking at the website when Josh was at work, and I came across a sibling group of three that had been broad casted on their local news channel. I watched the video, and fell in love with them. By the end of the video I was crying, and knew that I had to show Josh when he got home. In the video they were playing at a farm, and there were chickens. Instead of saying "chickens" the youngest girl said "shickens", and that stuck out to me. I showed Josh the video and he was tearing up too. But we both "knew" that it was impossible to adopt them. There were three, and we already had that many at home that we were still getting the hang of since Trent was just a baby. We also thought there was no way that someone would give us a chance to adopt them, since the oldest was half our age. We decided to go through the process of adoption, very slowly. When we filled out our forms at the first class, we put that we would take one child. We went through the six weeks of adoption classes, and had changed the number of children we would take to two. I still found myself looking at the sibling group of three from the video, almost daily. I kept it to myself, because I knew there was no way that it would happen. The classes did a lot for us. We had time to talk by ourselves on the way there, and the way home, every week for six weeks. We discovered a closeness that we hadn't had time for in a while. We learned a lot about parenting our own children as well. The classes make you look at yourselves from a different perspective. I thank God that we went through that experience when we did.

In February of this year we had completely finished the course, and the next step was to turn our paperwork in. We had taken some time out, to think about foster care adoption and if it was the route that God wanted us to go. We also looked into Ethiopian adoption, and something made us apply for a form. We prayed. A lot. And the night that we applied for the form, I had a dream. The only other time that I dreamt something like this was before I found out that I was pregnant with Kali, and I saw myself with a little girl. Anyway, during this dream I was standing in dirt, and all I could see in front of me was chickens. I couldn't see anything else but right in front of me. I asked "what am I doing?" and a voice clearly, and very loudly said "Adopting". For some reason, I thought I was in another country in my dream, and we decided that we should go through with the Ethiopian adoption. I got an email from the agency two weeks later saying we were not accepted. I was upset, and felt very confused. A couple of weeks later, my grandmother called my mom very concerned because when she had been going to sleep, she heard a voice say "Do not let Lindsey go to Ethiopia. You may never see her again". She heard it twice, and it really shook her. I knew that adopting internationally was not God's plan for us. So, we prayed more. That next week we went out together for Josh's birthday. We had a great night, and when we got home we were talking about everything going on, and for some reason I decided to mention the chickens in my dream. I hadn't told him that part of the dream because I didn't think that they meant anything. I also told him that I still looked at that sibling group all the time, and felt a pull towards them. I reminded him of how the youngest girl said "shickens", and we were laughing about it when he stopped and said "That's what God was telling you with your dream. He knew that part of the video stuck out to you, and that would be very clear for you". Of course, being the type of person to read far into things, I had overlooked it. We knew that night that those were the children that we were supposed to adopt.

It has been a long road, far more life changing than anything we have gone through before together. But it has been so worth it, and we are all excited about this new chapter. So when people ask us "Why?? Why three? Y'all are crazy!", it hurts, because the journey to get us here is one that no one else could understand unless they have full faith in God, and understand that there are others that we were sent here to save, no matter how "crazy" it might make us appear.

"Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for orphans and widows in their troubles, and refuse to let the world corrupt us" James 1:27