When my wife, Lauren and I began dating in 2002, we knew almost instantly that we would end up married. From the beginning, it was as if we belonged together. There were ups and downs but we dated for 18 months and were married in June 2004. As we began to talk about a family, we both agreed that adoption would be part of our family’s story. We planned to have 2 or 3 children and then adopt a child. Simple enough, right?

In mid-June of 2005, I came home from work early and Lauren was home. She had just started a new job and was supposed to be at orientation. Nevertheless, she had come home early from work. As I walked through our living room, she grinned and handed me a card. It was a Father’s Day card announcing that she was pregnant with our first child. To be honest, it was a moment of sheer terror for me. According to my wife, I went pale and clammy; she thought I was going to faint.

I finally processed the gravity of the news and slowly acclimated to this idea that I was going to be a Daddy. It was overwhelming but exciting. In February 2006, we welcome our first child, Noah. He was a healthy, happy little boy and is one of my greatest joys. When Noah was 18-months old, we talked about expanding our family and started trying for another child.

After several months, we had no success in getting pregnant. We visited doctors and specialists to see if something was wrong. Each of these visits brought more confusion as there was no concrete reason why were not getting pregnant. It was extremely frustrating and gave rise to some painful conversations between my wife and me. All we desired was to expand our family and there was no explanation why that wasn’t happening.

In September 2009, after 2 years of trying to get pregnant and with no success, we began exploring the process of adoption more intently. We sensed that God was leading us to proceed with adoption and away from our original plan. We began investigating, went to a few classes and in January 2010, began the process to become licensed foster parents. After 30 hours of training, we were certified as foster parents in May 2010.

There was an overwhelming sense of peace and calm upon being licensed as foster parents. It seemed as though God had intended this all along. Our story would take an interesting turn later that same month (May 2010). It all changed with a phone call late one night. I’ll share more about that in my next post.

 

-sb

07 Feb This entry was published on February 7, 2013 at 7:32 am. It’s filed under adoption, experiences, family, God, learning, suffering and tagged adoption, family, foster parents, infertility, orphan care. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.