Thursday, October 8, 2009

The Other Option…. Day 8

Well you all knew that I couldn’t go very far into the month without telling our adoption story.  So I have held out for 8 days and here it is.

 

Not long after Josie was born, I joined a few on-line forums.  They were my lifelines at that time.  Finding out all the success stories and learning about what I might expect during the next years.  One group in particular was an on-line email type forum.  Just after I joined, I received an email from a woman, Andrea Roberts, telling us about a new Down syndrome ministry that was matching children with Down syndrome in other countries with “forever families”.  I looked at the site several times and put it in the back of my “things I must recall” memory.

We had fertility issues getting pregnant with Josie so never in a million years did I think that we would actually conceive on our own just a few short months later.  13 months after Josie was born, we welcomed Katie into the world.  Then on Josie’s 2nd birthday, when Katie was only 11 months old, we discovered that yet again we were pregnant with Owen.  We didn’t feel our family was quite complete and when Owen was 6 months old, we found ourselves once again pregnant.  At 12 weeks, I went for an ultrasound after some spotting and was told that we had lost our baby.  We were heart broken, but we gave our hearts to God and asked him to comfort us. 

In doing this, Reece’s Rainbow, the Down Syndrome Adoption Ministry came up in our lives over and over.  So many of our friends were beginning or finishing up the adoption process.  I was drawn to the pictures there.. the stories of homecomings…and the heartbreak as a few of those children passed away and were no longer living in pain.  It was heart wrenching.  This whole time I didn’t mention my “want” to adopt to Joe.  Finally over the summer of last year, I showed Joe the pictures. 

“We can’t afford it!” was the first reaction that I got from Joe.  We talked about it and more importantly prayed about it!  I knew that if God called me to do this, then we needed to do it.  I showed Joe the pictures and had Andrea at Reece’s Rainbow set up a Family Page for us.  A family page consists of children that fit your “criteria”.  As we looked at them, we would have her take some off and add others.  We were down to two little ones….two boys… who I was already IN LOVE with.  Joe said we still couldn’t afford it.  He was seeing the $$$$$ that we didn’t have in the bank and I was seeing the love that we could offer one of these children. 

Finally, in one of our last discussions about adoption, I told him that if money was not an object, would this be something that he wanted to do?  His answer was a definite yes.  I told him to think about it a few more days and pray about it.  He needed to put the financial aside and just look at these two boys.  I was ok with whatever he decided, however I couldn’t go on looking at these faces if we weren’t going to bring one home.  That evening after he got to work, I received an email from him telling me “Let’s do it.. email Andrea and tell her we are committing to adopt Jacob (Paul then on Reece’s Rainbow).  The rest is history… at least in blog land!  LOL

PRAISE GOD!!  The Journey to Holland is so sweet… and even sweeter when we have been there twice!  There are days when Holland is a MUCH better place than Italy could ever dream of being!

2 comments:

Lund7 said...

Wow! That was a great post and a wonderful story of how Jacob came to you. Your family is precious!

Ellen Stumbo said...

And now you are able to help some of us walk this journey of adoption!