Month: February 2017

Foster to Adopt

/ Hilary / Leave a comment

We drove for close to two hours to a place in Colorado I have never been. The dust from the road swirled around our car as we bounced along the backroads of Peyton, near Colorado Springs.

“Where are we going?”, I asked as I looked around at the wide open spaces between the houses and horse stables.

“To a home large enough I guess,” Hubby replied.

Hubby worked with a friend in Thailand many years back and has kept in touch through Facebook. A few years ago, Hubby saw a post from his friend that his friend was trying to raise support to adopt a girl from a very horrible situation in Texas. We donated.

Today, we are going to meet this girl and the family. As I learned more about this family, though, my intrigue only grew. This family has six of their own birth children and adopted five. Incredible!

As we pulled up, I grew nervous, not sure how to talk about adoption without seeming like it was a four-letter word or as though the adopted children are black-sheep to the family. I’m so awkward.

We walked in and there were children all over the main part of the house! The older four were in the kitchen making treats while the younger four (including the girl we unofficially met through the Facebook story) were playing Wii in the family room.

The parents welcomed us warmly and invited us to sit and talk as we wanted to learn more about their adoption experiences.

I was appalled to learn the number of young people who are stuck in the foster system in the United States. Wishing I would have written down the statistics I learned throughout the day, here’s what I recall:

  • Texas has a significantly high number of children in the foster system*, 600,000!
  • Colorado has close to 100,000 children in the foster system*
  • If one family in every church across the nation adopted one child, there would not be an issue with children needing to be adopted from the fostering in the US.

*Foster system: the first choice is for children to remain/return to the birth mother/father. Fewer children are foster-to-adopt with a high number of sibling-sets needing families.

Hubby and I are just at the beginning of our adoption research and I have not been as open to the idea of fostering to adopt because of the stories I’ve heard and yet, I left today thinking a little more of the possibility.

We are wanting to adopt a baby for our first adoption and then in a few years would like to adopt a sibling group of 2 or 3. If we could wave a magic wand, I believe we would want to live in a larger house to be able to adopt a couple of sibling groups and be able to give the kids a home, a family, a future…

With how much it costs to adopt internationally and how much of a need there is domestically, I am much more open learning about various domestic adoption agencies and researching the agencies that have the greatest need for adopting families.

Back to Square One?

/ Hilary / Leave a comment

Waking up to a period when one is hoping to become pregnant is deflating. The weeks leading up are full of unknowns and questions and hopes of what could possibly be. Constantly checking to see if anything is abnormal or feels like symptoms of pregnancy. Just to see the truth that pregnancy is not the reality and another month of ‘trying’ is in store.

For me, I did not receive this clear presentation of reality. I actually would have loved to have received a period to mark a new month of opportunity and possibility of what’s yet to come.

Instead, after using the ‘cycle tracker’ to predict when I should be menstruating, I noticed I had missed the window of my new start. Full of excitement, I pulled out a pregnancy test in the hopes of a miracle and… negative.

Back to square one? How frustrating! I don’t have a day one to base my ovulation of off and could spend the entire month peeing on those darn ovulation sticks each morning. Possibly. I now know that my body has the ability to be ‘normal. Yet, I don’t know what I need to do to make it ‘normal’.

Or maybe this is just a part of the road of life for me. I now know that my body has the ability to be ‘normal. Yet, I don’t know what I need to do to make it ‘normal’.

Maybe that’s the point. I did nothing spectacular to receive my period earlier this year. The one major thing I did differently was to pray for God’s healing in my life and in my womb. It could be that simple. Letting go of the analyzing and trying new things and taking exercise out and taking more naps and on and on.

Finding the balance of taking care of myself without going to the extremes of finding answers that aren’t supposed to be found. Instead of me simply taking in information, I quickly move into “GO” mode with to-do’s and predictors and Google searching advice on the best ways to get pregnant and my mind became consumed with the thought of ‘this is the month to get pregnant!’

“WOAH sister”. That’s what I wanted to tell myself. “Slow down girl, just take the period as a wink to know the impossible IS possible and there is so much more where this came from.”

Instead, I was off to the races, trying to figure out what I could do to get pregnant. Since when did this become about ME and what I have control over?

God is a very big God. All knowing and all powerful, I believe this to be true. I also believe He is the creator and healer. Instead of worshiping the ovulation tracker this month and calculating days, I choose to spend my energy and time worshiping and getting to know Him more and letting my body do what it will do.

I do agree and believe in medical assistance and the amazing knowledge of doctors, it just seems like I can force my wants and timing a little too quickly. So for now, I will rest in this month of letting go and remind myself that I am not in control, so humbling.