Why We're Doing What We're Doing

A short time after we moved to Washington I met a woman who had two foster children she was attempting to adopt. She would often tell me about the great program she was going through and eventually I found out it was with Youth For Christ. It turns out that Youth For Christ in Tacoma not only has several amazing ministries, but is also a state licensed foster agency. Through hearing this woman's experiences I became more and more interested and she invited me and Justin to an annual banquet to learn more about the program. It was at that time that we were hooked. We heard stories from family after family of how God had taken brokeness and brought restoration to several children and families. We began to see that this could be God's plan for our family as well. It was at that time that adoption was no longer "Plan B," but became our desire and what we believed God was calling us to.

However, time went by before we officially commited ourselves to this. There always seemed to be a reason to wait; not enough money, not enough time, not enough certainty, not enough... Basically what it came down to was not enough faith. We finally realized that it was not up to us to open or close this door, but up to God. We had a lot of fear and a lot of unknowns, but we still felt that we were supposed to pursue this. We needed to step out in faith and leave the rest up to God.

So a few months ago we began filling out all the paperwork. We then went to several trainings to learn about how the whole process works. We submitted all our paperwork and we are now waiting for our background checks to be cleared.

Right now we believe this is what God is directing us to do. We know there may be a lot of ups and downs and we know that things may not even turn out like we are picturing them right now. But, we do know that God always does what is good, what is right, and what is perfect. We have experienced times when we didn't understand why things weren't going according to our plans only to find that God had something so much better for us. When Justin and I were married, my cousin read a poem during the ceremony. One of the main reasons we chose it was beause the last line read, "God's plans put man's best dreams to shame." We have seen this evident in our past and we know it will be just as evident through the ways that he brings us a family. We know the hopes and dreams we have now do not even compare to how amazing all He has planned will be. We have peace in knowing that God's plan always has been and always will be so much better than anything we could have imagined. We know that someday we will see how God's plan for us to have a family was so ordained and so perfect that we will be thankful it didn't happen any other way.