If not now, when?

I have written this post in my head so many times, but I have not been able to sit down and actually write out my thoughts.  Then someone asked me about how things were going.  Once I started talking I realized I wish I had been documenting things all along because, you know, I don't remember what I had for breakfast.  Goodness knows what I will remember in a year.

So here is what is going on: We are in the process of becoming resource parents through DHS.

I have always wanted to adopt and knew at some point we would.  But I just assumed international.

Not the state.  Not children who were taken from their homes.  Not children who have been neglected, abused, sexually assaulted.  Not children from right down the road.

When Trey and I got serious about our calling to care for the fatherless a year ago, we met with our DHS office. We met with private domestic adoption agencies.  We met with international adoption agencies.

I begged God to not let it be DHS.

We filled out paperwork for a domestic private adoption.  We met with social workers. We announced a private infant adoption. We had conference calls about China adoptions.  We filled out paperwork.  We worked our financial worksheet to adopt internationally.  We told our family we were going to adopt from China.

Yet, still...

God, please, not DHS.

If I have learned one thing in the past 5 years, it is that you can make a plan, paint a pretty picture in your head, but ultimately God's plan will make it's way known.  Even if I kick and scream along the way.

The thought of children in our state who needed a safe, loving home, would not leave us alone.  It kept us up at night.  It bothered me. I could no longer kiss my babies at night without thinking about children miles down the road who did not know what that felt like.  To be safe, warm, loved, secure.

I obsessed over the statistics.  I obsessed over the stories. I knew there are roughly 4,000 children in foster care in our state waiting for a family.  I knew we had love to offer them and a spare room waiting to be filled.

Yet I still begged for it not to be DHS.  It was too risky. I had children of my own! We couldn't foster.  How could I foster a child for 6 months only to have them removed from my home and placed back in their original home? How could I have family meetings with the birth parents and children to help reconcile relationships?  How would I know how to love children who didn't know love? Who had been through such trauma? Yet, how could I ignore it?

Life was so, so, so much easier before I cared.

But I did care, Trey cared, and after months and months and months of making excuses for not doing it, trying to make our own plans, running from DHS, it came down to this: If not us, who? If not now, when?

And, honestly? The timing is rough.

Trey is in year two of a 4 year seminary degree and is up to his eye balls in full time ministry.  He's out of town a good bit, I work full-time out of the home (for now....), and we have a busy two year old and a busy, busy, busy almost five year old.

But our ways are not God's ways and our plans are not His.  And His are far, far greater than what my earthly mind could imagine.  And I couldn't live while paralyzed by fear.

So there comes a point when we stop fighting and we start obeying.  I would be lying if I said that I was all in, all the time.  I still have moments when I want to run away from this.  It scares me. Also? I want to beat my head against the wall at times.  I just do.

But here we are, and we are at complete peace with it.  Busy, scary, uncomfortable peace, but peace.

We have a few more hours of training to do, a couple of tests, then our home study.

This is where I point out that it takes a village, y'all.  We have training three hours a night, one to two nights a week.  Add that in to our normal church nights, meeting nights, school nights, etc. and we have ourselves a full week. If it weren't for my mom and some sweet youth girls, we would not be able to do it.  They watch our kids, my mom cleans my house.  They care for the orphans and the fatherless by helping us fulfill our calling.

It's a beautiful, messy, ugly thing.

So that's where we are.  On our way to become foster/adoptive parents.

Life is super uncomfortable.  But I don't think we are called to live in comfort.

{Just because I love this old post from one of my favorites: www.rageagainsttheminivan.com/2012/05/where-is-mommy-war-for-motherless-child.html}