Hello Again!

It is hard to believe it is already July and I am just writing the first update in 2021! This past several months has been full of many unexpected blessings and some bumps in our journey to adoption. I will give you some highlights month by month.

JANUARY

We started the month with our 1st of 6 calls for our home study with our social worker, Brita from New Life Adoptions. This was informational and our first round of questions, mostly related to why we want to adopt. Our desire to adopt is really truly rooted in the Gospel and the hope that we have because we have been adopted into God's family. I (Renee) completed call #2, which was a one-on-one call with Brita that basically went over personal and family history.

We heard our neighbors were going to sell their house in February. The previous summer we had thought about this being a possibility someday but did not necessarily feel prepared to dive into buying another house yet. Through the counsel of family and friends and through many prayers, we decided to move forward to make an offer when it went on the market a few weeks later.

God provided in a big way this month! We knew our current vehicle couldn't fit three car seats so we found a used Honda Pilot, which has more than enough space for a 3rd car seat (and 4th and 5th!).

FEBRUARY

Connor completed call #3, his one-on-one with Brita. We informed her then that we were potentially buying next door and would need to slow down the home study process a little in the meantime.

Friday, February 12th the house next door went on the market and we put in our offer. We prayed constantly and found comfort in knowing that no matter the outcome we could be content because in Christ we have everything we need. Sunday our neighbors were reviewing the offers blindly and finally at 6pm, we got the call from our realtor that out of 18 offers ours was accepted!

MARCH

We completed call #4 about open adoption. Our hope and prayer is for an open adoption with the birth parents/ family. Open adoption is a spectrum and changes throughout the adoptee’s lifetime. It could mean email exchanges, phone calls, supervised visits, or even annual combined family vacations. We were surprised to learn that until the 1980's open adoption was rare and in not a few cases children were not even told they were adopted. Studies show that this is detrimental to the adoptee, the adoptive parents, and the birth family.

March 19th we moved into our new home. God provided 20+ willing and able friends to help us move our belongings literally next door. I think some of the neighbors were a little confused at first. :)

APRIL-JUNE

The next several months were challenging. In April, Karis and Alythea celebrated their birthdays. Three and one! We were settling into the house, enjoying the extra space to host family and friends. Then out of nowhere we hit some parenting challenges. The biggest challenge was that Karis started refusing to go to sleep and was waking several times in the night. We realized we have very little control. We realized we were looking for our children to be well-behaved and to live comfortably. God broke down these idols and gave us more of Himself. “Keep looking to Jesus” is an often repeated phrase between us. We kept looking for the next best book/ advice/ blog post/ podcast, etc. about parenting and marriage, but we began to see we just need more of Jesus! He is sufficient and He has given us all we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).

July

That leads us to today, July 1st. This afternoon we completed our 5th call, which was about transracial adoption. This session was very informative. We came away with some things we can do to increase diversity in our family.

NEXT

We scheduled our final (in-person) visit for July 14th. We are super excited! In the meantime, we need to submit background checks and fingerprinting. We need to prepare our profile book for when we are active with Mustard Seed Adoption Consultants.

Prayer Requests:

• Strength and unity in our marriage

• Grace in parenting our girls

• Patience with the adoption process

• Wisdom and creativity for creating our family profile book

• Divine provision for our future child’s birth Mama and Father (family)

• Protection and healthy for our future child