Isabella's Adoption - Part 1

I decided that since it is National Adoption month that today I would start writing about Isabella's adoption story. I might do Amelia's as well - although I probably covered it when I first started this blog. I guess I can start by saying this was not the way I had envisioned my life to be. I know there are many people that God gives them a desire for adoption before they are even married, but that wasn't the case for us. Ten years ago we got married and when we were ready for children, we assumed we would get pregnant and have children -- simple as that! I won't go into all of our infertility journey, it was pretty much just praying, waiting and hoping for years. And going through alot more emotionally than anyone ever realizes. In 2003, we had found out a couple things we surprisingly hadn't found out before and spent a couple months going through some tests, decided to do a couple IUIs (the inexpensive non-invasive procedure) but we knew that we would never do IVF. Not that I think that is wrong, it just would have been wrong for us. I personally didn't want to spend $20,000 on a slight chance that I would get pregnant and the possibility that I would have a miscarriage in a normal pregnancy was already increased, when I knew that we could spend the money for adoption. Yet, I got so tired of people, in my opinion uncompassionately, saying "Why don't you JUST adopt?" I didn't want to JUST adopt. I wasn't opposed to adoption, but I wanted God to show us His will and give us that desire. I totally believe the verse that says "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." We prayed that if our desires were wrong that God would change them. But He hadn't done that yet. I was still struggling with the desire to get pregnant and then we were worried about all the questions you have in adoption. From important ones like medical history, attachment, will I be prepared to deal with issues they may have as they grow up to the less important ones like "What if the baby isn't cute?" (Oh come one, you can pretend that doesn't matter, but you know we all want cute children and if my children ended up with chubby cheeks or crazy curly hair I could blame it on my genes ..... Oh wait.... :) ) Then in October 2003, I was listening to the radio and heard about an agency that was having some type of meeting or expo and I decided to look it up on the internet. This wasn't the first time I had looked up stuff about adoption, but normally got discouraged about different things. But this time it was different (obviously it was now God's timing!) I started showing Kenny some things and honestly to me it was the very first miracle in our adoption journey -- God gave us both this overwhelming desire to adopt! I honestly can't really remember the website, it was just totally God showing us that THIS was His plan. I don't know if its because I'm not a very patient person or just because we tend to "run with things" but we became as proactive as we could. I started talking to someone I knew was in the adoption process, she gave us the lady's name that did her home study and I called her and got lots of information and probably drove her nuts talking to her so much. As a side note, she knows that I think she is amazing, and I know that God sent her to us to do our homestudy and just encourage us along the way! Then in November 2003, we went to an international adoption seminar. We weren't sure if God was leading us to go international or domestic, but I was so excited about this seminar. I remember going to this meeting, tearing up during the video of people bring their children home yet after that sitting around listening to people, talking to some people and then leaving terribly discouraged. Have you ever been somewhere that you just felt you weren't supposed to be? That was how I felt - not at peace at all. I remember getting in the car and crying and Kenny asking me "What's wrong, I thought this was what you were wanting, are you not wanting to adopt now?" and it wasn't that, I was just so sure that God was going to show us which way to go and yet now I felt kind of empty. Once again, I thought God wasn't showing us, but He was by not giving us the peace to go this way --- its amazing to me to think now that Isabella's birthmother was pregnant with her at this time and God was just working us both toward each other. Then I went back to the internet and I stumbled across a website for Adoption Consultants in California. Cathy worked with domestic adoptions and I honestly got a wonderful peace as I looked at her website. I called her that night and when she called back we talked for over an hour. We spent time praying about it, thinking about it, and decided that this was definitely the way God wanted us to go. Our next step was that we had to create a profile - I remember spending several evenings doing this right after Thanksgiving. We then printed them out and got them ready to send to Cathy. I remember the day we sent them out - it was HORRIBLE!!! Honestly everything was going wrong! That night Kenny and I went to Michael's Craft store and while we were there I told Kenny that I felt like Satan knew that we were going to be getting victory and that God was going to bless us because he was doing everything that day to attack me and discourage me and trying to stop us from getting those profiles out. Right then in the middle of the store Kenny said "Well, let's pray about it!" OK --- I'm getting long, so I will write more tomorrow - obviously you already kind of know the outcome and that we did get our special blessing! But there is lots of things you don't know, so come back. :)