Our Journey

We have been praying for this day to come for a very long time. We are officially able to write the check to start IVF! We are beyond excited, anxious, and at a loss for words to describe the feelings we have going into these next steps. We are putting our hope in Christ as we always should that His will be done. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. This is a very tough verse in scripture for our human nature to grasp sometimes. We need to hold tight to this in our next steps and may need reminded of this throughout. This also is a great reminder in fostering children as we think we know what is best for that child and maybe the best is not always done for that child, but it is His plan for that child as well. Sometimes we think it is unfair what happens in our lives or especially in the lives of children in fostering (the system) but we have to find joy in the situations and trust in His will. We have found this hard in different cases thus far but we pray and rely on support systems we have, the ultimate support being our faith in Christ. We asks for prayers these next few months as we travel and have many appointments and lots of medications that could make me feel not my best. We know whatever happens will be worth it. We are truly blessed to have wonderful people in our lives. Thanks for following along!

Sitting in the woods gives you time to think. This morning, while hunting, I was thinking about this lovely Thanksgiving card that was sent to us. With it was wonderful words of encouragement for our upcoming process and a monetary gift as we’re nearer to reaching our goal to start IVF. That got me thinking about the love and support we have around us. When we first started the journey of fostering in November of 2016 one question the was asked in the interview/training process to become foster parents was “what support system do we have?” I know that’s a loaded question right? Support can mean so many things. Money, time, words, friends, family, extended family, our church family. To us it is all family by blood or not as we are all His children. But I digress, this question made me realize that we have so many people out there for us, loving us, supporting us in many aspects, pushing us when we need to do better, sitting with us when we’re down, helping us get back up, most of all praying for us. This also makes me realize as we share our story more people are with us every step of the way. We are so grateful for every single person in our lives currently or even in the past as they have been there and helpful to our journey. The prayers are an overwhelming blessing and are appreciated!

That leads me into tell you a little about the foster training process. Different agencies can differ in how they do things and how long it takes. For us we reached out to a few different private agencies. I researched and wanted to go the private agency route. Children’s Choice was the first to get back to us. The others got back to us with information months later, we were already going through training by this point. We love the agency we are with so in the end it worked out how it was meant to. We emailed them in early November and it took about a week when they got back to us and set up a time to come out. They told us training usually takes a couple months. Ours took a little longer as it was winter. Our agency came out every step of the way. We had several packets to read through and answer. We also had interview type questions to answer while they were there. It was a while ago but I believe they came out about once every other week, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on what part of the process we were in. Once all the training and paperwork were done we set up our clearances. Again that takes different amounts of time. In April I believe we received our official letter saying we were foster parents. After that we started to receive referrals. Until next time, see you later!